VHS : Mad Max 2 - Road Warrior [1981]

Rating: - My Favourite Movie Maybe! Sci-Fi Road Movie Masterpiece!
Ive watched this film more times than any other since it was first released on VHS in 1983. It made a lasting impession on me and ive never seen it bettered by any others of its type including 1985's Thunderdome.
So many elements are combined here; SciFi, Horror, Action, Western, Revenge Thriller and combined well. Mad Max was good but this really ramps it up.
Set in a desolate and lawless future Australian outback after the fall of civilisation(post world war 3 but NOT after a nuclear conflict - the Bombs fall in the years between parts 2 & 3) the saga continues of Max Rockatansky, the embittered and battle hardened warrior of the wasteland, constantly at war with the ferocious marauders who terrorise the apocalyptic landscape. Max is the epitome of 'Hard' - clad from head to toe in leather and steel and armed with a sawn off, double barrelled shotgun, he roams the wastelands in the now iconic black V8 Interceptor. A monster of a car, armed with a self destruct device and a supercharger to leave the opposition standing - this is Max's main weapon and bringer of Death to the enemy. The plot is straightforward and really is an excuse to enjoy the absolute orgy of violence and mayhem that ensues for 90 minutes! Max goes head to head with the minions of the terrifying Lord Humungous and his Chief Warlord Wez - These are truly fearsome warriors, clad like Max in leather and iron and armed to the teeth with crossbows, blades, morning stars and gas propelled arrow guns and a vast arsenal of cars, bikes and dune buggys. Some of these guys are barely human with their berserker tactics, utter contempt for human life and total bloodlust. A good 50% of them are mohawked, particularly Wez and look like they could have come from the depths of hell!
Max, mostly for selfish reasons, allies himself with a compound of 'normal' people who find their desert fortress under perpetual siege from the Humungous and his monstrous horde. The decent folk have their own oil facility to make fuel which is now the single rarest commodity on earth - and the mohican army wants it - and arent willing to trade!
In the ensuing battles, bodies are broken, impaled, crushed, and pulped in the bloodiest car chases ever seen on screen. Woman are graphically raped, fingers are severed and heads are decapitated (courtesy of Max's shotgun). Torture and Terror are the currency here! This is a VERY violent movie, well worth its 18 rating (although not fully uncut on DVD). The film culminates in an amazing 15 odd minute chase whereby Max in charge of a massive Mack Truck is pursued by the Humungous and the full force of his army in all manner of deadly pursuit vehicles. The stunt work and special effects (pre CGI) are jaw-dropping and its a miracle no stunt men lost their lives! I have yet to see a more gripping setpiece as the crazed thugs clamber on to the truck from their bikes & cars to engage Max in mortal combat to the explosive conclusion.
This film is tightly written & directed,it looks truly Epic, despite a relativeley modest budget, thanks to stunning photography,sharp editing and cutting edge production design. Performances are effective, and Mel Gibson should never forget his roots! This is action cinema at its best!
Also the score by Brian May is terrific - shades of Holst's Mars - very warlike! The locations are breathtaking (filmed at Broken Hill) and are the uncredited cast member.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was a bit too tame (well made though)and lets hope we see Mad Max 4: Fury Road soon! Please George Miller!!!
Incidentally check YouTube videos out if like me you like Metal - Ive seen a great trailer/montage from Mad Max 2 set to the music of Metallica which works very well indeed!

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Rating: - A gulp o' guzzoline and some leather chaps
The Aussie nomad is back - this time with a pariah hound in tow - and he's more disgruntled than ever. The army-issue crew cut and the boyish good looks are gone; this Road Warrior has a flyaway mop and there's a scowling weariness about him that suggests he might be partial to quaffing a little "guzzoline" himself... were it not in such short supply, of course. You see, gas is the currency of this post-apocalyptic wasteland, and Mad Mel - sorry, Max - soon finds himself wheeling 'n' dealing with a group of besieged settlers. They're about to make a burst for the coast (the Promised Land) with a bus-load of the flammable stuff. Hot on their heels is a biker/buggy gang that makes the Toecutter's goons look like The Goon Show.

The incongruous association between the violent marauders and homosexuality is brought up a notch. Toecutter's gang was boyish and chummy, occasionally flamboyant; here, Lord Humungous reins over an orgy of semi-naked kinky boys, all pink hair and S&M leather. (Amongst the baddies is a certain Vernon Wells who, amazingly, in spite of the absence of a chain mail vest, manages to be more camp than Commando's Bennett.) The settlers, by comparison, garbed in their angelic white armour, variously form an (admittedly dysfunctional) hetero family unit - in the safety of the compound convene wives without husbands and sons without fathers, waiting for a wanderer to walk into their world...

Pauline Kael described Mad Max 2 as "sentimental". Indeed, the simplicity of the relationships on show might be too much to bear for fans of the original's fuller characters. This grouchy, selfish, silent Max brings the archetype to the fore; we see far more of our hero in this sequel, but learn far less about him. But what more do we have to learn? One could argue that the scene was set in part one, and now we can witness an exhilarating fight for survival in a setting too rarely presented in mainstream film.

Mad Max 2 may heavily recall Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, but at least it's got the good sense to borrow from the best. It's also worth remembering that it was influential in its own right. This was 1981; rarely, if ever, before had there been an action adventure so devoted to its own gloriously unembellished cause: to provide a pure rush of adrenaline. Its thrills are relentless, and if you can tolerate Brian May's overbearing score all the way to the end, you'll find a climactic car chase that's never been bettered.

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Rating: - At the time of a desertic earth gas is the stake of all fights
The second film of the trilogy is getting off the banality of the first one with its rape, infanticide and vengeance. Here we get to a world that is a real war to the death of one tribe against another and there is no law anywhere close. It is war for survival hence for the only thing that has some value in this desertic world where you can only move safely in motor vehicles, hence with gas. A fight for a tanker of gas, that's what the stake is. Mad Max gets on the side that controls the tanker in order to get gas for his car and he manages to serve them in a way and be accepted, though he tries to go away on his own when the service is finished. But he gets wrecked and has to be brought back by some accessory to the action who has some kind of unidentifiable flying object, some kind of ancestor of the chopper. So he will be the hero of the essential part of the film, the chase after the tanker. We will follow it with anxiety especially since a tanker like that is a bomb on wheels. The successive attacks against the tanker will be creative and some people will die on both sides and the driver will be seriously endangered by the attackers, to the point that he will not be able to avoid the final crash. And surprise, surprise, the tanker will not explode. The good old valueless gas had been transferred to the school bus in which the women were traveling. But the wreck of the tanker will incite the attackers, or what's left of them, to go away. Strangely enough they will not verify the content of the tanker and will not be able to think that the gas was somewhere else: these attackers are barbarians somewhere, hence they are intellectually retarded. And the final leg of the migration to safety could start and Mad Max could disappear in a mirage in the desert like some sand on a wind. Entertaining but in no way too intellectual: you will not get any nightmares nor headaches. Just funny after all. But that kind of chase will be imitated galore in the coming years after 1981. And that's probably one reason why it became cult: it was one of the very first films to work on the technique of shooting and editing such a chase.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

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Rating: - I'm just here for the gasoline
Set a few years after Mad Max (and you don't have to watch that first), we rejoin the eponymous hero in a vastly changed world, populated by marauder bands, petty chiefdoms and solitary chancers. Ammunition is scarce and unreliable, and bows/crossbows the new levellers.

Out in the wasteland, fuel and a fast car are your means of acquiring further supplies, or of preserving your existing supplies and extending your life.

The basic story is this: a relatively peaceful group is holed up in its heavily fortified mini-refinery. Max undertakes to drive the tanker containing their gasoline through the motorised Humungous tribe baying at the gates to a new life beyond reach of marauders.

The dialogue is less than 3000 words. Uber-edgy and violent right off the bat, this is acted, filmed and edited so well it feels like a documentary.

An essential reference for peak-oilers, and anyone who likes their action hard and fast.

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Rating: - Like Waterworld, but with oil instead of soil
This isn't as good as the first Mad Max film, despite the general consensus. It's a very different kind of movie, with a very different kind of hero. It's harder to relate to Max here. In the mid 1990s the makers of Waterworld copied the plot of Mad Max 2, but replaced oil with soil.