The time Mad Max was set in Southend

The sound of roaring engines echoed around Mad Max’s ears. The smell of petrol filled his nostrils.

He stared across the mudflats, and pondered the horrors that had caused society to collapse in so dramatic a fashion.

He’d had a family, he’d been a policeman, and then everything had changed.

Sighing, he put all thoughts of the apocalypse from his mind and walked up to the pier to play on the 2p coin pushers.

“I visited Southend in the very early seventies,” explained director George Miller during a 1985 Wogan interview.

“I wasn’t really thinking about Mad Max then, but I do remember thinking that if ever I were to set a film a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland, then Southend would be perfect.”

Filming began on a bleak Sunday in January. Mel Gibson’s Max is embroiled in an epic car chase all the way along from Westcliff and after shaking off the mutants on his tail, he heads into ‘Pirates Cove’ for a go on the log-flume.

“The idea was, that if you’d had a complete apocalypse and societal breakdown then amusement parks and penny arcades would be the hubs for a society trying to rebuild itself,” continued Miller.

“Think about it, if you were spending your days eating rats in a hole in an irradiated desert, then a trip to the crazy golf is going to be a much bigger deal than it might be now.”

The story would be Max’s intervention after sadistic bike gang takes up residence in the Cliffs Pavilion and force an aging Jim Davidson to play night after night, ruining the apocalypse for everyone.

“We had a script, and had even begun filming,” explained Miller.

“But then it started raining. So, we waited. We waited and we waited but, and I didn’t know this, but it actually rains nine months out of the year in Southend, and the problem was that we had scheduled a hell of a lot of car chases through dusty towns in the desert.

Frustrated at losing his ideal location, Miller moved the production out to Australia. However, they really didn’t have the concept of a penny arcade or log-flume out in the outback.

After an aborted attempt to recreate a Southend seafront amusement arcade and pleasure park in the shadow of Uluru, Miller was forced to abandon the seaside and funfair elements of the script.

“I guess we got a more streamlined picture as a result,” sighed Miller.

“But I always felt we needed to see Mad Max on the dodgems to really get a feel for the man he is.”

And rewatching the film today, its hard to argue with that assessment.