Mad Goose

Mad Max is one of those cult films that I heard a lot about growing up, but never got around to watching. It's also one of those films that even if you don't actually see it, it manages to find its way into your brain through the countless references, spoofs and mentions it gets throughout popular culture. With the new Mad Max film currently heating up the message boards (what?) and bringing in boffo reviews and wads of cash in the theatre, I thought it was time that I checked out the original 1979 film.

(Spoilers Below)





Here's what I thought I knew about the world of the film going into it, based upon the aforementioned pop culture saturation: it's post apocalyptic, the world is out of fuel, there are cars and Mel Gibson in it. Now having seen it, I'm starting to think that some of those descriptors have to do with whatever comes next in the series rather than the first one. I was waiting for the "the world is out of oil" speech that never came, but towards the end of the movie (and I'm talking, last 15 minutes) a mechanic tells Max that the gang is out looking for fuel. As far as I can tell that's the only time anyone mentions anything about there being some kind of fuel shortage going on.

Also the film is purported to be "post-apocalyptic" but honestly, watching it I wasn't sure if it was after the fall of man or just Australia as it always is. I was enjoying the barren vastness of it all at first, overpopulation is one of the biggest horror-show futuristic apocalypse situations for me, but then I remembered that the film takes place in Australia, a country known for (in the words of Bill Hicks) having "a lot of leg room". In the beginning the audience is told that the film takes place "A few years from now", so considering that it came out in 1979, the fall of man has definitely occurred and no one can tell the difference (IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE).

This film is hailed as an underground, cult classic (or at least that's what I've always thought it was, from the people who hail it as such and the ways in which it's hailed) but the score feels like something straight out of the classic Hollywood playbook. Particularly the "Halls of Justice" music which must be honestly trying to sound like the soundtrack to an old Superman serial. Not only does the music dispel much of what I associate with cult cinema, but then the film itself feels really, really Hollywood. There's cheesy at home moments with the wife and kid and even a honeymoon like, road trip montage, complete with a puppy. It's almost enough to make Hawkeye in Age of Ultron blush.

The film begins with a bad dude in a fast car named Nightrider who's making all the cops look bad, even though they're not called cops. There's some truly bad ass driving stunts (as there are through much of the film, though honestly barely enough to qualify it as a "carsploitation" flick) and Nightrider seems unbeatable until Max finally gets on the road behind. That's right. Mad Max. The dark, out of control, wild man hero of our tale who gets right on Nightriders ass and...then Nightrider starts crying? I think we're supposed to think "Oh man, he sees that Mad Max is on his ass and he knows his ass is grass! Look at him weep with regret." And then he crashes into something that blows up.

What's strange about this opening is that throughout the first half of the film Max isn't Mad at all. Goose is mad. Goose, who is Max's partner and friend in the cops-who-aren't-cops, is the wild one, the loose cannon, the "stick your regulations up your ass chief" cop (not cop) on the edge. So I think what happened to Nightrider is that he was struck with a deadly bit of existential angst and ennui, enough so to make him steer his car into a metal pile of flammable debris.

Nightrider kind of sucks, though you wouldn't think so from everyone in his gang who can't get over the guy. The head of the gang, Toecutter (who doesn't cut even one toe) is especially broken up about it. But Toecutter's gang sucks, they act like sugared up 10 year olds, which I think is one of only two ways that biker gangs can act in films. They can act like maniac children or stoic, menacing nightmare beasts but that's it. And these definitely act like the former. They behave like rejects from The Warriors (though their outfits are pretty sweet) and they don't really have any real skills beyond the sheer number of them (which isn't even that many).

One thing I'd like to point out that the film totally gets right is the refusal of the filmmakers to take any time out from their story to try to impart the knowledge of this new world to the audience. That is, there's no dull expository dialog explaining what has happened to the world, who these new government agencies are, what is everyone doing and what is going to be done. Exposition, especially in cult or genre films is nearly always incredibly tedious and rarely ever necessary. Yes I was curious at points, wondering what exactly was going on, but I could follow it enough to get what I was supposed to get. I didn't need to have every little aspect of the world nailed down. Perhaps it's the generations growing up on fully fleshed out RPG worlds and fantasy book series that go on for thousands and thousands of pages that has caused some of the young creators to feel like they need to have every molecule of their world pinned to the wall with a thousand footnotes, but it's just not necessary.

Going over my notes here and I wrote, "Sex is big in the near future." I have no idea what I meant by that. Ah-ha! I wrote "SAX" not "sex" because there is quite a lot of saxophone for a film taking place after the apocalypse.

So Goose (who kind of looks like Lou Reed) gets killed by Toecutter's gang (including one member, Bubba who also kind of looks like Lou Reed)(because anyone in black leather, with short blonde hair and aviator shades kind of looks like Lou Reed) and it causes Max to finally get Mad. As in "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" by which I mean "Take this job and shove it" by which I mean he quits as a future, not-cop cop cop, by which I mean he just takes a vaykay with the wife and kid. Oh yes the kid! The kid who just sort of pops up from time to time. He'll be absent from a montage of Max and his wife rollicking in the grass or getting a puppy but then he'll appear again, later on, when it's time for peril. It also becomes apparent that Max and his wife literally just plop the kid in the back of their station wagon type car, not only sans belt but sans seat, sans anything, like you'd place the folding chairs you're bringing to the beach, he just chills back there, rolling about, after the apocalypse, eating ice cream.

I have anxieties about pet ownership at this point in human history, meaning that I sometimes freak out and think "Oh God what if society falls, how will I feed Nico!?" but here Max and his wife (who is either called "Jessie" or "Jessie" is an Australian slang word for lady) pick up a puppy and just take it on with them, I mean why not? It's not like there's roving bands of biker mad men and a serious lack of governmental protection for the population.

Over an hour goes by with Max not doing anything even close to mad. It takes the maiming of his wife and the death of his kid to finally get him to lose it. "So here we go" I think, "here comes the madness." But his blood and guts revenge romp is anything but, he runs four dudes on motorcycles off the road, and I mean he does this in the most basic way possible, like just running into them, not even some wild Ben Hur but in a car kind of action. Then when he squares off against the remaining three antagonists, they shoot him in the leg and run over his arm right away.

This actually does make Max a little endearing at this point, in the way that we've seen him just sort of be a regular kind of dude, so seeing him have to step it up and deal with this horrific pain to get his revenge, it's kind of like the original Die Hard, where the thrill comes from someone kind of regular doing amazing things when pushed enough. But even now his big showdown with the final 3 are  basically shooting one guy, chasing another one into a truck (that came out of nowhere, no way was it actually planned) and then the final death, for the dude who killed Goose is actually pretty gnarly, though it totally shows that Saw was not as original as I previously thought.

The cinematic equation I was able to figure out was (and I'm open to challenges on it):
Vanishing Point + Straw Dogs + A Clockwork Orange + Ned Kelly (only because, you know, Australia?)

I did enjoy the film, picking on the little bits that I found odd or slightly ridiculous I hope don't come across as bad mouthing. I watched a 1080p rip of it and the cinematography was goddamn gorgeous. The stunts are incredible and I have no idea how they were able to do most of them without seriously killing everyone. And! The real saving grace of the film is that it came in at one hour and thirty three minutes. No fat on that. Films that know when to cut are few and far between these days and that makes Mad Max a treat you can enjoy on the fly without having to carve out a thousand hours to get through one of the Marvel universe films.