11. DYSTOPIAN FUTURE: Polite society just ain’t what it used to be.

George Miller was a medical doctor in Sydney before he made this, his first directing work. He’d worked in an ER and saw so many vehicular accidents and even lost three friends to car crashes as a teenager. So why not take the telekinetic violence of autos and people colliding and make a movie?

The Main Force Patrol (MFP) is barely keeping order in Australia as the world slides into the end times. Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is exhausted and sick of being on the force, but they bribe him with a new cruiser, a V8-powered monster of a muscle car. After Max kills Nightrider (Vincent Gil) and his girlfriend, the entire gang — Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), Johnny (Tim Burns) and Bubba Zanetti (Geoff Parry) — run wild, killing almost everyone in their path. The cops try to do their jobs, but the legal system is too lenient on criminals, and soon, they’re back on the streets all over again.

This isn’t a post-apocalyptic film so much as a revenge film. The gang kills Max’s partner, Goose (Steve Bisley), his wife (Joanne Samuel) and their child. He tries to get away, but we know that he can’t keep the thoughts of killing every single one of them out of his mind.

One of the last movies released by American International Pictures, this was redubbed for the U.S. It didn’t do well. In fact, The Road Warrior, the follow-up, is the movie that many point to as having started the trend of end-of-the-world films. That shouldn’t take away from just how good this is.

James Wan and Leigh Whannell credit the film’s final scene — Max handcuffs Johnny’s ankle to an overturned car and gives him a hacksaw to cut off either the handcuffs or his own foot, then blows him up — as the inspiration for Saw.