Mad Max

George Miller was a hospital emergency doctor when this came together; he and producing partner Byron Kennedy funded it with locum shifts out on the road. The six week shoot ran around Melbourne late in 1977, chases near Little River, town scenes in the main street of Clunes. The 1979 world is not the desert of the sequels. A highway patrol still functions, with courts and a hospital intensive care ward; the collapse is a fuel shortage, not an apocalypse. Max goes on leave and takes his family away before any revenge starts, so a long stretch is domestic. The supercharger through the black Pursuit Special’s bonnet is decorative and does not work. For the American release, American International Pictures re-recorded the dialogue with American voices and changed the wording: “Oi!” became “Hey!” and “windscreen” became “windshield.” The original Australian track reached North America only in 2000. New Zealand banned the film in 1979: the burning of Goose inside his vehicle had landed in the same weeks as a real attack on a police sergeant. The ban was lifted later. A good fit if you will sit out that domestic stretch for chases cut from real roads. Not for anyone waiting for the sequels’ desert, since this Australia still has courts and an underfunded patrol unit.