Mad Max 2

Mad Max 2 is a UK VHS release by Warner Home Video on 13th April 1985, 7th November 1988, and 2nd October 1989, and it got re-released by Warner Home Video on 3rd July 1995, and 7th September 1998.

Description

Mad Max II is set in Australia in the near future, when law and order have virtually become extinct and mob rule, in the way of motor-cycling thugs, has taken over.

Mel Gibson, once again portrays ex-pursuit cop Max Rockatansky, a battle-scarred warrior, who stands alone dressed in leather and steel.

Some three years after the death of his wife and child, Max sets out to fight a personal war against the evil tribes who scavenge in the post apocalypse world. Gasoline is the only hard currency, and to get it the marauding gangs rape and murder. When Max finds an oil-rig, pumping and refining, he, aided by the Feral Kid (Emil Minty) and his boomerang, drives an oil tanker through the heart of the camp of biking warlords and mutants and bluffs them into believing that he is trying to escape with a tanker load of gasoline.

His personal sacrifice enables the 'good guys' to escape to their 'Paradise', but leaves Max as he started, physically broken and wandering alone on the highway in a barren and dangerous world. Brilliantly directed by George Miller. Mad Max His full of violence, exceptional stunts and stunning effects.

Cast

• Mel Gibson as "Mad" Max Rockatansky, a former member of the Australian highway patrol called the Main Force Patrol (MFP). However, after a biker gang kills his family, he leaves the force and hunts down and kills all of the gang members. The trauma transforms him into the embittered, "burnt out... shell of a man". The narration describes him as The Road Warrior, who despite his acerbic nature, elects to assist the settlers in their plan. However once his part is complete, he becomes a drifter once again, choosing not to follow them north.
• Bruce Spence as the Gyro Captain, a wanderer who looks for fuel and supplies. However, instead of driving a car, the Captain flies in a ramshackle old gyrocopter powered by a VW air-cooled engine. He, too, decides to throw in his lot with the settlers, and help defend their compound. Time's reviewer Richard Corliss called the Captain "a deranged parody of the World War I aerial ace: scarecrow skinny, gaily clad, sporting a James Coburn smile with advanced caries"; despite his quirks, however, the Captain proves to be wily and courageous. After the death of Pappagallo, the Gyro Captain succeeds him as the leader of the settlers.^[8]
• Vernon Wells as Wez, a mohawked, leather-clad biker who serves as Lord Humungus' lieutenant in the gang. Vincent Canby, the New York Times reviewer called the Wez character the "most evil of The Humungus's followers...[a] huge brute who rides around on his bike, snarling psychotically."^[9] In the same Danny Peary interview, Miller states the characters of Wez and Max are near mirror images of each other, with each being chained by the leaders of their respective camps, and who both find themselves spurred on by the death of a loved one somewhere in their past, in Wez's case the relatively recent death of The Golden Youth at the hand of The Feral Kid.^[10] Empire magazine listed Wez as the greatest movie henchman of all time.^[11]
• Emil Minty as the Feral Kid, a boy who lives in the wasteland near the refinery settlement. He speaks only in growls and grunts. The boy wears shorts and boots made from hide, and defends himself with a lethal metal boomerang which he can catch using an improvised mail glove.^[8] The narration of the opening and closing sequences, provided by Harold Baigent, proves in the closing sequence to be that of the Feral Kid, grown to adulthood by then, and remembering the circumstances of his youthful encounter with "Mad" Max.
• Michael Preston as Pappagallo, the idealistic leader of the settlers in the barricaded oil refinery. Even though the settlers' compound is besieged by a violent gang, Pappagallo "...carries the weight of his predicament with swaggering dignity."^[8]
• Virginia Hey as the Warrior Woman, a female member of the settlers who initially distrusts Max.
• Kjell Nilsson as Lord Humungus, the violent yet charismatic and articulate leader of a "vicious gang of post-holocaust, motorcycle-riding vandals" who "loot, rape, and kill the few remaining wasteland dwellers". Announced by the Toadie as the "warrior of the wasteland, the Lord Humungus, [and] the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah", The Humungus' "malevolence courses through his huge pectorals, [and] pulses visibly under his bald, sutured scalp."^[8] The Humungus' face is never seen, as he wears a hockey goalie's mask. In a 1985 interview with Danny Peary, Miller posited that he thought the character "was a former military officer who suffered severe facial burns," and who "might have served in the same outfit as his counterpart, Pappagallo."^[10]
• Max Phipps as the Toadie, the gang crier. He is an unkempt, bespectacled man. He wears a decorated mink stole as a hat and has many automobile badges and hood ornaments on his clothes. His behaviour with Lord Humungus and Wez make him a classic sycophant. Toadie takes pleasure in physically abusing helpless prisoners, but the gang has little respect for him.
• Arkie Whiteley as The Captain's Girl, a beautiful young woman among the settlers who rejects the Gyro Captain's offer to escape together.
• Moira Claux as Big Rebecca, a female warrior among the settlers who wields a bow and arrow.
• David Downer as Nathan, a member of the settlers who tries to escape the settlement and is fatally wounded by some of Humungus' bikers.

Opening (1995 Re-release)

• Warner Home Video A Time Warner Entertainment Company Ident (1993)
• Warner Home Video Screen Classics Collection trailer from 1994 with clips of "The Fabulous Baker Boys", "Tequila Sunrise", "The Mission", "Baby Boom", A Cry in the Dark", "Graffiti Bridge", The Delinquents", "Superman", "Mannequin", "Innerspace", "Poltergeist 1, 2 and 3", "Friday the 13th", "Quigley Down Under", "The Pope of Greenwich Village", "Blood Sport", "Rocky 1 and 2", "Cobra", "Spaceballs", "Blazing Saddles", "Arthur", " A Fish Called Wanda", "National Lampoon's European Vacation", "The Green Berets", "McQ", "Rio Bravo", "The Cowboys", "The Train Robbers", "Dirty Harry", "Heartbreak Ridge", "Every Which Way But Loose", "Any Which Way You Can", "Honky Tonk Man" and "Bronco Billy". [announced by John Cunliffe]

Closing (1995 Re-release)

• Warner Home Video Warning Scroll (1985-1996)

Trailers and info

1995 Re-release

Warner Home Video Screen Classics Collection trailer from 1994 with clips of "The Fabulous Baker Boys", "Tequila Sunrise", "The Mission", "Baby Boom", A Cry in the Dark", "Graffiti Bridge", The Delinquents", "Superman", "Mannequin", "Innerspace", "Poltergeist 1, 2 and 3", "Friday the 13th", "Quigley Down Under", "The Pope of Greenwich Village", "Blood Sport", "Rocky 1 and 2", "Cobra", "Spaceballs", "Blazing Saddles", "Arthur", " A Fish Called Wanda", "National Lampoon's European Vacation", "The Green Berets", "McQ", "Rio Bravo", "The Cowboys", "The Train Robbers", "Dirty Harry", "Heartbreak Ridge", "Every Which Way But Loose", "Any Which Way You Can", "Honky Tonk Man" and "Bronco Billy".