AustLit

1. The rights were originally bought by American actor Dirk Bogarde in 1963. Bogarde had hoped to make the film with expatriate American director Joseph Losey. Although regarded as an Australian film, Wake in Fright was eventually made as a co-production between NLT Productions (Australia) and Group W Films (an American subsidiary of Westinghouse), with a Canadian director and a Jamaican scriptwriter, Evan Jones.

2. Several sequences were cut for the television release (running time approximately 100 min.).

3. Also known as Despertar en el Infierno (Spain); Kova loma (Finland); Vaarallinen Loma (Finland); and Xypnima ston Tromo (Greece).

4. While the original negatives of Wake in Fright were lost sometime after 1972, Bill Collins occasionally presented the television version late at night during the early-mid 1980s. A VHS version of Outback was also released in the US during the 1980s, and some 16mm and 35mm prints of the film existed but were in extremely poor condition for screening. In 1996, filmmaker Anthony Buckley (the film's editor) began searching for the original materials, making good on a promise he had made to the NLT co-founder Bobby Limb sometime prior to Limb's death in 1999. Buckely eventually located a damaged 35mm print (of Outback) in Dublin. Two years later, after an extensive search, he discovered the original film materials in a Pittsburgh (USA) vault, marked for destruction and imminent disposal. These materials were later used to produce a restored version of the film (Source: www.wakeinfright.com. Sighted 15 September 2009).

5. Further reference: Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper. Australian Film 1900-1977, A Guide to Feature Film Production (1980, q.v.), p. 333.

6. Further reference: Synopsis and Curator's Notes, Australian Screen http://aso.gov.au/titles/features/wake-in-fright/notes/

'Restoration of Australian film Wake In Fright' from the ABC's 7:30 Report is available at http://youtu.be/le78LmmI6Kc (Sighted 10/02/12)