| “ | You see, in this world, there's people like me and there's people like you. And people like me eat people like you for breakfast and shit them out. You're nothing but foreign vermin, a stinking introduced species. And it's up to my kind to wipe your kind out. And that makes me the winner, which makes you... | „ |
| ― Mick Taylor's speech to Paul after catching him for the last time in Wolf Creek 2, after which he headbutts him and knocks him out. |
| “ | Now, your little mate's right, I am a pig shooter. Ya know what I do to pigs who won't stop squealin'? I make 'em stop! | „ |
| ― Mick Taylor. |
Michael Gleydson "Mick" Taylor is the main antagonist of the Wolf Creek film series.
Taylor is a psychopath, a sadistic man who kidnaps tourists after gaining their trust in the vast, empty Australian Outback and brutally tortures, sexually assaults, and mutilates them. He is based off of Australian serial killers Ivan Millat and Bradley Murdoch.
Background[]
He is portrayed by John Jarratt, who claims that his performance was so convincing he was unable to get work for two years following the release of the first film. Jarratt's performance has been highly praised and has since been thought of as one of the great horror heavies in film. Jarratt's evil laugh, which he claims took four months to get just right, gave costarring actress Cassandra Magrath nightmares. The character's personality traits were modeled after Jarratt's father, (though he stresses that the psychotic killer part was added) and the character is styled after the polar opposite of Crocodile Dundee.
Personality[]
Mick is a vicious and clever man who seems nice but ultimately is an extremely dangerous and uncaring individual who is sexually obsessed with torturing, raping and murdering women particularly, although he will kill the men they are with also, usually leaving them to die. He usually begins by stalking victims before rendering their car immobile and later arriving to offer help. He offers to tow them back to his camp. If they oblige, the victims are drugged and tortured. If they refuse, the victims are murdered on the spot. Mick will also toy with victims, like pretending to shoot them or freak them out with bizarre behavior before revealing his true colors. A trustworthy man, he will display increasingly unstable traits such as a psychotic glare before drugging his victims.
He may also be a cannibal, but this has yet to be confirmed. Little is known about the character to keep him more ominous; however, Jarratt created a detailed biography for the character to base his performance off. He has not released this information.
Character biography[]
Wolf Creek: Origin[]
Mick's past is explored in two prequel novels, Wolf Creek: Origin and its sequel Desolation Game.
Mick's family lived in the town of Erbil, which was owned by his great grandfather, but his grandfather lost the deed, so Mick's family lost their prestige. Mick lived with his parents and sister. Mick's father, Jim, killed animals for a living and beat Mick on a regular basis. Mick witnessed his father killing animals, which set something off in him.
One day, Mick and his sister were at a water hole, a man came up to them and offered them chocolate. Mick didn't trust him and told him to leave. Mick's sister wanted the chocolate, so Mick told her they had to leave. When Mick's sister refused to leave, he pushed her, but harder than he intended, and sent her rolling down a hill to her death. Mick convinced himself it was the man who killed her, and told his father the fake story. Jim murdered the innocent man in vigilante justice. Mick remembered what really happened, and decided to leave home before his father found out. Jim found out and prepared to kill his son. But Mick ran away from home before he could do so, and lived off of rats he killed in the outback.
One day, Mick returned to his home and killed both his parents, despite the fact that his mother loved him. Mick lied that the man he said killed his sister (who no one knew was dead) had returned and killed his parents. Mick adopted the name of his best friend Eddy Taylor.
Mick went to live in a camp. Mick was bullied until one day, he beat one of the bullies so bad his eyeball was knocked from it's socket hanging by the eyestalk. Mick was kicked out of camp and sent to work at a ranch. While there, Mick killed a dog. Mick also force fed the owner his dog before killing him. Mick killed another person at a bar.
Cutter, another serial killer at the ranch took Mick's knife and gave it to another killer to blackmail Mick with the evidence. Mick killed Cutter and went after the other killers himself. Mick found a girlfriend in a woman named Rose, but later used her as bait to lure the other killers to him to kill them. Mick killed Jerry, a pedophilic serial killer, by force feeding him his own intestines and killed two serial killer brothers. The last of the killers briefly turned the tables and forced Mick to stab Rose. Mick turned things back around and killed him. Rose died from the stab wound. After killing a couple of cops and deciding that a change of pace was in order, Mick enlisted in the Australian army to fight in Vietnam.
Wolf Creek: Desolation Game[]
Mick's time in Vietnam was mostly spent with Mick hanging around his superior, Sergeant Atkin, who cut a deal with the elder of a local and starving village, agreeing to give them half eaten scraps for food, if they let him rape their women. Atkin invited Mick to join him, which he accepted. Mick and Atkin raped and tortured the women, with Mick cutting them with knives. On one occasion, Mick killed a woman while raping her, but Atkin let him continue.
One night, two men stumbled onto them while they were raping and torturing the women. Mick and Atkin shot the two men dead. Mick and Atkin later took part in a mission. During the mission, they stumbled onto a young enemy soldier cowering in his pajamas. Even though he was clearly terrified, rather than take him into custody, Atkin decided that he and Mick would kill the man. Atkin severed the man's spine, this is where Mick learned head on a stick, and let Mick have a go at him. Mick stabbed the already parralysed man in the back and cut off his head, which he later placed on a spike. While burying some bodies, Mick found a grenade, but did not tell his fellow soldier assigned to help with the bodies as he allowed him to get blown up.
When Mick and Atkin returned to the village, the village elder scolded them for killing the two men, and wacked Atkin with her cane. Atkin took her cane, snapped it, and stabbed it into her throat. Mick and Atkin then raped and killed all the women. As rumors began to spread about Mick being responsible for the soldier's death, Atkin began to worry about mick telling people about how they raped and slaughtered all the women in the village. Atkin teamed up with two soldiers who believed Mick killed the soldier. The three conspired to kill Mick, but Mick killed them first. Mick went AWOL and went back home. Returning to Jerry's mine (which he had made his own lair), Mick believes he saw the ghosts of Atkin and his old friend Eddy Taylor telling him the mine used to be a place for sacrifices, stating that if Mick killed people, the spirits would give Mick superhuman speed and strength.
Two months later, Mick discovered a tour guide taking foreginers through the area, he blow out the tires and took the 10 people (6 men and 4 women) back to the mine. One escaped and was picked up by a motorist who took him to the pub to call the police. The one cop (a friend of Roberts from the first book) and the escapee went to Mick's home to find all but one woman dead. Mick killed the two men and severed the woman's spine before raping and killing her. Mick went to the pub wearing the skin of the woman he raped and killed, and shot the motorist, the pub owner, the cook, and three customers, before burning the place down and going to find a new lair, vowing to change location from time to time when things got too risky.
Wolf Creek[]
Mick in Wolf Creek
Western Australia, 1999: British tourists Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl are backpacking across the country with Ben Mitchell, an Australian friend and contrarian from Sydney. Ben buys a dilapidated Ford XD Falcon to facilitate their road journey from Broome to Cairns, Queensland via the Great Northern Highway. They stop at Wolf Creek to enjoy the scenery.
Hours later, upon returning to their car, the group discovers their watches have all suddenly broken and the car won't start. Unable to discover the problem, they prepare themselves to sit out the night. After dark, Mick comes upon them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. After initial hesitation, the group allows Mick to take them to his place, an abandoned mining site several hours south of Wolf Creek. Mick regales them with tall stories of his past while making a show of fixing the car. He tells in gruesome detail how he hunted wild pigs (claiming to have worn out five bolts on a .303) and makes disparaging, offensive jokes about the group and tourists in general. His manner unsettles Liz and Kristy, although Ben is less concerned. While they sit around a fire, Mick gives the tourists drugged water which he describes as "rainwater from the top end". Slightly drunk, Ben makes a joke comparing Taylor to Crocodile Dundee but Taylor is not amused, giving Ben a long, unnerving glare, most likely representing thoughts of torture. After enough time passes, Ben breaks the silence by asking what he really does, and Mick responds with "I could tell ya, but then...I'd have to kill ya". The tourists uncomfortably laugh this off but the water causes them to eventually fall into unconsciousness.
Liz awakens late the next afternoon to find herself gagged and tied up in a shed. She manages to break free as night falls, but before she can escape the mining site, she hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage, and witnesses him sexually assaulting her. Liz sets the now-dismantled Falcon on fire to cause a distraction and goes to help Kristy while Mick is busy trying to extinguish the blaze. When Mick returns, he sees that Liz has taken one of his rifles and tries to convince her to give it to him, saying that a rifle in the wrong hands is dangerous. When Mick starts yelling at her, she then shoots Mick with the rifle, blasting him in the neck, though somehow not fatally. Mick, in pain, falls to the floor and pretends to be dead. To check if he is really dead, Liz smacks him in the back with the rifle, he still keeps on faking. He waits for them to leave so he can get back up (As Liz would shoot him again if he got back up beforehand). The women attempt to flee the camp in Mick's truck. but before they can do so, Mick stumbles out of the garage, finished faking his death. He proceeds to blast at them, without success, with a double-barreled shotgun, before giving chase in another truck. The girls evade Mick in the bush by rolling his truck off a cliff and hiding, before returning to the mining site to get another car. Liz leaves the hysterical Kristy outside the gates, telling her to escape on foot if she does not return in five minutes.
Liz enters another garage and discovers Mick's large stock of cars as well as an organized array of travelers' possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Mick "rescuing" other travelers stranded at Wolf Creek in almost identical circumstances to her own. She then picks up another camera which turns out to be Ben's, through viewing some of Ben's footage, the recording ends focusing on a scene with Mick's truck in the background, indicating he'd been following them long before they got to Wolf Creek. She gets into a car and attempts to start it, but Mick shows up in the back seat and stabs her through the driver's seat with a huge knife. After more bragging and yelling about his truck getting wrecked, he hacks three of Liz's fingers off in one swipe, then picks her up and head-butts her into near unconsciousness. He then severs her spinal cord with a knife, paralyzing her and rendering her a "head on a stick." As Liz lies motionless on the garage floor, the camera dwells on her appalled gaze and labored breathing. Mick then interrogates her as to Kristy's whereabouts until he would kill her off-screen, it is unknown if she gave Mick any information.
By dawn, a barefoot Kristy has reached a surface highway and is discovered by a passing motorist, who attempts to help her. Mick, who has discovered their location through his sniper rifle (or from Liz), uses the rifle to shoot the motorist dead from far away. Rather than shoot and kill Kristy though, Mick gives chase in a fast Holden HQ Statesman, prompting Kristy to take off in the dead man's car. She succeeds in ramming Mick off the road when we catches up, but he coolly gets out of the car and shoots out Kristy's back tire, causing the car to flip over into the bush. A disoriented, dazed Kristy climbs out of the wreckage and while she desperately attempts to crawl away, Mick walks over and shoots her dead. He bundles Kristy's body into the back of the wrecked car with the body of the dead motorist. Mick then torches the car before calmly driving off in triumph.
The action then cuts to Ben, whose fate until now has not been revealed. He awakens to find himself nailed to a mock crucifix in a mine shaft, with an aggressive, caged Rottweiler in front of him and several other partially eaten corpses beside him. He manages to painfully extract himself from the crucifix and enters the camp in early daylight. Ben escapes into the outback, but becomes hysterical and dehydrated, eventually passing out beside a dirt road. He is discovered by two shocked Swedish travellers who take him to Kalbarri, where he is airlifted to hospital.
The ending 'reveals' that no trace of Kristy and Liz were found despite several major police searches. Early investigations were disorganised and hampered by confusion, lack of physical evidence and the alleged credibility of Ben. After four months in police custody, Ben was cleared of all suspicion and currently lives in southern Australia. The film then ends with the silhouette of Mick Taylor walking into the sunset, rifle in hand.
Wolf Creek 2[]
| “ | You expect to come to my fuckin' country, waltz around like you own the bloody place, come between a man and his meal and just walk away? Just like that?" | „ |
| ― Mick Taylor |
In the opening scene, Mick is pulled over by Gary Bulmer and Brian O'Connor, two highway patrol officers whom are desperate to meet a quota for speeding tickets. The officers claim that he is breaking the speed limit, which he is not. After belittling and insulting Mick, they give him a speeding ticket and an order to get rid of his truck. Annoyed at their rudeness and arrogance, Mick promptly uses his hunting rifle to blast O'Connor's head as they drive away, causing the car to crash down into a gulley. Bulmer, having broken his leg in the crash, tries to crawl away only to be caught and stabbed by Mick, who then burns him alive in the police car.
Mick is later seen when German backpackers Katarina and her boyfriend Rutger are hitch-hiking and try to flag his truck down. Mick initially stops, but when he sees an approaching dump truck, he speeds away. Mick later on appears to them again as they camp in a wooded area for the night. Mick claims that they are violating rules of the "national park" that they're camping in and offers them a lift to town so that they won't be fined, but Rutger insists that they are not. Seeing that they were not fooled, Mick then loses his temper and stabs Rutger in the back. He then begins to tie down Katarina and prepares to rape her but a wounded Rutger comes back and engages Mick in a fist fight. He is eventually overpowered and finally decapitated. Horrified at her boyfriend's death and at the notion of spending "a few long, fun months" with Mick, Katarina passes out. She wakes up to see Mick carving up Rutger's corpse to feed to his dogs. She flees into the bush and Mick pursues her in his truck.
British surfer Paul Hammersmith is driving along the highway when he sees Katarina standing on the road. He lets her into his Jeep, but Mick gives chase in his truck and taunts them. Eventually, one of Mick's rifle shots aimed for Paul unintentionally hits Katarina when Paul ducks the shot, killing her instantly - much to Paul's horror and Mick's dismay. Paul then escapes in his Jeep and after disposing of Katarina's body, reaches a deserted highway. In that period of time, Mick hijacks a semi-trailer truck, (presumably) killing its driver, and uses it to bait Paul when he reaches the highway. Mick gives chase in the semi-trailer, ramming Paul many times and even sadistically ploughing through a mob of kangaroos at one point. Eventually, he rams Paul off the road and down a steep hillside. Paul survives the crash and taunts Mick, causing Mick to launch the semi-trailer truck down the hill (without him in it). Paul then flees for his life as Mick watches curiously atop the hill.
After some time, Paul comes upon an outback homestead and is given hospitality by an eccentric elderly couple Jack and Lil. They plan to take Paul to town, but Mick shows up at the property (apparently having been following Paul for some time). Jack confronts Mick outside with a shotgun, who demands that Paul be given to him. Jack refuses and threatens Mick with the shotgun, ordering him to leave. Mick pretends to leave but when he has the chance, sneaks in through the back door. Jack tells Paul that they're leaving for town and goes to grab another gun in case Mick is still out there. However, Jack discovers that his second gun is missing. Having stolen it, Mick then uses Jack's rifle to shoot him in the head and then shoot Lil dead. While Mick is busy doing so, Paul flees once again. Witnessing this, Mick steals Jack's horse and gives chase. He catches Paul hiding in the grasslands and knocks him out.
Paul wakes up in Mick's dungeon, zip-tied to a chair. Mick is furious at Paul for his role in Katarina's death and prepares to torture him, but Paul pacifies him with his "English wit" by narrating bar jokes and leading Mick in drinking songs that he claims he learned at boarding school. Mick's torture for Paul now consists of a ten question quiz about Australian culture and history, with a promise to free him if he answers five of them correctly. However, if Paul gets a question wrong, he grinds off a finger with a sander. Paul answers the first two questions correctly and reveals that he is a history major. After he gets the third question right as well, an annoyed Mick (incensed by Paul's knowledge) grinds off one of his fingers with the sander. During the fourth question, Paul tricks Mick into cutting his other hand free by deliberately answering incorrectly (and losing another finger). When faced with the final question in regards to a famous Australian cricketer, Paul hits Mick in the head with a claw hammer, before giving the correct answer: Donald Bradman. He tries to hit Mick again but he gets back up and slashes at him with a knife.
Paul then flees the dungeon into some underground tunnels, pursued throughout the lair by a somewhat drunk Mick, who yells about how bad his injury is (He claims that it cracked his skull and blood is everywhere). Paul comes across several dead bodies of tourists and finds a severely-malnourished woman, who is still alive and begs to be freed. He says he will get help, but reaches several dead ends. Meanwhile, Mick releases his dogs, ordering them to find Paul. Eventually, Paul locates an exit, but as he approaches it, the dogs find Paul. But as they run towards him, Paul unintentionally activates a trap door, sealing himself from the dogs, who run away. On the path to the exit, Paul finds a blanket which is covering a Punji stick trap. Paul considers trying to jump over the deadly trap, but hears someone coming and hides behind a corner, assuming that it is Mick coming to get him. When the person walks past him, Paul hits them with the hammer and they fall into the trap to their death. When Paul looks down to see what he thinks is Mick's corpse, he discovers that it was not Mick, but the woman from before. Immediately afterwards, Mick then reveals that he is standing behind Paul. Paul again tries to hit Mick with the claw hammer but Mick subdues him with a chokehold. After declaring himself "the winner" and lecturing how "It's up to my kind to wipe your kind out", he head-butts Paul unconscious.
Later, Paul wakes up on a footpath in a small town, wearing only his underpants and with wounds all over his body. He finds a piece of paper in his hands which reads "Loser". A series of title cards reveal that despite reporting a crazed gunman, Paul was named as a 'probable' suspect in the murder of several tourists, and during the investigation he suffered a complete mental breakdown. He was subsequently deported back to England and committed to an asylum. The film ends similarly to the last one: with Mick Taylor walking away towards the sunset.
Wolf Creek (miniseries 2016)[]
Mick returns in a six-part miniseries in mid-2016, in which a surviving victim plans revenge against him for killing her entire family. Eve Thorogood, a 19 year old American tourist travels across Australia in this series hell bent on finding Mick, with the help of a Northern Territory cop Sullivan Hill. The series also features a brief appearance from Ben Mitchell, the survivor from the original movie (portrayed by Fletcher Humphrys)
Possible Death[]
Mick is ultimately tracked to his own home in Wolf Creek by Eve where she finds Hill tied up in the barn. Taylor attacks them, and Hill brings the roof down on them, killing himself in the process, but Taylor and Eve (though badly injured) survive. Eve confronts Taylor back inside the house, where they resume their battle. In the end, she manages to impale Mick using a fire poker and two halves of a broken spear, presumably killing him. She burns the house down with Mick's body still inside and leaves. After burying Hill's body, Eve explores the charred house the following morning and discovers that Taylor's body is gone. Before the credits roll, Mick's laugh can be heard echoing, implying that his evil influence will continue to live on. After the credits, a blue truck drives along the highway. Since other characters are shown to drive blue Fords in the series, it is unknown if it is Mick's truck or not.
Given the characters (apparent) death, it is unknown if there are any future plans for the series or what direction it could take.
Note: A fan on Twitter questioned Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) asking "I wonder if 'Mick Taylor' is still alive?". Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) then replied saying "evil never dies...". [1]