udar55 A nuclear plant employee is accidentally showered in radioactive waste and his company wants to hush up the fact the water supply has been contaminated. He escapes and quickly falls under the care of race car driver Larry (Steve Bisley) and his wife Carmel (Arna-Maria Winchester) at their vacation home. Since they are corporate guys, the baddies will stop at nothing to silence the escapee and anyone who helps him. It is THE CHINA SYNDROME with car chases! This one is pretty decent but suffers from a sluggish pace at times and making a straight-forward plot convoluted. There are some nice character touches (the deaf hit-man; Hugh Keays-Byrne's eccentric anti-nuke guy). MAD MAX's George Miller was originally supposed to direct, but didn't. He did do the work on the car chases (uncredited), which are really good but the film could have used more of them. Ian Barry directed and has a good eye and stages some nice shocks. Wish it was more even though. Some guy named Mel Gibson has a two-second cameo.

Woodyanders Selfless, compassionate German scientist Heinrich (a deeply sympathetic Ross Thompson), an employee for the nefarious multi-international nuclear power company WALDO, gets fatally contaminated by a radiation leak at one of WALDO's storage facilities in Central Australia. Heinrich escapes from WALDO's pernicious clutches and goes on the lam so he can warn the outside world about the potentially catastrophic repercussions of the toxic spill. Heinrich, slowly dying and suffering from amnesia, seeks shelter and protection from cocky race car driver Larry (the ruggedly likable Steve Bisley) and his caring nurse wife Carol (a wonderfully radiant performance by the leggy, strikingly gorgeous blonde knockout Anna-Maria Winchester). A bunch of WALDO agents, determined to cover up the disaster, relentlessly track Heinrich and the couple down.Basically "The China Syndrome" crossed with a tense, pacy, scarily plausible and tautly streamlined high octane car chase/conspiracy thriller, this extremely exciting and skillfully executed little dilly promptly hurdles along under Ian Barry's firm, strongly focused direction (Barry also wrote the terse, topical, tightly wound script). Russell Boyd's smoothly prowling, polished, often kinetic cinematography, Andrew Thomas Wilson's tinny, noodling, spooky'n'shivery synthesizer score, the shocking brutality of WALDO's corporate goons, the snappy, lightning swift tempo, the cold, gloomy, chilling tone, stunning shots of guys in gleaming white decontamination suits grimly going about their business, the despairing hopelessness of the pitiable Heinrich's wretched plight, and the harsh corporate ruthlessness that the evil, amoral WALDO embodies stoke the film's wired, ambient paranoia to a stirringly high temperature, therefor making for a most excellent and suspenseful nail-biter. Several folks involved with "Mad Max" pop up here: George Miller was an associate producer, Hugh "The Toecutter" Keys-Byrne plays a sadistic WALDO thug, and both Roger Ward and an unshaven Mel Gibson cameo as yahoo mechanics. The heart-pounding, pulse-quickening, blow-the-wheels-off-that-sucker spectacular climactic car chase will make your teeth rattle. A frightfully credible depiction of a disturbingly possible scientific reality.

aquarian_boy_102 I saw this movie at the Roxy Cinema,Parramatta, Sydney Australia in 1980. I thought the action stunts and story were good. Steve Bisley who played Goose in "Mad Max" in one of his early lead roles. Watch out for Mel Gibson in an unbilled role as a mechanic at the beginning of the film.

Krogh71 This was a pleasant surprise I caught on cable one day. Opening a year after Mad Max and with 2 actors Steve Bisley and Hugh Keays-Byrne also from Mad Max this little action/thriller is very entertaining. Aussies really know how to put together some great car chases - lots of V8 engine noises and cameras by the wheel, this movie has at least 2 that beat the crap out of several hundred car chases in American movies. The story might be a little far-fetched but nothing that's intolerable. I gave this one an 8/10, without the car chases a 7.