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01-21-2005, 07:05 AM
Oz horror film to fright festival
By Caroline Briggs
BBC News entertainment reporter
The violence in the film shocked preview audiences
A low-budget horror film inspired by the real-life disappearance of tourists in the Australian outback is set to storm the Sundance Film Festival.
Wolf Creek will get its world premiere next week at the festival in Utah.
The movie, which cost £570,000 to make (AUS $1.4m), has already been snapped up by a US distributor in a £1.88m (US $3.5m) deal.
It will also compete in the World Cinema Competition at Sundance which runs until from 20 to 30 January.
Written and directed by Australian Greg McLean, Wolf Creek tells the chilling story of three backpackers travelling in the remote outback.
We still don't know to this day how we managed to do it for $1.4m
David Lightfoot, producer
They are thrown into danger when they accept help from a local who turns out to be anything but friendly.
The film has been described as extremely violent even before the final cut has been released, with some people at the test screening fainting from the gore.
The Sundance website says Wolf Creek "is sure to do for Australian horror films what The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did for the American genre".
Producer David Lightfoot told the BBC News website that the reaction of the audience during a test screening last year had been "amazing".
"We had a couple of people who literally fainted in the audience," he said.
"Another couple of people went outside and hid in the toilets for a while before coming back in to see what happened.
Robert Redford founded the Festival over 20 years ago
"I produced this film and I can't even watch it myself."
He added that while the film was not a slasher movie, the secret of its triumph lay in its jolting realism and it packed a psychological punch.
"There are three or four sequences that are very confrontational," Mr Lightfoot said.
"The man is a deranged psychopath - an evil version of Crocodile Dundee - who thinks he is killing vermin. It plays on every primal fear.
"It is the fear of where you are, the massive scale of the outback and the fact there is nowhere to run to."
Parallels have been drawn between Wolf Creek and two notorious crimes in the Australian outback - the disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio and the crimes of serial killer Ivan Milat.
Mr Falconio, 28, vanished during an ambush north of Alice Springs in July 2001 while Milat murdered seven backpackers in 1992-1993 in New South Wales.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4162385.stm
For the full article
By Caroline Briggs
BBC News entertainment reporter
The violence in the film shocked preview audiences
A low-budget horror film inspired by the real-life disappearance of tourists in the Australian outback is set to storm the Sundance Film Festival.
Wolf Creek will get its world premiere next week at the festival in Utah.
The movie, which cost £570,000 to make (AUS $1.4m), has already been snapped up by a US distributor in a £1.88m (US $3.5m) deal.
It will also compete in the World Cinema Competition at Sundance which runs until from 20 to 30 January.
Written and directed by Australian Greg McLean, Wolf Creek tells the chilling story of three backpackers travelling in the remote outback.
We still don't know to this day how we managed to do it for $1.4m
David Lightfoot, producer
They are thrown into danger when they accept help from a local who turns out to be anything but friendly.
The film has been described as extremely violent even before the final cut has been released, with some people at the test screening fainting from the gore.
The Sundance website says Wolf Creek "is sure to do for Australian horror films what The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did for the American genre".
Producer David Lightfoot told the BBC News website that the reaction of the audience during a test screening last year had been "amazing".
"We had a couple of people who literally fainted in the audience," he said.
"Another couple of people went outside and hid in the toilets for a while before coming back in to see what happened.
Robert Redford founded the Festival over 20 years ago
"I produced this film and I can't even watch it myself."
He added that while the film was not a slasher movie, the secret of its triumph lay in its jolting realism and it packed a psychological punch.
"There are three or four sequences that are very confrontational," Mr Lightfoot said.
"The man is a deranged psychopath - an evil version of Crocodile Dundee - who thinks he is killing vermin. It plays on every primal fear.
"It is the fear of where you are, the massive scale of the outback and the fact there is nowhere to run to."
Parallels have been drawn between Wolf Creek and two notorious crimes in the Australian outback - the disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio and the crimes of serial killer Ivan Milat.
Mr Falconio, 28, vanished during an ambush north of Alice Springs in July 2001 while Milat murdered seven backpackers in 1992-1993 in New South Wales.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4162385.stm
For the full article