Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Monkey status: There is a monkey in this movie

 

Powered by pig shit and swaggering sax solos, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is an exercise in total audacity. Director George Miller’s tales of Max Rockatansky had increased in absurdity with each instalment, from the cop drama set in the last days of society that is Mad Max, to the diesel-soaked Acid Western influences of the second film.

 

So when he approached this outing, the question on everybody’s lips must have been the same – how can he up the ante? Last time, a muscled man in a hockey mask said a poem in Dutch while sadomasochist motorcyclists did fire dances around him. Surely weirdness is a finite resource?
There was an easy solution.

Give Max a monkey.

At the beginning of the film, we see Max tearing over the desert floor on a caravan led by a pack of camels. Sitting next to him is his unnamed pet and best friend, the monkey.

Somewhere in his travels, the Raggedy Man has picked up a capuchin that possesses quasi-human intelligence. It carries a water flask leagues over the desert to him and leaves him a trail of breadcrumbs so that he can track his stolen vehicle.

This Mensa candidate monkey was the sole charge of John Stark, monkey wrangler. According to IMDB, this was John Stark’s only film. There is little information to be found about the monkey aside from a commenter on the Mad Max Wikia, who claims that the monkey was named Sally and she was from Featherdale Wildlife Park, a zoo located in the suburbs of Sydney.

A December, 1981 issue of the Sun Special identifies John Stark as a part-time animal keeper at the park.

So not unlike the monkey we already covered in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, a monkey was brought out into the desert and made to ride around on a movie star’s shoulders.