Mad Max 2
Mad Max 2 is a 1981 film from Australia, directed by George Miller, running 95 minutes. reelscum files it under Ozploitation, post-nuke and carsploitation.
- Year
- 1981 · 1980s films
- Country
- Australia
- Runtime
- 95 min
- Director
- George Miller
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (6/100)
- Also known as
- The Road Warrior · Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior · Mad Max 2: Le défi · Mad Max: The Road Warrior
Defined in the glossary: Ozploitation, Post-nuke, Carsploitation
The template the whole Italian post-nuke cycle copied for a decade.
The sequel that swallowed its own genre. Max, now a burnt-out drifter in a fully collapsed world, helps a fuel-rich settlement escape a marauder army, and the whole film builds to a tanker chase that has never been bettered for real vehicular carnage.
George Miller invented an entire post-apocalyptic visual language here, the leather, the mohawks, the scavenged cars, and every Italian post-nuke film on this site spent the decade copying it. The stunts are real and terrifying.
The rare sequel that eclipses the original and defines a genre.
Trailer
The numbers
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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.
The cycle in depth
- 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.
Filed alongside
Mad Max
Made for nothing on public roads. You can feel every dollar missing.
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.
Dead End Drive-In
A drive-in turned into an internment camp. The satire is not subtle.
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.
1990: The Bronx Warriors
Fred Williamson in a cape. Castellari doing Warriors on a Roman budget.
Gone in 60 Seconds
93 cars destroyed for real. The director broke his own ankles. Worth it.
2019: After the Fall of New York
The last fertile woman on Earth, in a quarry outside Rome.