WAKE IN FRIGHT

The Canadian director Ted Kotcheff made "Wake in Fright" in 1970 and it first appeared a year later in the UK under the title "Outback"and it's among the most brutal and uncompromising of all films to deal with the machismo of the Australian character. It's about a young schoolteacher, (Peter O'Toole lookalike, Gary Bond), who finds himself stranded penniless, (after losing all his money gambling), in a hell-hole of an outback town known as 'the Yabba'. It's a culture, if culture is the right word, fuelled almost entirely by alcohol and it culminates in a kangaroo hunt that is simply an orgy of violence. It's the most terrifying sequence in a genuinely disturbing picture and it's a picture that disappeared off the radar for more than 40 years. Now that it's been rediscovered it feels like something of a lost masterpiece and it's certainly the best thing Kotcheff has done. It also features an extraordinary performance from Donald Pleasence as an alcoholic doctor living off his wiles and the 'good nature' of the community.