Fantastic Fest 2008

Not content to just earn the title of Most Important Action Film in Australian History, MAD MAX is flat-out responsible for kick-starting an entire unstoppable genre of pedal-to-the-metal mayhem! Following its release, celluloid documentations of a near-future world gone wild have appeared in countless languages, starring hundreds of international actors and cluttering video shelves with gasoline-hungry sunburnt desert warriors. Yet despite many top-notch entries during the exponential growth of the nuclear annihilation entertainment industry, it goes without saying that George Miller's flagship contribution remains unmatched. Mel Gibson is 'Mad' Max Rockatansky, a law-keeping family man in a pre-post-apocalyptic world that dangles mere inches above total societal implosion. Marauding criminals roam the Earth and live beyond rule, their numbers increasing as the police exhaust all their means to keep the inevitable at bay. But when a vicious maniac and his gang snuff out the few people Max cares for, he's transformed into an unstoppable force of raw, burning retribution, and the film becomes a whiplash-inducing catalogue of two-fisted, blue-collar, auto/human damage. Though shot on a modest budget, this 40-million horsepower beast skimps on nothing but social conscience, as everyone from bikers to babies are targeted for full-scale, wholesale slaughter. MAD MAX was originally released in the US in de-Aussified dubbed form, but we're pleased to present a recently-struck 35mm print with the original audio track, complete with all the muttered colloquialisms and down-under swearing you desire. So follow the red asphalt to the Alamo for total mechanized vengeance in the most crucial, influential and shockingly perfect exploitation masterpiece to ever tear open the Australian highway! (Zack Carlson)

(NOTE: At both MAD MAX and ROAD WARRIOR free outdoor screenings, in addition to the fun on screen, Chef John Bullington will be serving up classic Australian meat pies, shrimp on the barby and there will be plenty of giant-sized ice-cold Foster's to wash'em down with. Also, come prepared, we're having a Vegemite sandwich eating contest before the film.)