Stories are legion of the exploits involved in shooting the early Mad Max films. Many we all know, but a book called ‘Miller & Max‘ by journalist Luke Buckmaster sheds new light on the subject. The Guardian has published an extract highlighting the hair-raising approach taken by George Miller and his team for the shoestring-budget first film.
I’m not going to give you a precis of the extract, but I will say it is featured in the above scene, and involves a driver who can’t drive and a wayward rocket modelled on those found on navy destroyers. The story links here and is well worth the read.
Wow, never knew. Although everybody being young it was probably a blast to work on the movie.
There are some pretty crazy stories from the movie, and I don’t know that I would say this was the ‘worst’ one given that nobody got hurt!
I think it is the scene where Max drives at the bikers on a bridge that you actually see the head stuntman (Grant Page) break his leg. Some of the bike stunts are pretty bold to say the least.
That crash reminds me of the end of “Vanishing Point” when Kowaltski hit the bulldozers with his Challenger.
On a off-topic sidenote, I spotted this compilation clip of car chase from a short-lived Aussie cop drama tv series named “Bluey” featuring Aussie Valiants in action.
I can’t tell whether that show was Australia’s answer to Cannon, or Australia’s answer to Starsky and Hutch. I can’t stop watching!
Isn’t the actor in the van chase the knight rider from mad max?
Yes, looks it might be the same actor, Vincent Gil, who did Nightrider guest starred in Bluey from what I saw on his filmography on IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0317878/
Good old beasts those Valiants loved by Kiwis, Aussies not so much Barge Arse sorry Bluey’s car is a VK 4.3Litre possibly with lean burn I cant remember exactly when they fitted that stuff when it worked it was great a 265/4.3 would get 30mpg against the 25 my VJ 265 could get being nice to it, but it never worked right for long.
A handsome beast as well, I always thought, especially wth its optional ROH alloy wheels , and no vinyl roof.
I think the Lean Burn system appeared on the next model in 1976 to comply with ADR27A, our clean air act that all cars had to meet.
I remember reading at the time that the Chrysler sixes needed the least amount of modification to meet this requirement compared with Ford and especially Holden.
Love this movie, love that chase, and enjoyed this story, however, that scene drives me nuts. The car clearly had a rocket attached to it, in that scene you can see the plume more clearly than the car itself, and at no point prior in the chase is the car established as having rocket power – it’s clearly a V8 from the sound – or having some sort of booster button ala Max’s V8 Interceptor’s supercharger button, but instead for a rocket. Even if that were the case why on earth would the knight rider hit it when clearly trying to avoid the crash ahead?
If there were a brief establishing shot where he or his female accomplice clumsily hitting a “rocket button” in a panic, it would work perfectly. Instead it just looks like the clumsy stunt gone awry they describe it as.
Keep in mind that this movie was shot on a shoestring by inexperienced filmmakers. I’m sure the script said something like, “Night Rider crashes dramatically” and the rocket was an ill-conceived, naive attempt to achieve that. When they were done, they knew what they had didn’t look much like the car crash it was supposed to be, but they’d spent all that money on it and likely couldn’t afford to re-shoot it. Plus, what they had was plenty spectacular, even if it wasn’t very realistic.
The rocket car reference made me remember the story of the ’67 Chevy rocketcar.http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html
Believe or not the Pennsylvania Rail Road experimented with rocket powered helpers in the late 40’s to speed up trains over mountain grades. They put the rocket engines on flat cars. Needless to say they gave up after a couple of tries.It was too hard to control. Other railroads also experimented with jet engines, none were successful.
There was also a television commercial which featured a JATO rocket attached to a 1958 Dodge Coronet. That, combined with the jet-engine railroad car (M-497), is largely responsible for the urban legend of the ’67 Chevy rocket car.
Frankly, the above story about a rocket car being used in Mad Max, with minimal footage in the actual movie, seems rather dubious, as well. The write-up reads very similar to one of the more intricate stories floating around the internet. That one featured a ’59 Impala.
That was the first myth the Mythbusters ever tackled. As I recall, they ended up calling the myth “busted” because they were able to get the car up to a pretty significant speed and then stop it safely. I think they couldn’t get a JATO rocket for the test, so they used the equivalent thrust in civilian model rocket motors. It was impressive, but not nearly as dramatic as described in the myth.
“We could have shot down an airliner with a Monaro” is a quote for the ages.
Fun stuff ~ I remember seeing mad max in the Theatre when new .
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I had no idea there were stories and books about it, just another fun cheesy low budget romp .
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-Nate
It was a fairly landmark movie in Australia, winning a few awards and causing a lot of controversy due to the violence. It became a cult film fairly early on, with replicas of Max’s Interceptor being built & sent around the world.
The Mad Max series is probably my favorite of all time. Such mindless fun!
In the movie, they made reference to the car driven by Nightrider running on methane. Whenever I saw the crash in reruns, I thought the flame from the back was a methane tank leak…