Wake In Fright

The Australian Censors Board, determines that some movies must only be seen by adults and must not be seen by children. At 10 years old I wanted to see "A Clock Work Orange" at the drive in... Nope - R rated. Today I can say that the movie is fine for the younger people to see.

And at 13 years old me and some other kids saw a bit of a Swedish sex movie, from down the creek bank, that ran between the car park and another drive in movie screen - no big deal.... 2 or 3 minutes of that - "Meh - people fucking = boring".

But we were permitted to see at school, this movie called, "Wake In Fright" - as a class project.... AND it had been determined by the Censors Board, to be suitable for ages 12 and up (not sure on the exact details but it's close enough).

This is really a brilliant movie and it was almost lost forever, except some one had a few tins of it under their bed from 50 years ago...

So it's been rescued, restored and stuck in the national archives.

It's not a fancy made up production - it's really honest and blunt.

There are things in this movie that make it a great movie and there are things in this that make it - not a horror movie in the sense of crime and off the wall shit, but it's just not good living - with the booze and going crazy and the assorted (implied) sexual scenes...

The dysfunction of the crazy family and the crazy society.

With the booze, the religion, the gambling, the gossiping and mind fuck crap of small town / big city life.

A lot of NORMAL things - ARE disturbing.

In a round about kind of way, this is kind of like an Australian version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.... Kind of.

Losing your shit on an alcohol drug trip.....

And this is real world kind of issues - but the most mentally disturbing movie I ever saw was called "Eraser Head" - and it's a production, like a printed book, it's a manufactured item.

And fuck all ever happened in the movie - but it is the oblique side on issues, that caused a lot of people who saw it to want to go off to a psych hospital for a long holiday. I myself was seriously disturbed by it.

Wake in Fright has some similar elements to it.

I mean they are guys, it's acting, they are following a script, and they are doing it all in front of a film crew, so it's NOT real.... but there are parts that are disturbing non the less.