Movie  1979
 Mad Max      Back      Home
Goose: You've seen it!... You've heard it!... and you're still asking questions?
[a car that the bikers demolished earlier has been towed to the Halls of Justice]
Kid: Hey Mister! What happened to the car?
Bubba Zanetti: What do you think happened?
Kid: Looks like it's been chewed up and spat out.
Bubba Zanetti: Perhaps it was a result of anxiety.
Goose: It was like slow motion. He leaves his seat and goes through the windshield, headfirst straight into the tree, right? And then bounces back through the windshield. And by the time we got to him, he was just sitting there, trying to scream with his face ripped off.
[pause]
Goose: What's the matter?
Restaurant Patron: Not hungry anymore.
Goose: Give it here.
Max: I'm scared, Fif. It's that rat circus out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, a terminal psychotic, except that I've got this bronze badge that says that I'm one of the good guys.
[after Roop and Charlie crash into a bystander's van]
Charlie: Boy, we're really going to get it this time. He had his indicator on.
Roop: Shut up!
Toecutter: That there is Cundalini... and Cundalini wants his hand back!
Grease Rat: Like the sign says, "speed's just a question of money. How fast can you go?"
Station Master: That must be your friend over there. They didn't leave much of him.
Bubba Zanetti: Must've cut his heart out, eh?
Station Master: Yes. That's what I meant. Poor bastard!
Toecutter: [whirls on the Station Manager] The Nightrider. That is his name... the Nightrider.
Station Master: [frightened] The NightRider.
Toecutter: Remember him when you look at the night sky!
Station Master: I will.
Toecutter: Take your hat off.
Station Master: Anything you say.
Toecutter: Anything I say. What a wonderful philosophy you have. Take him away.
[last lines]
Johnny the Boy: [Max limps away after handcuffing Johnny to the car, leaking gas next to a fire] HAA! You're funny man, YOU'RE REAL FUNNY! PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Fifi: [sarcastically, as his superior walks out of earshot] Thanks, Labatouche. You're a real human being.
Nightrider: I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!
Bubba Zanetti: We're here to meet a friend. Comin' on the train.
Station Master: Nothin' comin' on the train except a couple of crates and a, uh, coffin!
Bubba Zanetti: Our friend.
Goose: See you on the road, skag. See you like we saw your friend, The Nightrider.
Johnny the Boy: We remember The Nightrider! And we know who you are!
Ziggy: [about Cundalini's hand] Well, unless someone makes a claim for it, I figure it's lost property.
[Max hands Fifi his letter of resignation]
Fifi: What's this?
Max: I'm through.
Fifi: Again?
Max: No, not again. I'm through. I'm quitting.
Fifi: Sit down.
Max: I didn't come here to dicuss it, I came here to say it. I'm through.
Fifi: Now just a minute! Alright, so the Goose bought it, but that's the way he always came in the world...
Max: -Off beat!
Goose: What a turkey! Hey, fella! You're a turkey!
Fifi: They say people don't believe in heroes anymore. Well, damn them! You and me, Max, we're gonna give 'em back their heroes!
Goose: [describing the supercharged Interceptor that's idling, in particular the supercharger itself] You can shut the gate on this one, Maxie... it's the duck's guts!
Barry, MFP Garage Mechanic: [excitedly] She sips nitro... with Phase 4 heads! 600 horsepower through the wheels! She's meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run!
Goose: [looking at Max just staring at the engine] He's in a coma, man!
Fifi: They say people don't believe in heroes anymore. Well damn them! You and me, Max, we're gonna give them back their heroes!
Max: Ah, Fif. Do you really expect me to go for that crap?
Fifi: You gotta admit I sounded good there for a minute, huh?
[the Kid is handcuffed to a car that's about to explode]
Max: The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It'd take you ten minutes to hack through it with this. Now, if you're lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go.
[the hacksaw is dropped next to The Kid, and Max limps off]
Roop: That scag and his floozie, they're gonna die!
Johnny the Boy: Whacked right out of his skull man! He ain't never comin' back!
Description
Setting Mel Gibson on a sure path to superstardom, this highly acclaimed "crazy collide-o-scope"(Newsweek) of highway mayhem "cinematically defined the postapocalyptic landscape" (TV Guide). Featuring eye-popping stunts that are "electrifying and very convincing" (Variety) and "an authentically nihilistic spirit" (The Village Voice), Mad Max is "pure cinematic poetry" (Time). In the ravaged near future, a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets, the ruthless gang laughs in the face ofa police force hell-bent on stopping them. But they underestimate one officer: Max Rockatansky (Gibson). And when the bikers brutalize Max's best friend and family, they send him into a mad frenzy that leaves him with only one thing left in the world to live forrevenge!

Amazon.com
The Road Warrior is already a classic, sans condescending genre distinctions like "sci-fi" or "action." But the story of Mel Gibson's stately antihero begins in Mad Max, George Miller's low-budget debut in which Max is a "Bronze" (cop) in an unspecified postapocalyptic future with a buddy-partner and family. But unlike most films set in the devastated future, Mad Max is especially notable because it is poised between our industrialized world and total regression to medieval conditions. The scale tips towards disintegration when the Glory Riders burn into town on their bikes like an overamped cadre of Brando's Wild Ones. Representing the active chaos that will eventually overwhelm the dying vestiges of civil society, they take everything dear to Max, who will exact due revenge. His flight into the same wilds that created the villains artfully sets up the morally ambiguous character of the subsequent films. --Alan E. Rapp