After seeing the new Die Hard trailer again, I had the urge to watch an old-school action film, so I checked out the original Mad Max for the first time in....well, far too long.
Holy crap I forgot how awesome it is. The opening chase sets the stage for both the stunts and how badass Max is.
It's low-budget and arguably hasn't aged that well (Mel Gibson was 21 when it was made - he's come a long way), but the stunts really pop off the screen. The editing is incredible as well, and did a lot to advance the quick-cut technique that MTV made staple (unfortunately).
The vehicular mayhem that takes place on-camera is pretty amazing - they fit a freakin Navy rocket on the back of a car at one point, creating a sequence that could never be repeated. One bike stuntman travelled 80 feet through the air during a stunt, and another actually got hit with the front tire of a bike while on the ground (looks far worse in slow-mo than it actually was, apparently).
The film also included some taboo material in terms of threats & violence towards children - the kind of stuff you'd never see nowadays.
The latex mask/eyes-popping stuff is hilarious.
One of the documentaries described Mad Max as a huge influence on action filmmaking, and it's not hard to see why. A critic described it as a western but with cars instead of horses. The crew cut a lot of corners and pulled off a lot of tricks to get the film to work, but watching it, you'd never realize it.
Anyways, just wanted to post this, in case anyone was in the same boat as me, having forgotten about the joys of pre-CG stuntwork - I suppose you could call it analog action? :)
My memory told me that The Road Warrior was far superior, but after watching this, the gap isn't as big as I'd thought. It's got a nice remastered special edition DVD (including the original Aussie audio track for the first time in the US - the original release was dubbed) that can be had pretty cheap, too. It's almost thirty years old, but it's still a good time.
