Wake in Fright

A schoolteacher misses a train in a mining town called Bundanyabba and, over five days, is destroyed by hospitality.

Nothing supernatural happens. Nobody is murdered. The horror is that everyone in the Yabba is generous, relentless, and will not let him leave. Every beer is offered kindly and refusing is not an option. Kotcheff shoots the heat until it becomes a physical fact.

The kangaroo hunt is documentary footage of a real cull, included with the cooperation of animal welfare groups who wanted the practice seen; it carries a card saying so. It is still one of the hardest sequences in any film here.

The negative was lost for thirty years and found in 2004 in a Pittsburgh shipping container marked "for destruction". Watch it. Not twice.