Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

The story continues as 'Max Rockatansky' is now a roaming lone wolf, a highway mercenary who does what he can for precious fuel and to survive.

For me this is easily the best of the trilogy as it gives you everything you kinda wanted from the first but didn't quite get. This film has become a legend over time, how many films, videogames, boardgames, TV shows etc...have used this formula and style since!.

The plot is even more basic than the first film and dispatches any notion of family, love or even friendship really. 'Max' is purely a roamer who cares for nothing but his dog and 'Ford Falcon', gas and sustenance are his goals. In short 'Max' reluctantly gains a friend in the form of the 'Giro Captain' and is shown a source of much gasoline. Again reluctantly he ends up helping the small band of protectors that hold the gas from a vicious gang of bondage clad desert thugs. All for more gas.

In short this film is virtually a constant set up for stunts, action and chase sequences, nothing much more than that. Definitely original in its time, all vehicles and costumes like this are now basically synonymous with this franchise. The used, dirty, seedy, gritty, rusty machine like world of the future also leans towards a Roman gladiatorial type look. The new gang of ultra thugs are a mix of American Indian, Roman gladiator, 'Rollerball' looking types that again also tend to appear very homosexual like the first.

Who can forget the iconic lunacy of Vernon Wells' character with his mohawk, leather chaps with bare thong clad ass showing and of course his collared blonde male bitch by his side haha. His utter madness and violent tendencies make him a scary gay loose cannon from hell as he lets out his war cries.
The rest of the bad guys are merely death fodder that end up getting blown up or crushed under vehicle tyres, but the costumes are all so unique and well imagined mixing fetish bondage gear with biker gear. Very cliched now of course but anything like this would come under the term 'Max Mad style'.

The bad guys easily make the film with their appearance and constant assaults, swarming over anything like ants. Their leader again is another brilliant visual treat and again totally homosexual looking. A huge tanned muscle bound man who speaks well, dresses in yet more black spiky strapped bondage gear and wears a hockey mask making him one of the best movie mysteries around. Who is this guy? what happened to him? and with the name 'Humungus' you again tend to think if that has anything to do with the gay theme. Naturally I have also wondered if the hockey mask idea had been pinched from a certain horror movie made the year before.

The good guys are more bland and boring with their stereotypical white outfits which indicate that they are clearly the goodies hehe. Baddies in black, goodies in white...oh the good old days of cliched action films. The 'Feral kid' character being rather annoying I must admit, the story is narrated by an older version of himself which is kinda neat but the actual character was just weird, but I guess that was the idea.

The film goes from one set piece to the next and not pausing much for breathe. The outback setting really works wonders for the film and gives a really nice bleak barren dystopian future feel. Of course the final tanker chase sequence is the most memorable and iconic action sequence of the film. Much like the iconic 'Indy' truck chase sequence in 'Raiders' our hero takes on one bad guy after another as they try to derail the tanker resulting in some epic over the top carnage. What was also so original about this film was the fact that all the good guys that help 'Max' in this final chase get killed...including the hot female!.

Not even 'Max's' trusty old dog survives the ordeal. These darn movie men always know how to get a viewer upset and against the bad guys, have them kill an innocent doggie. Dam them and their cliched overused movie trickery!!!.

This is pretty much the perfect action film with everything needed and supplied with class. A small budget again proves better results tend to get achieved, it really does look like they just got a load of cars and buggy's and just stuck a whole lot of metal crap all over them.

Sparse in every sense, little dialog, a tough hero with no name type (although we do know his name I don't think its mentioned) and locations that are alien and rich with imagination. A fantasy barbarian film with guns instead of swords and fetish gear instead of loincloths. The ultimate used heavy metal junkyard post apocalyptic universe that influenced everything.