Billy Can’t Be A Hero: A Re-Appreciation of William Friedkin, and the Movies of May 2013

In the last month or so, I’ve not only rescreened William Friedkin’s films Sorcerer (1977) and The French Connection (1971), but also caught his latest movie, Killer Joe (2011), as well as read his recently-published autobiography The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir. 

An iconoclastic autodidact, director Friedkin has always been interested in morally questionable people doing bad things (sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not) and the consequences of their actions.

It has been several years since I last saw any of WF’s work, and for some reason (probably raw, ugly contrarianism), he had fallen out of favor with me. Wow, was I stupid! His flicks are GREAT!!!!

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.