The Road Warrior's Stunts Made Some Broken Bones 'Unavoidable'
If you don't know him by name, you almost certainly know Vernon Wells by his face if you're a fan of '80s movies. He was Bennett, the Aussie villain with the chainmail tank top and Freddie Mercury mustache in "Commando," and he scared the pants off kids as Mr. Igoe, the sinister hitman with an interchangeable hand in "Innerspace." Or you may remember him as Lord General, the crazed leader of a mutant biker gang that crashes the party in "Weird Science."
Wells' career as one of Hollywood's go-to bad guys at the time was made possible by his ferocious performance as Wez, the psychotic henchman in "The Road Warrior," George Miller's sequel to his low-budget smash, "Mad Max." This time around, a bigger budget enabled the director to go bigger, faster, wilder, and weirder than his original vision. This time, our hero Max Rocktansky is battling a band of violent gas-guzzling maniacs led by hulking The Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), who wears a Jason Vorhees-style mask, a leather S&M chest harness, and not much else.
Wez is quite the gang's fashion icon, with an outrageous look including a red mohawk, shoulder pads decorated with fabulous black feathers, and assless leather chaps, which surely aren't the most comfortable choice for marauding around the scorching post-apocalyptic landscape terrorizing people. Or maybe they give him a nice breeze in that heat. Either way, Vernon Wells pulled it off, and Empire Magazine once ranked him as the top movie henchman of all time.
It probably isn't spoiling "The Road Warrior" too much by revealing that a character as savage as Wez suffers an appropriately brutal death in the spectacular finale, giving Wells a firsthand look at how dangerous the movie's stunts were.
George Miller prioritized the safety of his cast and crew
Ironically, Vernon Wells only turned to acting due to a car crash of his own. He was making a living as a singer and songwriter when a road accident left him with fractured vertebrae. When he recovered enough to walk, he picked up work as a model and a movie extra instead. This led to him playing a biker in a stage play called "Hosana" which, in turn, got him noticed by George Miller's fiancée. His next stop was the Outback to play Wez in "The Road Warrior," and Wells recalls that Miller took the safety of his cast and crew very seriously:
"You could not fart unless you asked permission. You didn't play, you did your job. And that was the whole thing when we started that film: George said, 'This movie is safety conscious, and if you don't want it, leave now.' And he was serious. Because you've got to think about it, with all those vehicles driving around there, one misstep and someone's getting run over by a 16-wheel truck — and I was on the front of it, jumping up and jumping off, just holding on."
If the first movie resembled the classic stripped-back car-chase thrillers of the '70s like "Vanishing Point" or "The Driver," "The Road Warrior" was a far more elaborate affair. This time, there was far more emphasis on wild configurations of modded and souped-up vehicles pursuing our hero, culminating in a bravura highway chase sequence as Max and his few motley cohorts defend a fast-moving gas truck from The Humungus and his gang.
Despite Miller's precautions, performing high-velocity stunts in a pre-CGI age with real vehicles and real stunt actors was still very hazardous. With typical Aussie matter-of-factness, Wells acknowledged a few broken bones were "unavoidable."
Some stunts still went badly awry
Road safety had always been a concern for George Miller. In his previous career as an emergency room doctor, he had plenty of experience with the consequences of automobile accidents. He has compared Australian car culture to American gun culture and lost two friends in car wrecks in his younger years. Even so, no matter how seriously he took health and safety on "The Road Warrior" set, stunts are an unpredictable business and some of the stunt performers risked their lives for the movie's big action moments.
One stunt that went awry but found its way into the finished movie occurred when Guy Norris, playing one of the bikers, crashed into a car. Instead of flying over it as intended, he smashed his legs into the vehicle and flipped wildly through the air. Having just recovered from a leg injury, Norris broke it again. If you check out the video of the stunt, it's a miracle that he didn't come off even worse.
He wasn't the only one suffering for his art. The following day, "Mad" Max Aspin broke a vertebra and a heel performing a stunt launching his vehicle over a pile of wrecked cars at 60mph. Further injuries were anticipated for the climactic chase sequence; Dennis Williams, who was behind the wheel of the gas truck, didn't eat anything for 12 hours prior to shooting the sequence to prevent any complications if he required surgery. Luckily for him and the other stunt actors, they managed to pull off the scene without any further accidents.
Their hard work paid off, and the final set piece is regarded as one of the greatest action scenes ever made. What's a few broken bones when you're making movie history?