In 1971 a former medical doctor who had seen a lot of carnage in the emergency room met an aspiring filmmaker at a summer school film program. They produced a short titled Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, which won a number of film festival awards. Eight years later George Miller and Byron Kennedy brought what would become the cornerstone of the post apocalyptic revenge western to the big screens of Australia.

Mad Max changed everything for Australian filmmakers, and made a career for Mel Gibson, who showed up at the audition with a friend the day after getting in a bar room brawl, never expecting to get the part. The low budget epic was filled with awesome car crashes and lots of future punk action and violence. It spawned a pair of sequels, and inspired many filmmakers and storytellers in the years to come (for another Mad Max style tale, check out The Book of Eli, which plays the following two nights, March 14th and 15th)

The film held the record for greatest profit to cost ratio for a movie for upwards of 30 years in the Guinness Book of Records, only recently beat out by Paranormal Activity.

The original adventure of cinemas most famous road warrior screens midnight on March 13th. And as an added bonus, it’s a brand new pristine 35mm print, so it’ll be like watching it fresh off the presses right when it was released in 1979.