Nuking Oz at Midnight: “Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em” & Other Sick Humor Visions of the Apocalypse in Australia!

From On the Beach to The Road Warrior to Tomorrow, When the War Began, Australia has figured prominently in cinematic depictions of the events surrounding total war, including the use of thermonuclear weapons.

So what’s that all about then, eh, mate?

Not Quite Ozploitation (and two by Polanski!)

Wake In Fright (1971; Ted Kotcheff) has all the elements of a B-movie exploitation flick—a visitor to an remote town must deal with the place’s strange and foreboding customs—but wisely never plunges into obvious horror-movie territory.

There’s nothing supernatural going on, nor any superfluous “crime” subplots that are supposed to jack up the action.

However, Wake In Fright is a vicious anthropological study of the Australian continent’s worst citizens, both rural and urban, and as such is a top-shelf entry into a specific segment of “feel-bad” Savage Cinema.