AustLit

'Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Wake in Fright, one of Australian cinema's 197C most unsettling horror movies, as well as one of its most, perceptive works of national self-interrogation. Adapted from Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel of the same name and directed by Ted Kotcheff of later First Blood fame, Wake in Fright has attained a semi-mythical status firstly as a `lost movie', only being fully restored for a 2009 re-release, and secondly as a cult film rejected by audiences on its theatrical release and with considerably less influence on the mainstream of Australian cinema than its contemporaries in the Australian Gothic genre.. (Introduction)