Mad Max
Mad Max is an
Australian
apocalyptic science fiction film starring
Mel Gibson. Released in
Australia in
1979, it was directed by
George Miller, and written by Miller,
James McCausland, and
Byron Kennedy, who produced the film. It was released by
1980 in
North America, and even later in
Europe.
Taglines:* The Maximum Force of the Future.
* The last law in a world gone out of control. Pray that he's out there somewhere.
* When the gangs take over the highway... ...Remember he's on your side.
* The Film That Started It All.
The film is set in a
dystopian near-future Australia. The beginning of the film only hints that the story takes place "a few years from now" but it is obviously set in a
society that is suffering from a prolonged
fuel shortage and and a dystopic state which has resulted in a breakdown of civil order. (The sequel,
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, opens with a far more elaborate presentation of a back story describing a global disaster involving conflict over oil.)
The over-riding theme of
Mad Max is revenge. A young police officer,
Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), is the best driver (he is referred to as the "top pursuit man" at one point by a superior) for a rundown and poorly funded highway patrol called the
Main Force Patrol (MFP). Their primary function is to secure the desolate highways of the outback from predatory motorized gangs. During a high-speed pursuit he inadvertently kills one of these gangs' chief lieutenants, the Nightrider. Max already has aspirations about leaving the police force, but his captain repeatedly makes attempts to encourage him to stay.
Thanks to the efforts of gang member Johnny the Boy, the bikers trap Max's partner, Jim Goose, and burn him alive ("the Goose is cooked") in retaliation. Max becomes disillusioned with his duty and takes a leave from the police force to spend time with his wife and infant son up north.
Meanwhile, the gang's vicious leader, the Toecutter (
Hugh Keays-Byrne), is still thirsting for revenge against Max. As the Fates would have it, the two once again cross paths when Max and his family vacation in a remote beachfront area. The gang runs down Max's wife and son, leaving their crushed bodies lying in the middle of the road. Max arrives too late to intervene.
Using a black
supercharged V8 Ford XB Falcon "
Pursuit Special," Max seeks to avenge the death of his family. He hunts down and kills the gang members one by one, including the Toecutter. Johnny the Boy escapes and is the last of the gang, but is soon located by Max, who handcuffs him to a wrecked vehicle. Max rigs the gasoline tank to blow up on a time delay, hands Johnny a hacksaw, and gives him a choice: Johnny can try to saw through the chain on the cuff, which will take a minimum of fifteen minutes, or through his own ankle, which will take perhaps five minutes. As Max drives away and the vehicle explodes, presumably killing Johnny.
The last scene is of Max driving off into the desolate outback, leaving his past behind him.
Whilst in residency at a
Melbourne hospital, Dr. George Miller met amateur film maker Byron Kennedy at a summer film school in 1971. The duo went on to produce the short film
Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, which was screened at a number of film festivals and won several awards.
Eight years later the duo created
Mad Max, with the assistance of first time screen writer James McCausland (who appears in the film as the bearded man in an apron in front of the diner). George Miller was an M.D. in Australia who worked in a hospital
emergency room. In his work he had seen many injuries and deaths of the types depicted in the movie, and felt that audiences would not believe such things were happening today, so he decided to place the story instead in a
dystopic future.
The film was shot over a period of twelve weeks, between December 1978 and February 1979, just outside Melbourne. Many of the car chase scenes for the original
Mad Max were filmed near the town of
Lara, just north of
Geelong (
Victoria, Australia). The movie was shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens, making it the first Australian film to do so.
Due to the film's low budget, only Mel Gibson was given a jacket and pants made from real leather. All the other actors playing police officers wore vinyl outfits. The police cars were constantly repainted to give the illusion of more being used (Often they were driven with the paint still wet). The film's post-production was done in Kennedy's house, with George and Byron editing the film in Byron's bedroom on an editing machine that Byron's father, as an engineer, had made especially for them. The duo also edited the sound.
The film achieved incredible success, holding a record in
Guinness Book of Records as the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture, and only losing the record in 2000 to
The Blair Witch Project.
The film was totally independently financed and had a reported budget of $300,000 AUD — of which $15,000 was paid to Mel Gibson for his performance — and went on to earn $100 million world wide. The film was awarded four
Australian Film Institute Awards in 1979.
When the film was first released in America, all the voices, including that of Mel Gibson's character, were dubbed with U.S. accents at the behest of the distributor,
American International Pictures, for fear that audiences would not take warmly to actors speaking entirely with Australian accents. Much of the Australian slang and terminology was also replaced with American ones (examples: "See looks!" became "Look see!", "windscreen" became "windshield", "very toey" became "super hot", and "preemie" became "rookie"). The only exceptions to the dubbing were the singing voice of the singer in the Sugartown Cabaret, played by Robina Chaffey, and Officer Jim Goose, played by Steve Bisley, singing as he drives a truck before being ambushed. The original Australian dialogue track was finally released in the U.S. in 2000 in a limited theatrical reissue by
MGM, the film's current rights holders (it has since been released in the U.S. on DVD with both the US and Australian soundtracks on separate tracks). The American dubbed version was also the one shown on television in the
United Kingdom until relatively recently.
Two sequels followed,
Mad Max 2 (known in North America as
The Road Warrior), and
Mad Max 3 (known in North America as
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) while a fourth movie,
Mad Max 4: Fury Road, is in hiatus.
|
Replica of a vehicle from Mad Max |
Due to the film's low budget, all the vehicles in the film were just modified vehicles of that era.Max's yellow Interceptor was a 1973
Ford Falcon XB sedan (previously, a Melbourne police car) with a 351C Cleveland V8 engine with many other modifications. The
Big Bopper, driven by Roop and Charlie, was also a Ford Falcon XB sedan, but was powered by a 302C Cleveland V8. The
March Hare, driven by Sarse and Scuttle, was an inline six-powered Ford Falcon XA sedan (this car was formerly a Melbourne taxi cab).
The most memorable car, Max's black
Pursuit Special (often erroneously called an
Interceptor after a mechanic in
Mad Max 2 identified the car as "the last of the V8 Interceptors") was a limited GT351 version of a 1973 Ford XB Falcon Hardtop — sold in Australia from December 1973 to August 1976 — which was modified by the film's art director Jon Dowding. The Nightrider's vehicle, another Pursuit special, was a 1972
Holden HQ LS
Monaro coupe.
Of the motorcycles that appear in the film, fourteen were donated by
Kawasaki and were driven by a local Victorian motorcycle gang, the Vigilantes, who appeared as members of Toecutter's gang. By the end of filming, fourteen vehicles had been destroyed as a result of all the stunts, including the director's personal
Mazda Bongo van (the small truck that spins uncontrollably after being struck in the film's opening chase).
* Mick Broderick, "Heroic Apocalypse: Mad Max, Mythology, and the Millennium", in Christopher Sharrett, ed.,
Crisis Cinema: The Apocalyptic Idea in Postmodern Narrative Film.
* Delia Falconer, "'We Don't Need to Know the Way Home': The Disappearance of the Road in the Mad Max Trilogy," in Steven Cohen and Ina Rae Hark, eds.,
The Road Movie Book.
* Peter C. Hall and Richard Erlich. "Beyond Topeka and Thunderdome: Variations on the Comic-Romance Pattern in Recent SF Film,"
Science-Fiction Studies, 14 (November 1987).
* Adrian Martin.
The Mad Max Movies, Sydney and Canberra: Currency Press and Screenbound Australia, 2003.
* Meaghan Morris. "White Panic or Mad Max and the Sublime," Kuan-Hsing Chen, ed.,
Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. London and NewYork: Routledge, 1998.
* Jerome F. Shapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film
, New York: Routledge, 2002.
* To the Max - Behind the Scenes of a Cult Classic, Mad Max DVD
(Village Roadshow).
* "Bury Me With It", track 6 of Good News for People Who Love Bad News''.
Modest Mouse. 2004.
*
Mad Max Movies FAQ*
Mad Max Online - Home to the original Mad Max movie, maintained by members of the cast and crew.
*
Mad Max Unlimited - A company that makes replicas of the Interceptor and other Mad Max vehicles.
*
Mad Max Replica Stats - Displays a comprehensive list of all known Mad Max Replicas in the world.
