It's fright night (again)
The Age
Thursday June 25, 2009
Goth horror cult status was achieved in one little film for this Canadian director, by Paul Kalina. WHEN Ted Kotcheff first arrived here in 1970, he met a hostile reception from the locals. The Canadian director was here to film the adaptation of Kenneth Cook's outback gothic horror Wake in Fright, which cast our rural backwaters as a particularly hostile and cruel place."When I arrived here a man came up to me and said 'you're here to rubbish Australians, aren't you?' " remembers Kotcheff. The 78-year-old director returned to Australia earlier this month to promote the rediscovered classic, now hailed by local critics as one of the great Australian films."I said 'I'm a director, I don't criticise, I observe and empathise, I want to know why people behave the way they do. What are the circumstances that force men to behave like that, that's what interests me.' "There were similarities, anyway, says Kotcheff, between the Australian outback and the Canadian wilderness."Our north is vaster than your outback and you have that same sense of brooding, empty landscapes that don't liberate you, they scare you and entrap you. Also the whole masculine ethos, that was very true of the Canadian north, so I had some sense of that."Kotcheff left nothing to chance in his recreation of the outback. He told art director Dennis Gentle to use only hot colours - red, orange, brown - so that the heat would be oppressive. He sprayed the set with fuller's earth, a fine dust used in special effects. He even went "to the ludicrous extreme" of bringing in sterilised flies. "I went to infinite pain to never let the audience be free of the heat, the dust, the flies."The simply plotted film evolves around indentured schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond), who arrives in outback town Bundanyabba to catch a plane to Sydney, where he plans to spend his summer holiday with his girlfriend. A weak man easily misled by temptation, Grant loses everything in a downward spiral of gambling, drinking, 'roo shooting and awkward sexual encounters. Yet Kotcheff regards the film's characters with considerably more sympathy than hostile reactions to the film at the time of its release would suggest."I think one of the most effective lines, it happens right at the beginning, is when (Grant)'s going on about these people and their aggressive hospitality and Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence) says, 'It's death to farm out here, it's worse than death in the mines; you want them to sing opera as well?' "He also wanted to film a scene in the mines where Dick (Jack Thompson, in his first film role) and Joe (Peter Whittle) work. The scene was abandoned for health and safety reasons, but it would have made them even more sympathetic, Kotcheff believes.But he remains steadfast in his estimation of the Yabba's cop, Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty, in his final role). "I saw him as the local petty tyrant of the town. This was his domain, he was the king of this particular circle of hell. I always felt there was a sinister side to him when, at the end, he takes a certain sadistic pleasure from John's mental and emotional demise."I often wondered if I went too far with that enormous flame on his lighter, whether the infernal connotations were too obvious. I guess not. He's xenophobic, certainly. Notice how he homes in on the outsider immediately."The best part of directing is creating characters, says Kotcheff. "Anyone can shoot with a camera, but to create interesting characters is the fun for me in making films."Among his most treasured moments in the film is when Joe pulls his chest hair. "Details like that reveal the person he is. This film is like chamber music. Most of the time there's only four characters, Doc, John and the kangaroo men (Dick and Joe), so you had to pay attention to every little detail in their behaviour. It wasn't a symphony. It's a piece of chamber music."
© 2009 The Age