We’re back with another episode of Truck Driver Movies. Here we look back at the good, the bad and the weird world of trucks on film.
This episode features the weird.
Starting in the early 70s, Australia began trying to create an image of the country that welcomed artists, film makers and developers. This worked, for the most part, but it also attracted the general population of schemers and hucksters looking to make a cheap buck off of the untapped markets and government money attached to “artistic endeavor.”
Soon after that, Australia was a fertile source of what film critics dubbed the “Ozploitation” genre of movies. This phenomenon was covered in a hilarious way in the documentary film “Not Quite Hollywood” released in 2009. All the highbrow hopes of the country’s artistic elites were thrown under the bus while cheesy horror, midnight sex comedies, and bland action films dominated the Aussie export lists. Things began to change in the early 80s, however.
As for the 80s in Australian film making, one name shook the world of action movies to the ground: Mad Max. Released to the Australian public in 1979, when it became available in America in 1980, it caught the world on fire. Mel Gibson became an instant star, and followed the movie up with an even more popular sequel, The Road Warrior. It was a smash hit. After that, the film studios all began trying to devise their own dystopian future action films. Embassy Pictures of America developed a central concept around one of the most popular elements from The Road Warrior – the tanker truck run for the final chase sequence. They thought, “Why not just make the whole movie about that truck with machine gun nests and crazed soldiers driving through houses?” Perfect, said the producers.
So what’s Battletruck all about?
After the Oil Wars, civilization has splintered up into small self-sufficient communities. Across the countryside comes Colonel Straker, ruthlessly smashing and enslaving each community underneath him with his armored battletruck. When the mysterious motorcycle-riding Hunter rescues Corlie, a woman Straker keeps as prisoner, Straker swears vengeance against him in a final confrontation that may ruin civilization for good. Here’s the trailer.
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If you feel like watching the whole thing for free, we found a version of it on YouTube. Audio is in English, but it has Dutch subtitles. Enjoy, truck drivers!
If you can’t get the video to play in the window, just visit the original YouTube page here.
[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/24alaWjfmws” playlist=”Battletruck 1982″ title=”Truck%20Driver%20Movies%20Battletruck%201″ width=”460″ height=”330″]
More Truck Driver Movies at CDL Life.