Wake in Fright (1971)

1971 | Australia | Ted Kotcheff | ★★★★★

Based on Kenneth Cook's Australian outback-set novel, Ted Kotcheff's booze, sweat, and testosterone-soaked Wake in Fright is a visceral, slow-burn waking nightmare of a film, driven by several memorably full-blooded performances and some decidedly brilliant editing.

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"A middle-class schoolteacher, stuck in a government-enforced teaching post in an arid backwater, stops off in the mining town of Bundanyabba on his way home for the Christmas holidays. Discovering a local gambling craze that may grant him the financial independence to move back to Sydney for good, the opportunity proves irresistible. But the bad decisions are just beginning and a reliance on local standards of hospitality in 'the Yabba' may take him on a path darker than ever expected." Eureka

See also:
Stotty's 1970s Favourites

Traitor (1971)

1971 | UK | Dennis Potter | ★★★★★

Produced for the BBC Play for Today strand, Dennis Potter's brilliantly written Traitor is a powerful drama about class and patriotism, featuring thematically dense scripting, a career-best performance from John Le Mesurier, and a discomfortingly bold ending.

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"Western journalists visit Moscow to interview Adrian Harris, a former controller in British intelligence who was also a double agent for the USSR. Harris believes in both Communism and Englishness, believing himself to have betrayed his class, but not his country. The press find these beliefs incompatible, and want to find out why he became a ‘traitor’. Harris is plagued by anxieties over both his actions and his upper-class childhood, and drinks to a state of collapse." BBC


See also:
Play for Today (1977-84)

Stotty's 1970s Favourites

Twins of Evil (1971)

1971 | UK | John Hough | ★★★

Starring Mary and Madeleine Collinson, John Hough's Twins of Evil is an undistinguished though somewhat entertaining Hammer horror, featuring strong visuals, pleasing performances, and a cracking final act, but little of any substance.

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"Glamorous identical orphaned twins Maria and Frieda move from Vienna to the village of Karnstein to take up a new life with their submissive aunt and grim uncle a fanatical Puritan and leader of a witch-hunting religious sect who is determined to kill his nemesis, Count Karnstein: a devil-worshipping libertine who has been turned into a vampire..." Network