Mad Max
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| Mad Max | |
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 Mad Max movie poster |
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| Directed by | George Miller |
| Produced by | Byron Kennedy Bill Miller |
| Written by | George Miller Byron Kennedy James McCausland |
| Starring | Mel Gibson |
| Music by | Brian May |
| Cinematography | David Eggby |
| Editing by | Cliff Hayes Tony Paterson |
| Distributed by | - Australia - Village Roadshow Pictures - USA - American International Pictures - non-USA/Australia - Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | April 12, 1979 |
| Running time | 95 min |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$350,000 (estimated) |
| Followed by | Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Mad Max is an Australian apocalyptic science fiction action film from 1979 directed by George Miller and written by Miller and Byron Kennedy. The film, which starred the then little-known Mel Gibson was released internationally in 1980.
This low-budget film's story of societal breakdown, murder, and vengeance turned out to be a box office hit; it was notable for decades for having the highest profit-to-cost ratio of any motion picture (cost $400,000, profit in excess on $100,000,000) only losing the record in 1999 to The Blair Witch Project. The movie was also notable for being the first Australian film to be shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens.
It was followed by two sequels, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Taglines:
- The last law in a world gone out of control. Pray that he's out there somewhere.
- The Maximum Force of the Future.
- When the gangs take over the highways... Remember he's on your side.
- The Film That Started It All.
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[edit] Plot summary
The film, which is set in Australia in the near future, depicts a poorly funded police unit called the Main Force Patrol (MFP), which struggles to protect the Outback's few remaining townspeople from violent motorcycle gangs. The film depicts the future Australia as a bleak, dystopian, impoverished society that is facing a breakdown of civil order due to widespread energy shortages. The film introduces a young MFP police officer, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), who is considered to be the MFP's "top pursuit man". Max, though, has become disillusioned with the MFP's dangerous and ill-matched fight with the violent biker gangs, and has given the MFP notice that he intends to quit the force. Max has another reason to stay out of the line of fire; he has a wife and a new baby at home.
One of the biker gang members, nicknamed the Nightrider, manages to escape from police custody and steal a police car. Max pursues the Nightrider in a high-speed chase, which results in the Nightrider's death in a fiery explosion. After this dangerous chase, which resulted in injuries for a number of officers, Max reminds his commanding officer that his days as a police officer are numbered. Max's commanding officer offers Max an incentive to stay: a customized, black Ford XB Falcon "Pursuit Special" with a powerful 600 horsepower, supercharged V8 engine.
The biker gang, which is led by the Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) plans to avenge Nightrider's death by killing MFP officers. Toecutter's young protegé, the biker Johnny the Boy, sets a trap for Max's close friend and fellow officer, Jim Goose (played by actor Steve Bisley). When Goose's vehicle is flipped over, the bikers burn him alive ("the Goose is cooked") in retaliation for the Nightrider's death. After seeing Goose's charred body in the hospital's burn ward, Max becomes angered and disillusioned with the police force. To recuperate, Max takes a leave from the police force to spend time with his wife and infant son in the relatively peaceful areas north of their region.
Meanwhile, the gang's vicious leader, the Toecutter is still thirsting for revenge against Max. The two once again cross paths when Max and his family are vacationing 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, and Max arrives too late to intervene. His son is pronounced dead on the scene, while his wife suffers massive injuries to her internal organs.
Filled with a burning, obsessive anger, Max once again dons his leather police outfit and straps on his sawed-off shotgun. Driving the supercharged, black Pursuit Special, he goes out to avenge the death of his family. He hunts down and kills the gang members one by one, including the Toecutter. When Max finds Johnny the Boy, he handcuffs his ankle to a wrecked, overturned vehicle with a ruptured gas tank. Max offers Johnny a hacksaw, lights a crude time-delay fuse, and leaves, giving Johnny the choice of trying to cut through the hardened steel cuffs or his ankle. Soon after, the wrecked vehicle explodes in a fireball, and an embittered Max drives off into the desolate Outback.
[edit] Conception
While George Miller was in residency at a Melbourne hospital, he met amateur film maker Byron Kennedy at a summer film school in 1971. The duo produced a 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 a medical doctor in Australia who worked in a hospital emergency room, where he saw many injuries and deaths of the types depicted in the movie. Miller believed that audiences would find his violent story to be more believable if it was set in a bleak, 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 repeatedly repainted to give the illusion that more cars were 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 a home-built editing machine that Byron's father, an engineer, had designed for them. The duo also edited the sound in Kennedy's house.
[edit] Success
The film was very successful at the box office, holding a record in Guinness Book of Records as the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture, and in 2000 finally conceded the record, to The Blair Witch Project. Mad Max 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. Both New Zealand and Sweden initially banned the film.
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.
[edit] Vehicles
Max's yellow Interceptor was a 1974 Ford Falcon XB sedan (previously, a Melbourne police car) with a 351ci Cleveland V8 engine with many other modifications. The Big Bopper, driven by Roop and Charlie, was also a 1974 Ford Falcon XB sedan, but was powered by a 302ci Cleveland V8. The March Hare, driven by Sarse and Scuttle, was an in-line-six-powered 1972 Ford Falcon XA sedan (this car was formerly a Melbourne taxi cab).
The most memorable car, Max's black Pursuit Special 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. After filming was over, this Interceptor was bought and restored by Bob Forsenko and is currently on display in the "Cars of the Stars Motor Museum" in Cumbria, England [1]
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 (the small, blue van that spins uncontrollably after being struck by the Big Bopper in the film's opening chase).
[edit] See also
- Pursuit Special – Max’s black car.
[edit] References
- 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 Abe Vigoda, 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).
[edit] External links
 Cinema of Australia |
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Film chronology: 1890s-1930s • 1940s-1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s |
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