Discover ‘Wake in Fright’, the Australian Thriller That Martin Scorsese Called ‘Deeply Unsettling and Disturbing’

Exclusive: Arrow Video will release "First Blood" director Ted Kotcheff's 1971 classic on 4K UHD for the first time in North America this summer. IndieWire shares the new trailer.

Over the course of a 60-year career, director Ted Kotcheff mastered just about every genre there was to conquer. He helmed a literate, witty Gregory Peck Western (“Billy Two-Hats”); fast and funny comedies (“Fun with Dick and Jane,” “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?,” “Weekend at Bernie’s”); dramedies where the laughs coexist with unsettling insights into the dark side of the human condition (“North Dallas Forty,” “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz”); and a pair of the greatest, and in one case, most influential, action movies of the 1980s (“First Blood,” “Uncommon Valor”).

Before he made any of those films, though — and long before he finished his career supervising a dozen seasons of “Law & Order: SVU” in the early 2000s — Kotcheff directed one of his most powerful and enduring films, the gritty Australian thriller “Wake in Fright.”

The tale of a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) who gets stranded in a remote outback town overrun by violent, crazy drunks led by the maniacal Doc (Donald Pleasance), “Wake in Fright” (1971) is darkly funny and terrifying — it also, in spite of good reviews, was a commercial failure at the time of its release.

In subsequent decades, “Wake in Fright” developed a cult reputation, less because its audience increased than because its unavailability gave it a mythic stature among those few who had managed to see it during its initial run. For many years, the negative was thought to be missing, and the versions released on home video and television were largely censored, degraded dupes that failed to represent Kotcheff’s original intentions. It wasn’t until the original elements were discovered in the mid-2000s that the film was widely seen in its proper form, ultimately receiving a major boost in visibility when Martin Scorsese selected it to screen in Cannes’ repertory section.

“‘Wake in Fright’ is one of only two films ever to screen twice in the history of the festival,” Scorsese said at the time, referring to the fact that Kotcheff’s film had originally premiered at the festival back in 1971. “‘Wake in Fright’ is a deeply — and I mean deeply — unsettling and disturbing movie. I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, and it left me speechless. Visually, dramatically, atmospherically, and psychologically, it’s beautifully calibrated, and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time, right along with the protagonist played by Gary Bond. I’m excited that ‘Wake in Fright’ has been preserved and restored and that it is finally getting the exposure it deserves.”

Now, “Wake in Fright” is receiving its most lavish home video release to date in the form of a limited edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Arrow Video. In addition to a new transfer — the first time “Wake in Fright” has been released on 4K UHD in North America — the Arrow edition is loaded with extras incorporating insights from both the filmmakers and “Wake in Fright” scholars. There’s also an accompanying booklet with new critical writing and archival material.

Take an exclusive look at the new trailer for “Wake in Fright” below.

“Wake in Fright” will be released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray by Arrow Video on June 30.