we were driving through the australian outback once and my mother was telling me about the original "hills have eyes" why she feltt the need to do this i'll never know. i was terrified and somehow knew we would break down and we did but luckily it was in a small town near where my aunt lived not the outback so not too impressive, creepy though. just a few miles back..

i actually liked how the first bit of the movie was. i like it when horror movies kind of start of like normal movies because it pulls you in and makes you feel a bit more comfortable before you get scared.
It really pissed me off when she didn't properly kill him, she had a knife at her disposal so why not slit his throat after shooting him just to make properly sure? I'm really curious about this film and if it was really their mate.

why not? would people stop travelling to america because they saw an alien invasion in independence day?

they're not based on real life events. and the film starts off by telling you the amount of people that go missing in Australia every year.

bowling for columbine was based on a true story, afraid to go to america now?

i ca see how this film would scare tourists off as it is about tourists specifically getting murdered.

i give people more credit for having enough intelligence to understand it was just a movie, which was 'loosely' based on a true story which happened a decade or two ago

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_k...scovery_1.html <--- ivan milat story if anybody is interested.

this movie scared me more than any other horror movie because it was aussie & felt more real compared to american horror movies etc.

Thanks for that. I never did know the real story.

Doesn't it have some disclaimer that it is "inspired by recent events" in Australia? That, at least, certainly is true I think.

As I understand it, "Mick" is an amalgamation of both the Ivan "Backpacker Killer" Milat "story" and the more recent (2001) disappearance of 28~year old British tourist Peter Falconio. The "head on a stick" line was one of Ivan Milat's favourite sayings/threats and indeed, the head of one of his victims has never been found. (She was found beheaded, in a kneeling position, indicating she was beheaded whilst still alive. )

On July 14th 2001 British tourists Peter Falconio and his girlfriend, Joanne Lees were merrily smoking pot as they drove in a combi van through the Outback when they were stopped near Barrow Creek by one Bradley John Murdoch. I don't think there is such a place as Wolf Creek.

Nobody knows for certain how Murdoch killed Peter Falconio (or where he's buried or even if he's definitely dead), but his girlfriend Joanne Lees who
made an astonishing, very brave escape from the sick fuck later testified that she had heard a gun~shot.

'Wolf Creek' wasn't released in the Northern Territory until after Murdoch was
found guilty late last year, because the DPP (Australian equivalent of a DA) feared that the similarities to the Falconio case could prejudice the outcome of his trial. A bit of an insult to the intelligence of the public, if you ask me, but there you have it.
It's not a movie you'd say was "based on a true story" exactly, but it definitely was inspired by real events.

aussies love nothing more than a good head on a stick over an open fire.

she was saying independence day wasn't based on true events, not that wolf creek wasn't.

i dont really believe murdoch is guilty. granted i havent read the transcripts of evidence but the evidence from what i understand seemed to be largely circumstantial. i dont believe the dna evidence was genuine. i think it was largely doctored. my understanding is they werent even able to match up murdoch to the case until the third time they tried. i think it was even transported from the nothern territory to south australia to match. suspicious.

joanne lees is a less than satisfactory witness. i dont believe her. from memory she was not faithful to falconio?

theres no body.

there was one pool of blood found at the 'murder' site. there were no drag marks. there was no blood in the vehicle.

im reluctant to go further because i dont know enough about it, but i dont think murdoch (who is NOT a great guy. he's probably the lowest of the low but thats irrelevant) did it. i think he's just a pretty useful scapegoat. do you know how embarrassing it was for them not to have anyone to pin for this?

wolf creek is a real place. it just wasnt filmed there.

__________________
N/A

"That went over my head! You're smarter than me!"

Ooops! I stand corrected. Wolf Creek is real. It's a crater, but nonetheless still called a creek:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications.../slide_12.html

I thought they had just changed substituted 'Barrow Creek' with 'Wolf Creek' for the sake of the movie.

And yeah it's absolutely true that Joanne Lees cheated on Falconio (and then was dumb enough to deny it, not at the trial but much earlier on at a commital hearing), but are you suggesting this is relevant but Murdoch's character and prior criminal history aren't? I hope not. (Shooting at Aborigines because he was a proud, fanatical racist; abducting and raping a 12 year old girl, not to mention that he was caught on CCTV in the vicinity of Barrow Creek the night of Falconio's disappearance).
I don't know the case through and through either though, but on the face of things, Lees sounds not perfect but a million times more credible than Murdoch.

I might buy the 'scapegoat' line if he didn't already have such an awful criminal record. I don't hold being a drug runner against him ~ but the rest makes me doubt him a hell of a lot more than I'd doubt Joanne Lees.

no i am suggesting it makes her testimony as to what she saw and experienced and basically what is truth as far as she is concerned is suspicious.

all of those things, bar the last point, are irrelevant to this case. admitting those things to evidence is prejudicial and unfair to the accused. i already said he's not a good guy. but i dont think he did this. i am willing to be proven wrong but im not convinced. i dont know how the jury was.

did you know that someone gave evidence that they saw falconio about 7 days after his alleged disappearance?

murdoch doesnt need to be credible. he's charged with a crime but his past is irrelevant.

i dont believe that all of the evidence brought before the court was genuine. i believe that they pegged it on him because of exactly what you are saying. he is a bad guy with a bad past. they knew this and picked him out especially.

__________________
N/A

In my opinion, if Lees testimony as to what happened was suspect, it was most likely because both she and Peter Falconio were stoned when he 'disappeared'. Not because she had been cheating on him.


I wasn't there, but I think he had a pretty fair trial. (As mentioned, apparently in the interests of justice, 'Wolf Creek' wasn't even allowed to be shown in the NT until the jury reached a verdict.)
All evidence of Murdoch's prior criminal record was kept from the jury.
(And whether his prior record was irrelevant to the case is debatable. The manner in which he abducted and raped the 12 year old girl, along with her mother, would be called 'similar fact' evidence in some courts, since it demonstrated an extremely similar MO.)

Why hold Lees 'bad points' against her as a witness, but not Murdoch's? He testified in his own defense, so he too was a witness like Lees and the jury were entitled to judge his truthfulness, his credibility or lack thereof and come to a conclusion.

And incidentally I'm not defending her because she's a woman and going 'Wah, wah, sexist!' If it had been Joanne Lees who 'disappeared' and Falconio who escaped, and then it later emerged he'd been screwing around on her, I'd have the same opinion as I do now ... that Murdoch is likely to be the culprit.

Yeah, I did know that. It's interesting but I'm not sure how credible that person's testimony was. Wasn't it somebody who said they served him in a cafe or a roadhouse or something? Couldn't they have been mistaken? I'd have to look it up. Got any links handy?

It'd be nice if poor Pete was still alive. I'd LIKE to believe he did fake his own death, but from what I've read, the likelyhood of that is slim.


... but Lees past isn't irrelevant, despite the fact that unlike Murdoch, she had never shown a proclivity to commit violent crime, and wasn't the one on trial?


One thing I'll agree with you on is that the police at one point had a certain forensic 'expert' gathering 'scientific' evidence against Murdoch. This woman was the same 'expert' who was the star prosecution witness against Lindy Chamberlain, and her testimony in that case was later proven to be a complete load of dingo shite. I don't know if they actually got her to testify at Murdoch's trial, though. Surely they'd have been too embarrassed.

ANYway, I don't know this case through and through, but this article in "The Bulletin" which, whilst blatantly, openly biased against Murdoch, still offers pretty compelling evidence of his guilt. This paragraph I think gives a fair, intelligent summary of a lot of the reason for the suspicion people had about Lees:

Many readers of The Bulletin write in saying they are convinced that Joanne Lees is the guilty party, not Murdoch. It is in one way understandable how they have come to form this view. The daily press tend to report the “best” angle of the day, and that - in this trial - has often been based on doubts as to the reliability of Lees’ memory. But as Wild said, she wasn’t there “taking notes” when she was attacked. She was “in a state-of-emergency”. It would have indeed been more suspicious had she remembered everything in fine detail.

The rest of it is here. I know it's openly partisan but there's a lot more than just Murdoch's prior history on offer as evidence of his probable guilt :
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulle...2570D900065D3B

I thought I was the only one who liked it.