Crazy Max

The film takes place in the near future in dystopic Australia . At the beginning of the film, the action is transferred to "several years ahead of today." A society dependent on fuel supplies was the result of a fall in civil law (in the sequel, “ Mad Max 2 ” - this is described in more detail).

The plot is based on the story of the officer of the Main Force Patrol Max Rokatansky. The film opens with the big chase of MFP representatives for a gangster- biker nicknamed Night Rider, who escaped from custody on a stolen "Interceptor." "Interceptors" - the most powerful patrol cars, they are equipped with eight-cylinder engines and have the highest speed characteristics. Having broken away from the crews of the Big Bopper, the March Hare and the patrolman on a motorcycle nicknamed The Goose, the Rider remains face to face against Max. By directing his car directly to the Rider's car, Max does not seek to avoid a collision. That, on the contrary, at the last moment takes his car away from the blow. However, Max’s car is so superior to a car hijacked by the Rider that Max manages to turn around and catch him, after which the Rider, completely demoralized, crashes to death.

Max is considering leaving MFP and his leadership secretly finds a sponsor from him to install a forced engine on the usual “Interceptor” (this is how the “Special Stalker” appears) to keep Max from being fired.

The rest of the gang, led by the Ripper, arrives in a small town where they brought the coffin with the Night Rider (most likely, by order of the bikers themselves). While the Ripper takes the coffin, bikers terrorize the town, forcing the young couple with fear to leave the town in their car, but along the way they accidentally knock down the Ripper, who, along with the rest of the bikers, catches up with them and smashes their car with axes. Near the remains of the car there remains one of the bikers, drug addict Johnny Boy, who is taken to the police station, Max and the Goose.

Since there were no victims in the case (neither the guy, nor the girl, nor the townspeople showed up), the case is being closed. "Goose" does not accept the fact that bikers go unpunished and beat Johnny Boy. Thus, bikers now know the object of their revenge. Johnny Boy is taken with him by Babba Zanetti, a high-ranking member of the gang, a calm, serious and well-aimed shooter.

While Gus is having fun in the club, Johnny Boy incapacitates his motorcycle and as a result, Gus, going on a mission the next day, has an accident, but survives and lends a car to a companion he met to get to the station, but bikers track him down, Johnny Boy with a well-aimed stone in the windshield turns the Goose car over, and afterwards the Ripper makes him set fire to the Goose.

Loss knocks Max out of a rut. After receiving a vacation, he leaves for a vacation to the north with his wife Jesse and their newborn son Sprog.

By coincidence, Jesse, on the way to the store, encounters the Ripper, who begins to pester her. With difficulty, she manages to escape, but one of the bandits, trying to grab hold of her car, loses her hand. Having tracked it, the bikers first demand this hand in exchange for the Sprog stolen by them, but a local elderly woman with a gun gives Jesse a few seconds of handicap. On the highway, Jesse's car stalls and bikers knock down defenseless Jesse and Sproog. From injuries, Jesse is in a coma, and Sprog dies.

The distraught Max takes the same “Special Stalker” from the MFP garage and destroys all the gang members by pushing them off the bridge and shooting with a well-aimed shot from his shotgun Babbu Zanetti (it was he who shot Max knee, because of which he was forced to wear the original franchise crutch). The Ripper realizes that Max can kill him, and prefers to retreat, but Max catches up with him in his "Special Stalker" and pushes right under the rider who is not in time to brake, which knocks the Ripper and crushes.

After that, after a long search, he stumbles upon Johnny Boy, catching him for another crime: Johnny Boy in the same manner as he once shot down the Goose, shot down another car to rob. Unable to withstand the anger at Johnny, Max rivets his leg to an upturned car, picks up his lighter and sets it so that after 10 minutes the gasoline pouring will fall on her light and kill Johnny with an explosion. Max also says that the handcuffs are made of high-strength metal and it will take 10 minutes to cut them, but Johnny can cut his ankle in 5 minutes. Without listening to his screams, Max leaves, and against the background an upturned car explodes (which suggests that Johnny Boy also died).

Thus, Max avenged his family and friend ("Goose").

The life of the protagonist has lost all meaning, he is doomed to wander for the rest of his life.

Background

While working in a Melbourne hospital , Dr. George Miller in 1971 met at the cinema school with a novice cameraman and producer Byron Kennedy. This duo produced their first short film, “Violence in the Cinema, Part 1,” shown at many festivals and won several prizes. Four years later, this couple decided to make a full-length film. George Miller worked in an ambulance at the hospital and during his work he saw many injuries and deaths, which was reflected in the film. Miller was inspired by articles by journalist James McCausland on Australia's automotive culture and global fuel industry.

Scripting

James McCausland was an American and a big fan of cinema, he moved from his native New York to Australia in 1971, where he continued to work in such prestigious publications as The Australian and The Age as an editor and author of articles on economic and financial topics. McCausland had a more anthropological view of motorists in this country. If at first Miller simply wanted to raise a theme in the script that reflected the problems of road crashes due to the fact that the country's government allows ordinary people to sell high-speed cars, despite the fact that most roads are not adapted for such high speeds, and is not going to do anything to to fix this, then McCausland saw in some young reckless people some distraught racers, for whom their vehicle is the only meaning of life. In his opinion, this became especially pronounced during the “ oil embargo ” of 1973, when gasoline at gas stations became catastrophically small, and prices rose sharply. Then, Australian drivers often began to fight in lines for the right to refuel, McCausland did not see anything like it in the United States. He was also a proponent of the peak oil theory of the American geologist and geophysicist Marion King Hubbert .

Miller saw in these arguments the central idea for the future film, he invited McCausland to write a script based on his theses. Miller and Kennedy have already come up with several options for the plot: the first was a youth drama about traffic police and the very young daredevils in sports cars on the most dangerous country roads, because of which the main character lost loved ones, the second was a fighter about confronting the traffic police and bikers who take revenge for the comrade who died in pursuit, the third option showed the protagonist of one of the reckless. Miller also came up with the idea of ​​a film that shows the world of the near future, when oil reserves on the planet are almost completely exhausted, the world collapsed, and now drivers are killing each other in road wars for the remaining gasoline. McCausland considered that all this should be combined in one plot, and the main character should be made both a scorcher and a guardian of order. The decision to transfer the action to the near future was relevant in that it allowed us to show universal cars and motorcycles, as well as unusual weapons in the film. They decided that McCausland would write all the dialogs and come up with the stories of all the characters, and then Miller and Kennedy would finalize the chases and stunt scenes. But in the end, the resulting script, which consisted of 214 pages, they had to be significantly reworked due to a reduction due to lack of money (Miller implemented many of the ideas for the first film later in the sequels of Mad Max, mainly in Road Warrior and Road rage ").

Preparatory Period and Filming

The development of the script, the creation of basic artistic solutions and the search for financing took a total of 14 months.

The film was shot in twelve weeks, filming took place from October 24, 1977 to January 1978 in the vicinity of Melbourne . In May 1978, the scene of the death of the Night Rider was re-shot. The post-production of the film lasted one year.

Due to the low budget, the latest editing and sound operations were completed at Miller’s house: George edited the film in the kitchen, and Byron Kennedy edited the sound in the living room.

Location

The film was shot in the western suburbs of Melbourne, in Melbourne itself and in the state of Victoria.

• MFP Headquarters - Spotswood (Melbourne) Pump Station Building. Currently, the complex of buildings belongs to the Melbourne Polytechnic Museum.
• The interior of the MFP was rented in an abandoned gas station building in Port Melbourne. Currently, the building has been rebuilt for luxury housing.
• MFP Parking - Underground parking at the University of Melbourne.
• Field surveys were carried out in the west of Melbourne in the area of ​​the settlements of Avalon, Little River, as well as the areas of Greater Melbourne Laverton, Kreibybern and Sunburri.

Transport

Since the film was low-budget, all the cars from the film were modifications of the cars that existed at that time. Max’s yellow Interceptor was remade from an Australian 1973 Ford Falcon XB sedan (a Melbourne police car) with a 5.8-liter (5751 cubic centimeters or 351 cubic inches) V8 engine with 260 bhp , hood, grille, headlights, suspension and transmission from the GT modification ^[2] . The Big Bopper , which was driven by Roop and Charlie, was also a Ford Falcon XB sedan with a V8 of 5 liters (4948 cubic centimeters or 302 cubic inches) with a capacity of 230 bhp ^[3] . The March Hare , which Sars and Scuttle drove, was a Ford Falcon XA sedan with an in-line six-cylinder engine (this car was a taxi in Melbourne) ^[4] .

Max's most memorable car, the black “Pursuit Special” - “Special Chaser” (often mistakenly called “Interceptor” after the mechanic from the movie “Mad Max 2: Road Warrior” called this machine “the last of the V8 Interceptors”) version of the limited-edition GT351 series of the Australian Ford Falcon XB, sold from December 1973 to August 1976 and modified by the crew. According to the plot, the power of the engine of the Special Stalker was 600 bhp . The supercharger installed on the car is a dummy ^[5] . After filming was completed, it was dismantled for the possibility of operating the car on public roads, although for some time its unchanged appearance was used at film screenings.

Policeman Jim Goose rode a Kawasaki KZ 1000 , 1977 model year motorcycle . A gang of bikers rode around on Kawasaki KZ-1000 and Honda CB750 / CB900 motorcycles. On the basis of the Honda CB750, a tricycle with a stroller and with a glass cap-sphere, which was stopped by police Hus, was also made. All motorcycles were provided for filming for free, and during the filming they were smashed to smithereens. In the role of bandits starred local bikers from the Australian state of Victoria ^[6] .

The machine, which the bandits defeated with axes - Chevrolet Impala , model year 1959. This car was put on set, because it still had to be scrapped.

The film for a long time kept a record in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest ratio of profit and budget, losing it only in 2000 to the film “ The Blair Witch ”. The budget of the film was 300 thousand Australian dollars (of which fifteen thousand were paid as a fee to Mel Gibson). Worldwide rental brought the film $ 100 million as of December 31, 1982.

In 1979, the film won three awards from the Australian Film Institute for best screenplay, sound, and music.

When the film was first released in the United States , the entire soundtrack (including the character Mel Gibson) was re-sounded at the request of the distributor of American International Pictures, who feared that in America they would not understand the actors with an Australian accent, and wished to add an American accent to the voices. The only exception was the Sugartown cabaret singer, played by Robin Chaffee. The original Australian scale was nevertheless released in 2000 in a limited edition by Metro Goldwin Mayer, the current owner of the rights to the film.

Three sequels were shot - “ Mad Max 2: Warrior of the Road ”, “ Mad Max 3: Under the Dome of Thunder ” and “ Mad Max: The Road of Fury ”.

• Starting in September 2010, in the Mojave Desert in southern California, a 3-day Wasteland Weekend “Mad Max” festival has been held. All participants of the festival should be dressed in post-apocalyptic costumes in the style of “Mad Max”, and the atmosphere from all series of the film will be recreated at the festival. ^[7]
• Max’s yellow “Interceptor” is present in the game “ Carmageddon TDR 2000 ” and is called “Sheriff” or, in another translation, “Crush”, acting as a police car in one of the locations. The Special Stalker also appears in the game, under the name SXE Black Hatch.
• Puretone's clip “Addicted to Bass” outplayes the opening chase scene from the movie, but this time the fugitives manage to escape.
• In the third part of the animated series Avatar: The Legend of Korra , a gang of robbers appears, reminiscent in appearance of the characters of “Mad Max”.
• In the computer game Wasteland 2 , during the passage of the Prison, you can see the “Interceptor” half covered with sand

• Bikers in the cinema

• Mad Max in the IMDb Database
• Mad Max Movies FAQ
• Mad Max Unlimited - a company that produces copies of the "Interceptor" and other machines from the "Mad Max"