Saw Wake in Fright, a spacey, anxious sort of Australian film about a prissy little schoolteacher in a backwoods community. He stops off in a slightly larger backwater town and gets stuck there after losing all of his money in a night of drunken debauchery. From there it's a sort of low-key horror as he keeps missing train night after night, stuck in a hung-over haze, waking up on floors of saloons after nights of drinking and shooting stiff in the clothing he passed out in. All of this may sound like a rousing good time, but schoolteacher is a fairly dainty, mincing dude and it's clear that all of this bacchanalia is destroying him in some way.
The film begins his entrapment with the town sheriff buying him drinks in a pub. There's young, shirtless guys hanging about, some in black wife-beaters, and the sheriff leans very close over the schoolteacher, lighting his cigarette. The protagonist is all-but-explicitly gay and it feels very much like the sheriff is hitting on him in this scene. In later scenes he's menaced by angry drunk men. It's never clear if their roughhousing is going to descend into rape or murder or if the townsfolk will just keep him liquored up and watch this dainty man self-destruct.
The film treats the schoolteacher's adventures as a sort of growth experience. Ultimately the schoolteacher relaxes and becoming, perhaps, more of a man. This film was made in the 70s, so I'm not sure that the schoolteachers' supposed to actually be gay. Perhaps he's just kind of effete but straight after all. The character is played by Gary Bond who was gay in real life and like I said there seems to be some homoeroticism in the film. Perhaps I'm just seeing what I want see? Anyway the events of this film looked horrifying to me. It's played loosely and ominously, full of grumbly sounds and sudden jump-cuts, but ultimately with an arid, aimless feel. Scenes go on forever as you watch a man, stuck in place, fall apart. Not as glum as I make it sound, but no chuckle-fest either.
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