Product: Mad Max (1979)
Rating: 5.0
Original Australian Language Track!
Mel Gibson was originally dubbed over, as mostly all the other actors where also, to create an "English Language" soundtrack version of Mad Max for its worldwide distribution. Thus pre-DVD the only way to hear Mel's original voice (the one he had when he turned up with bandages across his face with blood under the patches and the casting agents knew they had found Mad Max, an outback young lad with some good looks and a penchant for licking out of the bottle all day long) was to get the Australian version of the film on video tape. Now on "Special Edition!! (Check to make sure this review is for that version as Amazon sometimes changes products and moves reviews!)" DVD you can hear Mad Max the way it was meant to sound - 1 track Australian mono audio - but to be honest why brother with any 5:1 digital upgrade or a 2:1 English track?... unless you can't understand the original audio, in which case just turn to the subtitles.1979 Mad Max made its break onto the scene for one reason and one reason alone - the dawn of "Ultraviolence", Mad Max was instantly slapped with an X rating in Europe and was heavily criticised for being bloody graphic and too obscene for most viewers, George Miller had in fact delivered on very little blood on the screen, creating instead intensive bullying and quick flash cuts, probably dummies going under trucks or the jump cut subliminal frames of eyes jumping out of their sockets before a crash, people had never seen this kind of violence on the screen before, George Miller having himself already produced a violent twenty minute test film "Violence in Cinema Pt 1" (1971), knew there was a market for this thing, and there was, Mad Max produced several memorable posters for the first movie, each one either a cartoon or a still of anything other than Mad Max, the artwork always seemed to make people believe they where walking in on some sort of high budget Australian sci-fi violent action film, when in fact they where just viewing a bunch of guys with a 35mm camera, sticky tape and no fear of the brand new superbikes that could do 200 mph on the back roads of Oz. Peter Jackson obviously watched re-runs of this while making his Bad Taste. Low budget film makers know that Mad Max is probably just as important as Evil Dead that came out two years after it, in terms of how to make a low budget film that works. Just look at Mad Max, no one had two coins to rub together, yet they have a movie that spawned no less than two sequels and made an A-list Hollywood actor out of the lead, that is not bad going at all.The result is a very mish-mash of acting inabilities, poorly directed non-violent stuff, wonderful atmosphere, nice amateur camerawork, film speed ups to create the illusion of faster motion, that mostly actually work, but it is long and drawn out, taking well over an hour for Max Rockatanski to loose some loved ones, going after the "Toecutter" a biker and his crew for a bit of road rage and revenge, this is the first film in which children are murdered (all suggestive; like a ball and shoe rolling down the road) because of bad driving, people visibly go under trucks and some `burnings alive' but nothing that is graphic (the most graphic scene being a severed hand hanging from a chain) it was the illusion of manic bikers going psycho on the streets that was so easy for everybody at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s to believe, so naturally they bought into all the stuff because aristocratic systems had man blaming each other for their own problems and not bad management of government, the "Halls of Justice" scenes in which arrested druggie bikers who kill are set free because of a technicality, all of this to people was very real at the time, a real fear, then suddenly a victim hero emerges from the rubble to clean up the mess himself, Mad Max is a bit of a defining moment in the genre, generated a better sequel in terms of budget and action, but this original is still very much the more important offering because of what it is. The Original Ultraviolent Action Film that Played on people's Belief's Systems of What a Criminal Was. It was as good then as say making a film about Mid-Eastern terrorists going on a rampage across America <--- take note all you budding young film makers.