Wake in Fright

Director Ted Kotcheff recalled that Chips Rafferty, whose last film appearance this is, insisted on drinking real pints of beer during the bar sequences. Kotcheff substituted non-alcoholic beers for the real stuff, but Rafferty could tell immediately that it had no alcoholic content and demanded proper pints be served. He told Kotcheff: "You concentrate on the directing, I'll concentrate on the drinking." The director calculated that due to this, Rafferty was drinking up to 30 pints per day.

According to the DVD commentary, the "artificial" banknotes printed for shooting the "Two-Up" gambling sequence looked so realistic that two extras were later arrested for trying to pass them off as genuine currency.

This film went out of circulation for many years, in large part due to the dissolution of the two production companies involved: NLT Productions was liquidated soon after its failed release, and Group W's assets were absorbed by CBS in 1999. As a result, the original film and sound elements went missing, sparking an international search. After a nearly decade-long quest, in 2002, the film's editor Anthony Buckley tracked the film down to CBS' Iron Mountain archives in Pittsburgh, where an initial 60 cans of film were found in a shipping container marked "For Destruction". By September 2004, a further 263 cans - several of which contained the original camera negative - were recovered from the vaults, allowing for a full digital restoration.

The novel's author, Kenneth Cook, based the fictional town of Bundanyabba on Broken Hill in New South Wales, where much of the movie was filmed on location. The train is seen arriving at "Bundanyabba Sulphide St" station, and Sulphide Street is a genuine station in Broken Hill. Broken Hill is one of the most isolated inland towns in Australia.

The sudden eerie silence and dimming of the lights in the bar portrays a ritual that still occurs most evenings in Returned & Services League (RSL) clubs across Australia. Each evening the lights are briefly dimmed and patrons are expected to stand in quiet remembrance of fallen service personnel. Usually the ceremony will coincide with the recitation of the 'Ode of Remembrance', a stanza of Laurence Binyon's 'For the Fallen', through the club PA. It reads: "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." This is followed by one or two minute's silence, and then the spoken promise by all: "Lest We Forget".