Mad Max
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- For other uses, see Mad Max (disambiguation).
| Mad Max | |
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| Directed by | George Miller |
| Written by | George Miller, Byron Kennedy, James McCausland |
| Starring | Mel Gibson |
| Produced by | Byron Kennedy, Bill Miller |
| Distributed by | Village Roadshow (Australia); American International Pictures (U.S.); Warner Bros. (outside the U.S. and Australia) |
| Release date | 12 April 1979 |
| Runtime | 93 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$350,000 (estimated) |
| IMDb page | |
Mad Max is an Australian post-apocalyptic/science fiction film starring Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky. Released in 1979, Australia, it was directed by George Miller, and written by James McCausland with Miller and producer Byron Kennedy. Its U.S. release was in May, 1980, however, and even later in Europe.
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Plot Summary
The film is set in a dystopic 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 which has resulted in a breakdown in the civil order (the sequel, Mad Max 2, (known in the U.S. as The Road Warrior), more fully explains this film's backstory).
The overriding theme of this story is revenge. A young and idealistic police officer, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), is tasked with controlling the increasingly bold and lawless motorcycle gangs on the desolate highways of the outback. During the normal course of his duties for the Main Force Patrol, he inadvertently kills one of these gangs' chief lieutenants, the Nightrider, during a high-speed pursuit. When the gang subsequently hunts down and burns alive his partner Jim Goose ("the Goose is cooked"), Max becomes disillusioned with his duty, and quits the police force to settle down with his wife and infant son.
Meanwhile the gang's leader, the Toecutter, still thirsts for revenge against Max. As the Fates would have it, the two once again cross paths when the now ex-highway patrolman and his family vacation in a remote beachfront area. Mounted on dust-caked bikes, the gang runs down Max's wife and son, leaving their crushed bodies lying in the middle of the road. An anguished Max arrives too late to intervene. The newly widowed Max, searching for something, now decides to rejoin the MFP and fill the void left by his loss in the only way he can — through a spree of vehicular homicide.
Add a supercharged V8 Ford XB Falcon police car (specifically built to seduce him to stay a police officer), and you end up with a dozen or so dead cyclejockeys and one burnt-out Anti-Hero left to eternally race the highways alone and through a sleep deprived blur.
Conception
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 McGausland. 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, the post-production was done in Miller's house, with George editing the film in the kitchen and Byron Kennedy editing the sound in the lounge room.
Success
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. The only exception was the singer in the Sugartown Cabaret, played by Robina Chaffey. 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).
Two sequels followed, Mad Max 2 (known in North America as The Road Warrior), and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, while a fourth movie, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, is in hiatus....
Vehicles
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 Australian Ford Falcon XB sedan (previously, a Melbourne police car) with a 300bhp 351C (Cleveland) V8 engine, with a GS/GT specification hood, grille, driving lights, and other modifications. The Big Bopper, driven by Roop and Charlie, was also a Ford Falcon XB sedan, but was powered by an engine unique to Australia, the 302 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 an Australian Ford XB Falcon Hardtop — sold in that country from December 1973 to August 1976 — which was modified by the film's art director Jon Dowding.
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.
References
- To the Max - Behind the Scenes of a Cult Classic, Mad Max DVD (Village Roadshow)
- Fallout, a computer game partly (in great parts) inspired by Mad Max.
External links
- Mad Max at the Internet Movie Database
- Mad Max Movies FAQ
- 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.
| Mad Max Movies |
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| Mad Max | Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior | Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome | Mad Max 4: Fury Road |
