We are so honoured to reveal Umbrella’s brand new 4K restoration of the pioneering Australian New Wave landmark WAKE IN FRIGHT from the original camera negative.
All the little devils at Umbrella are proud to have restored this landmark Australian film, drawing out all the sun, sweat, beer, and blood from this fair dinkum classic.
New to The Yabba? Come and have a drink, mate.
A horror like no other before or since, this outsider’s ode to the outback burns like hellfire as it spins and spirals into a cacophony of blood, dust, and uncontrollable howls of manic laughter.
WAKE IN FRIGHT (aka OUTBACK) lures us into The Yabba, an isolated town where the locals all have the same primal instincts to drink, shoot, screw, gamble, and brawl until the end of time.
We did not blink at the chance to restore every bead of sweat and drop of beer in this sun-drenched descent into the clutches of madness. The whole team are beside themselves to make this essential masterstroke of Australian cinema available in its definitive form!
Restoration Details:
The original camera negative was scanned in 4K by the National Film and Sound Archive before being sent to our restoration facility to be colour corrected and stabilised one shot at a time.
The team then cleaned each shot frame-by-frame removing any imperfections and correcting any distortion. With over 300 shots per reel, this resulted in months of intense restoration work before a feature-length preview was ready.
The History of Wake In Fright:
After the film was released to a menial box-office return (shame, shame Australia) the camera negatives vanished from the face of the earth for over three decades. In 1998, Umbrella friend and editor of the film Anthony Buckley tracked them down to a storage facility first in London (close but no luck) and eventually in Pittsburgh, USA four years later. On the box it was found, a label stating ‘for destruction’.
The six-year search finally saw the film touch down on home turf in 2003, but it was the incorrect elements – ramshackled TV cutdowns. The search carried on from one contact to another before Anthony arrived at a film vault where the manager stated that the only chance would be to check the bins. Have a guess what was in the bin?
Finally, in 2004, all 263 cans of the film were sent to the National Film and Sound Archive in Australia to be preserved. According to director Ted Kotcheff, “the search for it was almost like a film – “The Hunt for O-Negative.” He added, “the loss of the negative would have been a knife in my heart as Wake in Fright is one of my proudest achievements.”
Fast forward another two decades and we cracked open the vault one more time to dust off the prints and ensure this masterpiece of Australian cinema is preserved for all future generations to discover and be proud of a pivotal moment in our country’s cinematic history.
The most striking difference is the colour between the previous scan and our newly restored and coloured master. Director Ted Kotcheff intended for the heat to be palpable in his 1971 film, stating, “I don’t want to see any cool colours. I don’t want to see blue or green. Ever. On anything. All I want is red, yellow, orange, burgundy and brown.”
The 2009 grade had a green and yellow hue that didn’t correspond with the look of the surviving release prints. The grade on this new restoration has replaced these hues with a far more natural and earthy aesthetic – capturing the Australian landscape in all its sweltering, sun-soaked colour.
WAKE IN FRIGHT has never looked better, and that is a sight for sore eyes.
Umbrella wish to give special thanks to colourist Charlie Ellis at Roar Digital and the Wake In Fright Trust. The restoration was supervised by filmmaker Mark Hartley.
Coming soon to 4K Blu-Ray…
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