Comprehensive information and links about Mad Max

Mad Max is an Australian apocalyptic science fiction film starring Mel Gibson. Released in 1979, Australia, it was directed by George Miller, and written by Miller, James McCausland, and Byron Kennedy, who produced the film. It was released in May, 1980 in the U.S., and even later in Europe.

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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, which has resulted in a breakdown of civil order. (The sequel, , opens with a far more elaborate presentation of a back story, describing a global disaster involving conflict over oil.)

The over-riding theme of 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 his partner, Jim Goose, alive("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 (Hugh Keays-Byrne), 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. 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 "the last of the V8 interceptors" a black supercharged V8 Ford XB Falcon "Pursuit Special" , Max seeks to avenge the death of his family.

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 , which was screened at a number of film festivals and won several awards.

Eight years later the duo created , with the assistance of first time screen writer James McCausland. 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 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 Kennedy's house, with George Byron editing the film ..and sound...in Byron's bedroom on an editing machine that Byron's father, as an engineer, had made especially for them.

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 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 singing voice of 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,

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 driven by Roop and Charlie, was also a Ford Falcon XB sedan, but was powered by a 302C Cleveland V8. The 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 identified the car as "the last of the V8 Interceptors") was a limited GT351 version of a 1973 Ford XB Falcon Hardtop — sold in that 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.

Mick Broderick, "Heroic Apocalypse: Mad Max, Mythology, and the Millennium", in Christopher Sharrett, ed., 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., Peter C. Hall and Richard Erlich. "Beyond Topeka and Thunderdome: Variations on the Comic-Romance Pattern in Recent SF Film,"