How did you become a fan?

[Player of Games]

I was about 17 when MM2 was on telly. By that time I lived in a little village in this small country so the movie was like a revelation to me: No need for logic or language.
Come to think of it the movie had quite a bad influence on me for some time- I wanted to be a smalltown rebel
However, I still admire the way the movie is composed: lights, music, perspective etc.

[Taipan]

Huh, I've been on this forum for 6 years and never actually told my story of becoming a fan for everyone not to care!

It was on my birthday, probably 9th or somewhere around that. I woke up early and immediately started looking for presents so I went to my parents bedroom to ask them where my presents were. Then my dad comes up to the VCR pops in a tape and plays Road Warrior recorded off the TV the day before. "That's your present" he said. Being a little idiot I grabbed the tape, and ran with it and right after breakfast I watched the whole movie. Now thinking about it my dad must had found it funny that I watched the movie like it was a gift from heavens (with rape scenes, torture scenes....), but it really was! Cars were awesome, there wasn't a whole lot of talking in it, action was there and the movie was set in the future! From that point on it turned into an obsession. Each time I got back home from school I'd pop in the same worn out VHS tape and watch the whole movie. When the tape got damaged I recorded RW off a TURKISH channel (with overdub etc) and I could watch it again.
I was drawing MM cars, modifying my toy cars in MM fashion, running around with a piece of plastic taped to my shoulder so I'd look like Max.

Then some time later on Christmas Eve I saw a trailer on TV with a movie with Mel Gibson in it, lots of dust, desert, a plane and BAM: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Wasn't so much hooked on that movie (i am getting now though), but it was something. And finally I discovered Mad Max on New Years Eve when they showed it on TV.

And even later on I discovered this site, I didn't have net connection yet so I'd go to a local net caffe and download as much as I could onto a floppy disk and bring it back home. Damn I probably still have floppys with saved pages of madmaxmovies.com circa 2004.

[Karol]

In 1990, I was 15 and saw The Road Warrior on TV. It played on channel 44, KBHK, in the SF Bay Area, and was introduced by an announcer saying, "Well, it's a desperate struggle to survive... in the world of the future! Mel Gibson is... The Road Warrior!"
I had heard about the movie - something about weird cars in the desert, and decided to record it onto VHS tape in case it ended up being good. This VHS tape ended up being the only known copy of the "lost" TV version or NBC version, and I used it to provide Peter the information on the Lost TV version page. Someone eventually transferred the tape onto DVD and sold copies.
Anyway, I don't remember the film having a big effect on me at the time, and I remember the movie seemed a bit drawn out. As soon as my best friend found out I had recorded it, we started watching it on a regular basis. If it wasn't for his interest in the movie, who knows what would have happened. He was into cars and we tried identifying the cars, which only led to frustration the more we watched the movie. A few months later, I saw bits of a movie on TV that looked a little bit like some of the scenes from the Road Warrior montage. Soon I would learn that there was a MM1 and MM3.
I eventually became obsessed with The Road Warrior, on an almost religious level for a time. It seems to me that I must have watched at least part of The Road Warrior every week during my last 2 years in high school!

[MFP 2020]

I saw the US theatrical release of Mad Max at the Nile Theatre on infamous 19th Street in Bakersfield, California, on Friday, December 12, 1980. I know this because I wrote it in my journal. It changed my life.

In late 1980, I was seeing very short TV commercials for this Mad Max movie (none of which I've seen since). The scene I remember most from the previews is the sped-up shot of the Pursuit Special coming up behind Toecutter. I'm not sure what my reaction was. I was supposed to go see Flash Gordon with my buddies, but they decided they wanted to see MM instead. I was 15 at the time, and some of my friends were 17 and older, so I was able to get in with them. Including my two buddies and me, there were exactly 4 people in the audience. We had used complimentary passes to get in; before the screening, the manager came down and told us that since he had only one paid admission, he wouldn't be showing the second feature. Not that it mattered.

I had never been a car guy, but after the movie, I became...well, slightly more of a car guy. I wrote to Filmways, the company that took over American International Pictures (part of the reason for the hurried US dub and release of MM), at least twice, begging for anything they could give me that was Max-related. (Knowing nothing about film distribution, I even wrote to the costume and prop departments asking for badges and vehicle plans! Hey, I was 15.) Mr. Robert Rembert, the publicity executive, finally responded to my entreaties with a large envelope which included the US one-sheet poster, an advance press proof, and black and white lobby cards. I went, to use the technical term, apeshit. Surprisingly, the cable movie channels started showing MM1 the following year, which is pretty amazing considering how long it used to take for a movie to get released to cable and TV. I'd sneak across the street to my best friend's house after bedtime to watch it when it was on.

In 1981 The Road Warrior was released and I saw it numerous times at the theater. I've been hooked ever since. That same year I turned 16, and the first car I looked at was a 1973 Mustang Mach 1. Black. Big meaty tires. Asking price, $4,000. My dad said, "No way."

That was probably a smart move.

[Uncle Entity]

I vaguely remember some pics from 'Mad Max' in 1982 or so, on a TV magazine, because they were going to air the movie in Italy. I was 5. I fondly remember a black/white pic of Max sitting on the BoB. It amazed me.
In 1987 or 1988, when they first aired Thunderdome on TV, I was hooked forever. Then, watched MM1 and MM2 on TV and found them astonishing.

I rented all three movies in 1998 and found myself a fan for life. The days without Internet. I believed people was loving Thunderdome even more than me, instead... oh well.

12 years of fandom.

[Foxtrot X-Ray]

Watched movie - Hooked.

[MADasMAX]

We had a local video pirate who hired films out,one day he dropped a vhs copy of a film called Mad Max....rest is history...i was the only kid in the street with a vcr and next night my dad came round(stayed withh grandparents)and watched it again.next thing i was famous as being the kid in school with Mad Max...i think even the teachers were thinking about phoning social services...then before i knew it,i had MM2...was totally blown away....how could a sequel be better than the first!!!!

[zykotec]

I was born a fan Conceived and born during post-production of MM1, I guess I was aorund 12-13 years before seeing RW, that intro, WOOOOW, the dual turbo's on the hood of the Marauders car and the sound of Max's Supercharger really made an impact. I only saw MM1 after having a mate order it off the internet 8-9 years ago (it was never released here in Norway as new I think, and is not really a well known film, even if everyone knows RW is Mad Max 2 . ANd I kinda like MM3 too, apart from the music score that I don't think aged very well

[Bad cop]

As you all know I'm a huge lover of cinema. When I first was temped to see Mad Max it looked like a good film. I watched and thought it was pretty good. It was a while before I saw the sequel which I thought was even better which took me back to the original. I began to watch them over and over again for every time I saw one it was far apart. I eventually saw Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and I liked it but didn't think it was as good as the previous two. I still kept watching the films which eventually lead me to the forum. They soon became my favorite films. Nothing has been able to top them since. That's how I became a fan.

[Max_Van]

I was a fan because i grew up in Newport victoria, not far from Where the Halls of justice were. I would ride my bike down their to see if the interceptor was parked near by