Unlike most of the Mad Max 2 clones, which sold themselves on their action content, the action here is pallid. Certainly, the battletruck looks great – and has a breathtaking slow-motion end going over a cliff – but Battletruck is distinctly lacking in slam-bang heroics. These often consists of little more than a handful of aerial shots following motorcycles as they buzz across the barren Central Otago (New Zealand) countryside. Battletruck does have it over many of the Mad Max clones in that there is a modicum of plot and depth to the creation of post-holocaust society – the images of people eking a living look believable, rather than most of the Mad Max imitators, which only set out to be comic-book action films and paid no regard to the background of the worlds they took place in.

James Wainwright gives a performance that captivates whenever he is on screen, although Michael Beck lacks much heroic stature. Bruno Lawrence, on the other hand, gives an extremely silly performance.

Director Harley Cokliss is a potentially worthwhile director who has always hung around the genre without having had a major hit. Cokliss debuted with the well-considered children’s film The Glitterball (1977) and has turned out occasionally passable films such as this, Black Moon Rising (1986) and Dream Demon (1988). Cokliss may well be known more known for the films he did not direct than those he did – the aborted Thongor in the Valley of the Demons sword-and-sorcery project in the late 1970s and for The Empire Strikes Back (1980), for which he served as second unit director. In the 1990s, Cokliss has virtually disappeared from cinema screens, eking out a subsistence with tv work for sword-and-sorcery shows such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1994-9), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) and The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1996-8); a handful of children’s fantasy tv movies – The Ruby Ring (1997) and An Angel for May (2002) – and the occasional action film such as Malone (1986) and Pilgrim (2000).