Film / Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land is a 2009 Australian historical film about the escaped convict and serial killer Alexander Pearce (Oscar Redding). When he and a group of fellow prisoners (Arthur Angel, Paul Ashcroft and Mark Leonard) escaped into the bush in 1822, Pearce killed and ate his friends to survive.

Also based on the Pearce story is the 2008 film Dying Breed, a horror film focusing on Pearce's modern day Cannibal Clan descendents (who are just one of the many reasons not to go to Tasmania for a holiday).

Van Diemen's Land has the following tropes:

• Disposing of a Body: Pearce eats the evidence.
• Dwindling Party: This starts when the group kills one of their members to stay alive. While two of the group wisely desert the rest, the members begin to kill each other to survive. The only survivor is Pearce.
• Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Before their arrest, the convicts were petty thieves, tax dodgers and conmen. After their escape they become murderers.

• I Am a Humanitarian: Pearce eventually grows to like the taste of human flesh.

• No Party Like a Donner Party: Stranded in the middle of nowhere, Pearce realizes that the strong must eat the weak.
• Penal Colony: The convicts were transported from Britain to Australia.

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