Mad Max (1979) on Netflix
R19791h 28mActionAdventureSci-Fi
Oil shortages have broken down civil order in near-future Australia. Max Rockatansky, a pursuit officer in the Main Force Patrol, and his partner Jim Goose face Toecutter's motorcycle gang.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.8/10247,108 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Oil shortages and environmental damage have left a near-future Australia short of fuel. The poorly funded Main Force Patrol is among the last police agencies still working, and Max Rockatansky is its best pursuit driver. A gang member called Nightrider kills a rookie officer, steals a Pursuit Special and flees with his girlfriend; Max steers him into a roadblock and the chase ends in a fiery crash. At the patrol garage Max is shown a new supercharged V8 Pursuit Special, which his superiors authorized to persuade him not to quit. Toecutter and Bubba Zanetti's motorcycle gang then riot through a town, wrecking property and stealing fuel, and Max and his partner Jim Goose take Johnny the Boy, one of the gang, into custody. With no witnesses in court, Johnny is judged unfit to stand trial and released.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mad Max (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- George Miller was a medical doctor in Sydney, working in a hospital emergency room where he saw many injuries and deaths of the kinds shown in the film. He also witnessed many car accidents growing up in rural Queensland and lost at least three friends to accidents as a teenager.
- Miller knew little about writing a script, but after reading Pauline Kael's essay Raising Kane he concluded that most major American scriptwriters, like Herman Mankiewicz and Ben Hecht, had been journalists, so he hired McCausland, the Melbourne finance editor of The Australian. McCausland was paid roughly $3,500 for about a year's worth of writing.
SPOILER
The film was banned in New Zealand because the scene in which Goose is burned alive inside his vehicle unintentionally mirrored an incident with a real gang shortly before release. It was shown there with an R18 certificate in 1983, and a separate Swedish ban was lifted in 2005.- Most of the biker gang extras were members of actual Australian motorcycle clubs and rode their own motorcycles in the film. They were even forced to ride those motorcycles from their homes in Sydney to the shooting locations in Melbourne, because the budget did not allow for aerial transport.
- Mad Max grossed A$5,355,490 in Australia and over US$100 million worldwide. Given its small production budget it was the most profitable film ever made at the time, and it held the Guinness World Record for the highest box-office-to-budget ratio of any motion picture until The Blair Witch Project in 1999.
- Miller's first choice for the role of Max was the Irish-born James Healey, who at the time worked at a Melbourne abattoir and was looking for a new acting job. On reading the script Healey declined, finding the meagre, terse dialogue unappealing.
- Four days into shooting, Rosie Bailey, originally cast as Max's wife, was injured in a bike accident. Production was halted and Bailey was replaced by Joanne Samuel, causing a two-week delay to a schedule already set at ten weeks.
- After filming, the car went up for sale but no buyer was found, and it was kept until Miller wanted it for Mad Max 2. It went unsold again and was left at a wrecking yard in Adelaide, where Bob Forsenko bought and restored it before selling it to the Cars of the Stars Motor Museum in Cumbria.
