FOYLE Film Festival bring us a rare double-bill screening of the first two Mad Max films next weekend.
Released in 1979, George Miller's original Mad Max is an action-packed pre-apocalyptic tale of society on the brink of collapse, featuring a star-making performance from the young Mel Gibson.
Leather-clad car cop Max Rockatansky (Gibson) is burned-out on defending Australia's highways from marauding biker gangs and other petrol-crazed scum as society teeters on the brink of lawless autogeddon.
Max attempts to resign from the road and focus on his young family – unfortunately, he's already been marked for death by two-wheeled maniac Toecutter (a superb Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his highly unpleasant cronies.
Hilarity does not ensue: by 1981's action-packed sequel, Rockatansky's sanity is but a dot in his rear-view mirror.
In the second film – the definitive Max movie for many fans – he's become a nomadic 'road warrior', roaming a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by fetishwear-clad crazies in 'the last of the V8 interceptors'.
After encountering a camp of survivors holed-up in a heavily fortified oil refinery and under siege from kinky gang leader Humungus and his motorised minions, Max is cajoled into helping them flee in exchange for as much of their 'precious juice' as he can carry.
What follows is one of cinema's best ever car chases, so good that Miller himself ripped it off wholesale for his recent Mad Max reboot, Fury Road.
Forget that CGI-smeared atrocity – and indeed 1985's turgid Beyond Thunderdome: the original pair of Max flicks were never bettered.
:: Tickets £6 via Brunswickmoviebowl.com
