Wake in Fright
Wake in Fright is a 1971 film from Australia and the USA, directed by Ted Kotcheff, running 114 minutes. reelscum files it under Ozploitation.
- Year
- 1971 · 1970s films
- Runtime
- 114 min
- Director
- Ted Kotcheff
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (26/100)
- Also known as
- Outback · Savane · Bite the Bullet
Defined in the glossary: Ozploitation
A masterpiece and an ordeal. The kangaroo hunt is real footage and it is unbearable.
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.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Ozploitation: the Australian genre boom, 1971 to 1986
An adults-only certificate, a tax loophole, and a Melbourne doctor who knew what happens to bodies at speed. Australia's fifteen years of cheap, mean, brilliant genre film.
- Wake in Fright is not an exploitation film
It was lost for thirty years, found in a bin marked 'for destruction', and it is the best thing on this site.
On these lists
- Essential Ozploitation
Australia spent fifteen years making films about the country trying to kill you. These are the ones that meant it.
- Better than their reputation
Prosecuted, banned, dismissed or filed on the wrong shelf. All of them are good.
Filed alongside
The Cars That Ate Paris
Peter Weir's debut. A town that farms car crashes. Very strange.
Road Games
Rear Window in a truck, with Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Razorback
A giant pig film shot like a perfume ad. Somehow works.
The Man from Hong Kong
Jimmy Wang Yu wrecks Sydney, with hang-gliding and a man actually on fire. Peak crossover.
Mad Max 2
The template the whole Italian post-nuke cycle copied for a decade.
Patrick
A man in a coma does telekinesis. Better than that sentence implies.
Stone
Australia's outlaw-biker scripture. Mad Max drank from this tank.
Long Weekend
A couple litter, and Australia decides to kill them. Excellent.
Mad Max
Made for nothing on public roads. You can feel every dollar missing.
Dead End Drive-In
A drive-in turned into an internment camp. The satire is not subtle.
Fair Game
A woman alone at an outback wildlife reserve is hunted by three kangaroo poachers. Lean and nasty.
Thirst
A secret society farms humans for blood. Ozploitation does vampires as corporate agribusiness.