This old turkey has been running on AMC…so I watched t. Was it supposed to be a comedy? I actually though the scene where the bikers move into that crummy little outback town was pretty funny…the stationmaster was pretty cool! Anyway, how do you spn a motorcycle around with the throttle full open? Those clunky 70’s Australian Chevies-great cars!
And the scene in the “halls of Justice”-are Aussie lawyers just as smarmy as the American variety?
Who played Max’sbald-headed boss?
I didn’t realize that Mel Gibson was such a runt!-What is he-about 5’6"?
i loved fifi
5’10", actually. He just seems short next to his boss, who has almost 6" on him.
I still love it. It set the tone for post apocalyptic as punk genre. It’s also nice to see Mel as a slender Aussie without a Jebus fixation.
A previous thread that answered a lot of my questions.
I think it is the pinnacle of modern movie making. But that’s just me. 
To the OP: You have to remember this movie was shot on a shoestring…its IMDB entry indicates it was made for $400,000 although it doesn’t say if that is Australian or US, or if it was adjusted for inflation. Either way not a lot of money.
I thought it was pretty cool in the early 80s, but rewatching it last summer (I bought the trilogy on VHS at a yard sale), it seemed like everyone in the first 2 movies was gay. I mean, Road Warrior was the outback as a post-apocalyptic leather bar.
It’s clearly done on a miniscule budget and the plot, like Max himself by the end, is a mess, but I like it.
The Toecutter’s gang seems to have been lifted wholesale from The Wild One but the actors are all pretty good and they really are a menacing bunch. Despite the lack of money, the action scenes, particularly the chase that opens the movie, are great (apparently, director George Miller even sacrificed his own van to the carnage since there was no cash to buy another vehicle to wreck for the sequence). Also, the scenery is gorgeous.
There’s quite a lot that just seems inept: I don’t think the movie establishes its supposed post-apocalyptic setting very well at all; the opening chase is pretty much the last real action till very near the end (I’m fairly sure budget problems have something to do with both of these); the relationship between Max and his wife seems a bit cliched and underwritten (though the little bit where she’s playing the sax at home cracks me up every time I see it), and considering the big buildup, the Last of the V-8 Interceptors doesn’t get as much screen time as I’d like (though that oversight is made up for in spades in the sequel).
I guess I like it mostly because of the mostly truly vivid characters, the mostly engaging story, and because the route that takes Max to his madness is not an entorely predictable one. Two and a half cheers.
Oh, and by the way, Kundalini wants his hand back.
What pisses me off is that here in the States, broadcasters seem most often to show the dubbed version. I can hear the jaws of our Aussie members dropping from here on the East Coast of the U.S., but yes, Mad Max was dubbed into American English, presumably for the poor 'Merkins who couldn’t understand the impenetrable Aussie accent. Arrrggggghhh!!!
It’s called a burnout. Hold the front brake on, stand up off the seat, rev it up and dump the clutch. Once the rear tire breaks loose, there’s not that much traction. Don’t try this at home, kids. 
I always think you had to be there for “Mad Max”. You can’t imagine the impact that film had in Australia back in 1979… it was a film about us - XA Falcons, AC/DC and the sense that there was no future. You had to be sitting in the Woodridge drive in on a sweltering summer night to really get it.
Nowadays, I love the fact that the formidable Hugh Keyes Byrne (aka “the Toecutter” is in it… I will often play “Stone” “Mad Max” and the greatest Asussie film ever made “The Man From Kong Kong” as a dynamite HKB triple play. But for Mad Max, you had to be one of us and you had to be there to really know what that film means, IMO
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Thanks for the info. MAD MAX always was a pretty strange movie. This “Main Force Patrol”-they can’t maintain their fleet of cars, but they all wear skin tight leather pants and jackets-sort of like a NYC gay bar, circa 1975. And why do they have the “MFP” anyway? There’s nobody on the roads except for crazed bikers, anyway. Mel Gibson’s wife was pretty hot though…and I liked that scene where she find’s the biker’s hand dangling from her bumper.
Again, probably a movie that’s difficult for an American to understand, but OK.
I saw it last night (all but the first fifteen minutes), and I wished I had turned on the closed captioning on the television. Sound quality was dreadful.
Post-Apocalyptic? I thought these movies were supposed to be set after WWIII. I didn’t get any sense of that. Or did the balloon go up during the first 15 minutes that I missed?
I watched this at a steamy Florida drive in when it first came out, probably 1980 here. I loved Bubba Zanetti, who had some of the best lines but sparse dialogue. “Perhaps it was a result of anxiety.” And Max was Dirty Harry-cool when he handcuffed the kid to the car, tossed him a hacksaw and explained his options.
I don’t see how any male between 12-90, anywhere in the world, would not understand this movie.
Its really pretty simple. And Bubba was the coolest.
I believe Mad Max is set shortly before the nukes fly, while Road Warrior occurs after the final apocalypse.
As noted, it’s easier to appreciate Mad Max when you realize what a shoestring operation it was. And it holds up pretty well considering that a quarter century has passed since it was filmed. A fun movie despite it’s nihilism.
Toecutter: “Take your hat off.”
Station Master (frightened): “Anything you say.”
Toecutter: “Anything I say. What a wonderful philosophy you have.”