The Truth Behind the Film Wolf Creek
Wolf Creek, the Backpacker Murders, and the Peter Falconio Case
Nov 10, 2008
The tagline of the film Wolf Creek states, 30,000 are reported missing in Australia every years. 90% are found within a month. Some are never seen again.
Wolf Creek- The Movie
It all begins when two female British tourists meet a young Australian man and the three decide to see the sights together. They plan to visit a large crater called Wolf Creek. After a hike up to the crater, they return to their car to find that it won’t start. They plan to spend a miserable night stranded until a man in a truck unexpectedly comes to the rescue. The man - Mick Taylor, (in a chilling performance by John Jarratt) offers to tow them to his nearby camp and repair their vehicle. They accept his offer, and are taken in the dark to an abandoned mining site.
At first Taylor appears friendly and they have a talk around the campfire. Mick tells them stories ,which begin to grow more and more sinister. The trio become drowsy after being offered drinks laced with drugs.
Liz awakens to find herself tied up in a shed. She gets loose only to discover Mick torturing Kristy in another shed. She manages to shoot Mick, and the two girls escape. However they are in the dark and totally lost. Mick, still alive, pursues them.
Liz tells Kristy to run for the road while she returns to try to find another vehicle. In one of the old sheds, she discovers evidence that Mick is a serial killer who has murdered other stranded travelers like themselves.
While she is in the shed, Mick catches up with Liz and tortures her into telling where Kristy is. In a very violent scene he cuts off some of her fingers and then severs her spinal cord, so she is paralyzed and helpless. Kristy reaches the highway, but Mick shoots her rescuer, and then kills her, too.
In the meantime, the almost forgotten Ben comes to and finds himself nailed and crucified to a beam in the mine shaft. He manages to break free and stumble out to a road, where he is rescued by surprised travelers.
However, Ben’s ordeal is not over. Because he is unable to find the place where they were held, he becomes a suspect in the disappearance of the two girls. He is later cleared of suspicion, but Mick gets away and at the end is walking off in search of another victim.
The Real Setting
There is a place in Australia called Wolf Creek, actually spelled Wolfe Creek, but it is set in a different location than in the film. The film was shot in South Australia, while the actual crater is located in northern Western Australia. Despite this shift in location, aerial shots of the real crater were used.
Two True, Similar Australian Murder Cases
While Wolf Creek is entirely a work of fiction which was for effect presented as a story based on true events, there are two Australian murder cases that are very similar. Writer/director Greg McLean first wrote Wolf Creek as a work of fiction. When he heard of the true cases, he blended similar incidents of real crimes into his fictional story. This created some confusion as to whether the film was intended to portray a true crime or was a completely fictional story.
Ivan Milat and The Backpack Murders
The character Mick Taylor is patterned after Australian serial killer Ivan Milat. In the early 1990s, the bodies of two British tourists were found in the Belango State Forest, southwest of Sydney, New South Wales. Five more bodies were soon discovered. The victims had been tortured before being murdered. Milot was captured and sentenced to life in prison.
A Similar Australian True Crime Story
A crime similar to the Wolf Creek story occurred in 2001, when two British tourists, Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees took a trip in the Outback from Alice Springs toward Darwin. During the night, a man named Bradley John Murdoch signaled for them to pull over, saying something was wrong with their van.
Peter got out of the van to inspect it with Murdoch, and shortly after Joanne heard a shot. Holding a gun on her, Murdoch then tied her up and forced her into his vehicle. When he left, no doubt to bury Peter’s body, Joanne managed to escape. Fearing for her life, she hid for hours, then made her way back to the highway where she was found by two truck drivers.
Peter’s body was never discovered, and no murder weapon was ever found. Because of her stoicism when being questioned, Joanne, like Ben in the film, for a time came under suspicion of having murdered Peter. The film is an interesting turn-around because in this true story it was a woman victim who survived, and who came under the suspicion of the police, not a man.
Murdoch was later caught after an intensive investigation. It is believed he may have followed the two from Alice Springs. He was known to be a heavy drug user.
Murdoch was still facing trial at the time the film came out. Because of the similarity between the movie and the true case, an injunction was placed on the film’s release in the Northern Territory where he was being tried. When his DNA turned up on makeshift handcuffs he had tied Joanne with, he was found guilty in December of 2005.
Click this link to read a review and comparison of the horror movies The Strangers and Them
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