A couple of months back, we let you in on the news that Drafthouse Films was in the process of reviving the 1971 Australian thriller WAKE IN FRIGHT. Cool news for the many of us who have never heard of, let along seen, the shocker that Martin Scorsese has called “deeply disturbing”. Now a new poster for the re-release has popped up, and we’re displaying it for you below.
Wake in Fright is the story of John Grant (Gary Bond), a bonded teacher who arrives in the rough Australian outback mining town of Bundanyabba, planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But, as his one night stretches to five, he plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left.
The film made its world premiere at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for a Palme D’Or and its US distribution rights were sold. Retitled Outback and hurried into a few theaters across the country, the film barely played for more than a week before it was yanked from circulation due to poor attendance and lack of advertising. WAKE IN FRIGHT vanished into obscurity, barely reviewed by American critics and not ever appearing on domestic VHS or DVD.
The Ted Kotcheff-directed flick returns to cinemas beginning with engagements at Film Forum in New York City on OCTOBER 5th, The NuArt in Los Angeles on OCTOBER 19th and will expand to additional markets before a home video and VOD release in Q1 of 2013.
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