In the near future civilisation is starting to break down due to fuel shortages. In rural Australia the MFP (Main Force Police) are the last bastion of law enforcement and they are currently being terrorised by a biker gang wreaking havoc.
When MFP officer Max (Mel Gibson) kills a gang member who goes by the name ‘Night Rider’ in a high speed pursuit the rest of his gang led by ‘Toecutter’ (Hugh Keays-Byrne) head to town.
This is my first return to the original Mad Max for what must be around 25 years and it was a rather surreal viewing experience.
Firstly, the Max character we all think we know is not in this film. He has yet to be fully formed, but the character is so legendary that it is odd to see him here like this. He is a man in love who does not want to be a hero and actually quits his job and tries to escape the violence. Mel Gibson has very few lines and is not yet the movie star that he would become in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Secondly, the apocalypse desert setting that forms a huge part of the myth of Mad Max is not here. It hardly feels apocalyptic at all. Just some happenings in a quiet rural part of Australia that still has nightclubs and law courts, albeit slightly strange ones. This semblance of normalcy may be in some part due to the minuscule budget the film had or, like with the character of Max it may not have been fully formed.
And finally, now that the Mad Max franchise has moved on there are more interesting subjects about the making of the film than in the watching of the film.
Focusing on the watching of the film I cannot help but find it a disjointed and disappointing affair. This is a short 88 minute film that plays like a petrolhead fantasy made by someone who has recently watched A Clockwork Orange. The underlying fuel shortage and breakdown of society does not come across well at all. The gang members behave in a similar manner to those in A Clockwork Orange but it does not really fit with the hard boiled tone the rest of the film has. In fact with all the leather the characters are wearing it just feels a bit homoerotic and that the film needs to be about repressed feelings. The score is overly bombastic and makes everything seem melodramatic when it should be tense. And the manner in which Max is pushed over the edge seems coincidental rather than being driven by his actions at the outset of the film.
The only thing that does work unconditionally is the danger present in the high speed vehicle scenes. Given the low budget look and feel the sense of speed in those sequences makes it slightly more terrifying.
The more compelling story for me is the legend around the making of the film. This was George Miller’s feature film directorial debut and he made it for a mere 400,000 Australian dollars with some of the cast and crew paid in beer rather than cash. The storyline around the breakdown of society was supposedly added to the radio chatter in the background to explain the sparse populated roads and lack of actors. Miller has admitted that it was set in the future because they could not afford to film it with actual sets or have extras. And he also found himself editing the film as he could not afford to pay someone else. Yet it went on to be a global phenomenon earning over $100 million making it the most profitable film ever made until 1999 and the release of The Blair Witch Project.
Even more bizarrely it was dubbed for the U.S. market due to the fact that the Australian accents and slang were deemed too difficult to understand. You can check out the American dub on YouTube if you want to hear how crazy it makes it sound. The fact that this success allowed Miller to expand and extend the world of Mad Max into what it is now is truly fascinating. Whilst its influence is expansive with the likes of the Saw franchise creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell citing the closing scene as their inspiration for the horror series.
A moment of film history. Just not necessarily one to revisit often.
Phil the Bear's Film Reviews 