Monthly Archives: June 2019

Road Games (1981) | Richard Franklin

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Road Games (aka Roadgames) is a Hitchcockian suspense-thriller set primarily out on the open roads running through the Australian outback. Jamie Lee Curtis is Pamela, who, along with independent truck driver Pat Quid (Stacy Keach) and his pet dingo Boswell, tries to get to the bottom of a story which might connect a series of killings which have surfaced around Australia to a mysterious driver of a creepy looking van that’s on the road with them, as Quid attempts to deliver a rig full of pork to Perth, which is undergoing a meat shortage at the time due to butchers going on strike. As the trucker drives on toward his destination, he gets into greater danger, including stirring up the locals into thinking the serial killer they’ve been hearing about on the radio might be Quid himself. A self-described student of Hitchcock, Richard Franklin, directs, from a script by Everett De Roche. Quentin Tarantino claims it is one of his all-time favorite Australian films.

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) | George Miller & George Ogilvie

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In this entry of the Mad Max series, set a few years after the events of The Road Warrior, Max’s nomadic travels lead him to Bartertown, which, as the name implies, is the methane-fueled hub where anyone can go to exchange something they have for something they need.  The town is overseen by Aunty (Tina Turner), though it is really run by a dwarf named Master (Angelo Rossito), who gets into a scuffle with Max, where the only resolution anyone will abide by is to battle to the death in a caged arena called ‘Thunderdome’.  Following his ordeal, Max manages to make his way to a desert oasis full of children awaiting the return of adults, and who see Max as a messianic figure named Captain Walker, foretold to come back to them and take them to the fabled Tomorrow-morrow Land with his magic. Mel Gibson returns in his last portrayal of the titular anti-hero. George Miller directs the action sequences with his friend George Ogilvie making his feature film debut directing the scenes of dialogue and drama.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) | George Miller

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Max’s wanderings through the now lawless Wasteland formerly known as Australia take him to a fortified oil refinery where there’s plenty of precious fuel, but a vicious gang of murdering marauders, led by a hockey-masked and muscle-bound leader named Lord Humungus, wants to get their hands on it, giving the residents an ultimatum of imminent death should they not comply with their demands.  The colony living there needs to escape in a hurry but wants their fuel. Max strikes a bargain — he’ll secure an abandoned big rig for them to haul their fuel in exchange for as much gas as he can carry away in his car.  The problem is that the Marauders aren’t going to let anyone escape without a fight. Mel Gibson stars in this phenomenal action-packed follow-up to Mad Max.  George Miller returns to direct this iconic entry in the series.

Mad Max (1979) | George Miller

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Set in the near future, Mel Gibson stars as the titular Max, one of the best police officers working for the MFP fighting against the increasingly hostile lands, full of marauding car and biker gangs who have no regard for life, or for laws, and especially not for law officers.  One such gang of bikers, led by a psychopath named Toecutter, is on the rampage and is targeting MFP officers who’ve messed with their way of doing things, putting them all in potential harm’s way.  A family man, Max doesn’t know if he’s really cut out to put his neck on the line in a losing battle against anarchy.  He soon discovers there is not much escape from the criminal element that has permeated everywhere, and it’s kill or be killed in the lawless and bloodthirsty territories.  George Miller directs in this wildly successful action vehicle that propelled Mel Gibson, and Australian cinema itself, to even greater success.

Escape from New York (1981) | John Carpenter

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Escape from New York is set in a future 1997, during a time when, after the crime rate has skyrocketed out of control, the island of Manhattan has been turned into an ultra-maximum security prison where the worst of the worst violent criminals are put to live in a state of walled-in anarchy. A potential global crisis emerges when Air Force One is hijacked, forcing the President’s (Donald Pleasance) escape pod to crash land on the island, where he is immediately taken and held hostage by the criminals there, led by the vicious warlord, The Duke (Isaac Hayes). As they will kill the President if any cop sets foot on the premises, the government recruits eye patch-wearing Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a former military hero turned criminal who has been recently sentenced to the island, in exchange for not only his freedom, but, due to a bomb implanted inside him set to detonate in mere hours, his life.  Plissken has less than 24 hours to get the President out alive so that he can get some critical information delivered in time for an important political conference that might save the planet from a dark destiny. Co-written, directed, and scored by John Carpenter.