Say g’day to Wake In Fright’s 40th Anniversary trailer

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I’m personally very stoked to finally get a look at WAKE IN FRIGHT, Ted Kotcheff’s 1970 Aussie thriller that has gotten a lovely restoration by Drafthouse Films on its 40th Anniversary. The new trailer for WAKE IN FRIGHT, which Martin Scorsese called “a deeply… unsettling and disturbing movie,” has just been released and can be seen below. It’s a rather unusual and unsettling preview, which I assume mirrors the movie closely.

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.

WAKE IN FRIGHT opens theatrically in New York on October 5 at The Film Forum (NYC), October 19 at The Nuart (LA) and will have a national release to follow in major cities after screening at Fantastic Fest 2012 this week (Drafthouse Films).

Source: Arrow in the Head

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Eric Walkuski is a longtime writer, critic, and reporter for JoBlo.com. He's been a contributor for over 15 years, having written dozens of reviews and hundreds of news articles for the site. In addition, he's conducted almost 100 interviews as JoBlo's New York correspondent.