Wake in Fright (1971) - January 15,2013

[Akijama]

Courtesy of Image Entertainment.



Wake in Fright Blu-ray

Wake in Fright Blu-ray Review

Hailed by Martin Scorsese, Roger Ebert, and Nick Cave, Wake in Fright is a "lost" Australian film from 1971. It played Cannes that year and was sold for distribution across Australia and the United States. Poor attendance, a lack of advertising, and critical of its homeland, Wake in Fright was yanked from theaters after one week, and thought to be lost forever.

Thirty years later, the film's cinematographer, Brian West, found the original negatives a week before they were scheduled to be incinerated. He began the painstaking process of restoration, and Wake in Fright is finally getting the recognition it deserves. It returned to Cannes, making it only the second film to ever screen twice; it is getting a screening at Fantastic Fest this year; a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles, with additional cities to follow; and undoubtedly Drafthouse Films, who has the distribution rights, will release a wonderful blu-ray/DVD.

Wake in Fright has been described as having the "backwoods horror of Deliverance" and the "gritty nihilism of Straw Dogs." A British schoolteacher stops in a small outback town on his way to Sydney, but his single night stretches into five, and a "descent into personal demoralization at the hands of drunken, deranged derelicts."

Trailer