Mad Max
"A few years from now", when society is teetering upon the brink of collapse, berserk motorbike gang member Crawford "Nightrider" Montazano (Vincent Gil) steals a Pursuit Special, which he uses to escape from police custody after killing a rookie officer of an Australian highway patrol called the Main Force Patrol (MFP). Even though he manages to elude other MFP officers, the MFP's top pursuit man Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) then engages the less-skilled Nightrider in a high-speed chase. Crawford breaks off first, but then is unable to recover his concentration before he and his girlfriend are killed in a fiery crash.
At the MFP garage, Max is shown what one of the MFP mechanics has been working on: a supercharged black Pursuit Special, the last of the V8 Interceptors.
Meanwhile, Nightrider's motorbike gang, led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and Bubba Zanetti (Geoff Parry), run roughshod over a town, vandalizing property, stealing fuel, and terrorizing the population. They trap a young couple in a car, destroy the car, and it is implied that they rape the couple. Max and fellow officer Jim Goose (Steve Bisley) arrest Toecutter's young protégé Johnny the Boy (Tim Burns) at the scene. When neither the rape victims nor any of the townspeople show for Johnny's trial, the federal courts close the case, Johnny's attorneys releasing him into Bubba's custody over Goose's furious objections.
While Goose visits a nightclub in the city the next day, Johnny sabotages his police motorbike in the parking lot. After being thrown into a field at high speed uninjured during a ride, Goose borrows a ute to haul his damaged bike back to the MFP. However, Johnny ambushes Goose off the road by throwing a drum brake through his windshield, and, at Toecutter's insistence, throws a match into the wreck of the ute, igniting the gasoline and burning Goose alive. After seeing Goose's charred body in a hospital intensive-care unit, Max becomes disillusioned with the MFP, and informs his superior Fifi Macaffee (Roger Ward) that he will resign. Fifi convinces Max to take a vacation first before he submits his final letter of resignation.
Max takes his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their infant son Sprog (Brendan Heath) on vacation in a station wagon. When they stop to fix the spare tire, Jessie takes Sprog to buy ice cream. They encounter Toecutter and his gang, who attempt to molest Jessie, but Jessie kicks Toecutter in the crotch, picks up Max and they escape in the car. They flee to a remote farm owned by an elderly friend named May Swaisey (Sheila Florance), where the station wagon breaks down. Toecutter's gang follows them there and ambushes Jessie in the woods. With May's help, Jessie and Sprog escape, but when they try to drive away, the station wagon dies and they are run over by the gang while trying to escape on foot. Sprog is killed and Jessie is badly injured. Max arrives too late to do anything.
Jessie is near death in a hospital ICU, and the loss of his family ultimately drives Max insane. He dons his police uniform and takes the black Pursuit Special from the MFP garage to pursue and eliminate the gang. He rams several gang members off a bridge at high speed, kills Bubba during an ambush, and forces Toecutter into the path of a speeding semi-trailer truck. Finally, Max locates Johnny, who has found a car wreck and is stealing the boots of its dead driver. Max handcuffs Johnny's ankle to a wrecked vehicle, and sets a crude time-delay fuse involving a slow petrol leak and Johnny's lighter. Max throws Johnny a hacksaw, leaving him the choice of sawing through either the handcuffs or his ankle in order to escape within the given time limit. As Max drives away from the bridge, the vehicle explodes. Now a shell of his former self, Max drives on to points unknown.
violence