Wake in Fright

Uh, "Breezy," never saw that.

"Fear is the Key," "Wake in Fright," "The Anderson Tapes," I saw that.

Uh, "Klute," I gotta see that one.

A number of people have brought that one up.

They wanna have, you know, either a thrill or a fright or they wanna ha- they wanna have some sort of major experience to draw them into the cinemas.

There are so many examples of, um, the Australian landscape, you know, going back to Mad Max and Wake in Fright and those really sort of older films.

So I don't think that's anything new, Sinead.

I think the Australian landscape has sort of been used in that way for, um, decades, and it's just because it, I guess, it is just such an iconic landscape But it's interesting, I also have heard recently, you know, um, international commissioners and also Australian commissioners sort of, um, express concern that there's too much red dirt in an, um, Australian, on Australian screens at the moment [laughs] and, you know, that we need to, um, diversify.

We're unplugging our curling wands and going bush, Felicia.

Why would you possibly want to leave all this glamour for a hike into the middle of nowhere?

A 20-minute drive down the road, the tiny town of Silverton has served as a backdrop for films like Wake In Fright and Mad Max 2.

The town of about 30 residents has one pub, four donkeys, and a Mad Max 2 museum.

He's still just prey in that landscape.

And specifically when Mick... kind of walks away and John Jarrett himself has described him as a shark he's like a shark and he's waiting to just like pick off anyone that kind of swims into this like vast expanse this sea of brown and sun and then when he wanders off he disappears I think he fades away and it's like he is a ghost and yeah I think that's what's always been interested to me about wolf creek even when i back when i saw the cinema it kind of terrified me is that like supernatural fear of the unknown and and australia does this all the time uh picnic at hangy rock walk about like a lot uh waking fright the film that i mentioned a couple of weeks back a couple of episodes oh yeah yeah there's a lot of that where it's just like australia is like this almost this um liminal space this kind of weird purgatory-esque place or can be for some people that are lost so

It leans a bit more into, you know, you were saying about the within without nature of it.

It leans harder into that in Wolf Creek too, doesn't it? Because that becomes, I think Mick ends up in more of a sort of urban area and it ends up being almost a bit class war.

okay.

Killer, Warthog film.

I mean, I keep mentioning it, but Waking Fright, which is the film that I watched recently.

It's Osploitation, but it was directed by an American guy.

Fright.

And why is it called Wake in Fright?

Well, the film itself is based on a book by Australian journalist Kenneth Cook of the same name.

And yeah, it's an exploitation movie set in the Australian outback.

So the book itself, the book that is based on was called Wake and Fright.

So it's not, the film title wasn't made up for the film.

But the title of the book comes from an old Australian expression that was, you dream of the devil, but you wake in fright.

Or may you dream of the devil and wake in fright.

Never saw that.

71, Wake in Fright.

Didn't see that.

1971, I saw this one.

These, these are the ones I just bought.

I got the Night Watch set and I got Wake in Fright, so.

Okay.

Wake in Fright is so good.

It really is, yeah.

Donald Pleasence in his, some of his most unhinged in that movie.

Yeah

... an even worse thing to be.