7. Mad Max (1979) / Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
It was a rare event for an Australian action movie to showcase at the Cannes Film Festival indeed, it was a first. But in 1978, it was the international film industrys first acknowledgement that first-time director George Miller, a former medical doctor from Brisbane, had invented an incredibly effective new action genre all of his own: the post-apocalyptic road/action movie. Its stylish but its also incredibly violent, appraises Slater of how the films hybrid elements gelled like aspic. The style comes from playing the films relatively low-budgeted motifs for all theyre worth: tight-fitting leather cop uniforms; biker apparel; the high-powered Interceptor patrol vehicle rode by highway cop Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) and his partner, Goose, and the now-iconic, black-painted Pursuit Special that Max makes his own; the hair-raising, auto-destructive (literally) stunts that lay waste to cars and bikes in a choreography of metal carnage; the Bernard Herrmann-influenced orchestral score by Brian May (not the Queen guitarist), who Miller hired after hearing his music for the Oz horror flick PATRICK (1978). As for the violence, it was pretty relentless for its time; informed less by splatter-movie gore than by Millers own observation of real injuries in the hospital emergency room. The Acolytes, the movies motorcycle gang, are deeply depraved, raping a young couple they waylay on their backroad stalking ground (filmed on location in Queensland); the Goose, Maxs pal, is burned to a crisp after the gang trap him in his crashed car the shock of his third degree-burned hand reaching from his hospital bed provides a jolt; but all this is just a prelude to the outrages visited upon Maxs wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their infant son. The lead-up to the retribution is excellent but its not a perfect film, opines Slater of the powerful revenge motif that turns Gibson, a blue-eyed 22-year-old at the time, into a truly mad Max. Its a film of three segments: it has a very powerful beginning, with the undercurrent of the collapse of Australian society. Even the great unnamed disaster looming in the background is a phantom that haunts the highways. Conjecture about the crumbling society of MAD MAX sometimes suggests the aftermath of nuclear war, but things are not that far gone: the Main Force Patrol fights to maintain some semblance of law and order, still managing to pay employees Max and Goose; the Acolytes have legal representation, so the courts are continuing to work. Instead, as Millers co-screenwriter James McCausland later confirmed, the inspiration was the oil crises of the early 70s: Long queues formed at the stations with petrol and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence. It was a theme developed further in the films truly post-apocalyptic sequel. Then you have the retribution at the end, with the guy being handcuffed to the car, author Slater observes understatedly of MAD MAXs blood-and-thunder climax. It suffers from its middle section which is just padding really his married life, etc, moving into the countryside with his family. Its quite flawed in that respect, but it works. For this writers money, the slightly pedestrian domestic retreat scenes set us up for the vengeful crescendo that follows. Max is a conscientious young cop who fears hes starting to enjoy being part of the rat circus and wants out; Jessie is an endearingly real, frizzy-haired young woman, far removed from a Hollywood starlet. Its devastating when Toecutter and the gang lay waste to their lives, cutting down mother and child in a scene thats still shocking today. Stephen King once remarked that movies like STRAW DOGS, DIRTY HARRY and DEATH WISH could bring out the blood-lusting fascist in even the mildest liberal. MAD MAX has that in spades, the act of climactic vegeance becoming both the films raison detre and the point at which it ends. As rapacious Acolyte Johnny whines at the choice Max has left him he can saw through his own leg or else die when the car hes cuffed to blows up a truly maddened Max drives off into an uncertain future. But society will keep on heading down the road to barbarianism. MAD MAX did incredible business in most cinematic territories, to the extent where its budget-to-revenue ratio made it one of the most profitable films of all time. A sequel seemed inevitable though George Miller did consider directing FIRST BLOOD (the gig which went to WAKE IN FRIGHT director Ted Kotcheff). But with MAD MAX 2 often referred to as THE ROAD WARRIOR, its US title Miller and his filmmaking partner Byron Kennedy switched the focus from personal revenge to the tribal wars of an auto-crazy world. When Part Two came along it was the ultimate car-chase movie of all time, says Oz buff Slater. Even now . I think the car chase at the end lasted 20 minutes. Its phenomenal. In many ways as graphic as its predecessor, THE ROAD WARRIOR has a pulp cartoonishness that becomes a pure joy as Miller ups the ante. Its a comic-book sensibility: incredibly violent, fast and furious, and really fun, acclaims Slater. Though some of the violence was trimmed to allow younger teens to view the film, its breathless, hyper-kinetic movement doesnt leave a sense of anything missing. The visual aesthetic is not just post-apocalyptic but post-punk, with this movies predatory motorcycle gang (led by a comic-book archetype called The Humungous) resembling a bunch of semi-mutated, shaven Mohawks rather than Oz bikers. The look influenced a whole school of pre- and post-cyberpunk science fiction, influencing the comics that MAD MAX 2 is often compared with (think of Tank Girl). Its a very different movie in that respect the first is more built upon his personal lifestyle, his marriage and the retribution. This is all-out violence A-Z in 90 minutes, but its great for what it is. What it is is a relentlessly moving depiction of gang warfare over depleted oil supplies; minimal dialogue and maximum action. The deepest sense of personal pain comes from the mutoid punks killing Maxs trusty companion dog, but were clearly meant to stay on the ride and avoid too much pointless moralising. Its an extremely violent car film without one touch of CGI, or computer tomfoolery, notes our impressed Oz correspondent and some of the most frenetic action scenes give the sense that a stuntman could have been seriously hurt, if not killed outright. But of course, computer graphic imagery simply wasnt in use at the cinema yet. In his popular 1981 book Cult Movies, an impressed Danny Peary wrote of the original MAD MAX: if Australian filmmakers began churning out similar violent, futuristic car-motorcycle films full of spectacular chases and crashes... it could be the start of an international craze equal to that caused by Italian westerns and Chinese kung fu movies... Jay Slater, a spaghetti-western aficionado, gets the aesthetic link: Both of those movies are very beautiful to look at to a degree they lend themselves to that spaghetti-western template. Its a beauty born of desolated locations imbued with violent action a kind of pulp art, though Miller claimed the films of Kurosawa, rather than comic books, as his inspiration. As the embattled tribe that Max helped save moves on to found its own settlement, the hardened shell of a man retreats to the wilderness, eulogised on the soundtrack by the Feral Kid (a once-mute member of the tribe) as the archetypal hero, a living myth. Aside from a couple of Aussie misfires (detailed here) and post-apocalyptic Italian knock-offs like AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983), which drew equal inspiration from John Carpenters ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), MAD MAX 2 remains almost the sum total of the new genre Peary was anticipating.
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
