Mad Max
Mad Max is a 1979 film from Australia, directed by George Miller, running 88 minutes. reelscum files it under Ozploitation and carsploitation.
- Year
- 1979 · 1970s films
- Country
- Australia
- Runtime
- 88 min
- Director
- George Miller
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (4/100)
- Also known as
- Bolides hurlants
- Banned in
- New Zealand
Defined in the glossary: Ozploitation, Carsploitation
Banned by the New Zealand censor from 1979 to 1983, partly over a real gang assault on a policeman that echoed a scene.
Made for nothing on public roads. You can feel every dollar missing.
A first feature shot on Australian back roads for about A$400,000 by a director who was an emergency-room doctor, which explains the specificity of the injuries. The world-building is almost accidental: this is not yet the full wasteland, just a near future where the law has thinned out and the roads belong to whoever drives fastest.
The stunt work is real and occasionally looks like somebody nearly died, because they nearly did. Mel Gibson is a passenger to the vehicles for most of it, which is correct.
The American release dubbed the Australian accents into something blander. Find the original audio.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Ozploitation: the Australian genre boom, 1971 to 1986
An adults-only certificate, a tax loophole, and a Melbourne doctor who knew what happens to bodies at speed. Australia's fifteen years of cheap, mean, brilliant genre film.
- Wake in Fright is not an exploitation film
It was lost for thirty years, found in a bin marked 'for destruction', and it is the best thing on this site.
On these lists
- Essential Ozploitation
Australia spent fifteen years making films about the country trying to kill you. These are the ones that meant it.
Filed alongside
Mad Max 2
The template the whole Italian post-nuke cycle copied for a decade.
Road Games
Rear Window in a truck, with Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis.
The Cars That Ate Paris
Peter Weir's debut. A town that farms car crashes. Very strange.
Stunt Rock
No plot. A stuntman and a prog band. Exists purely so Grant Page can work.
Death Race 2000
Corman satire with actual teeth. Stallone before anyone knew.
Vanishing Point
A white Challenger, amphetamines, and an existential crisis at speed.
Two-Lane Blacktop
Almost no dialogue, almost no plot, and completely hypnotic.
Wake in Fright
A masterpiece and an ordeal. The kangaroo hunt is real footage and it is unbearable.
Gone in 60 Seconds
93 cars destroyed for real. The director broke his own ankles. Worth it.
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Ninety minutes of driving and one of cinema's great abrupt endings.
White Lightning
Burt Reynolds, moonshine, and the blueprint for a decade of Southern comedy.
The Man from Hong Kong
Jimmy Wang Yu wrecks Sydney, with hang-gliding and a man actually on fire. Peak crossover.