The Mad Foxes

See what happens when you leave the dustbin opened ? Out pops something like The Mad Foxes. This 1982 Spanish-Swiss atrocity takes its inspiration from Mad Max, as a rich playboy who does a nice line in fast cars and deflowering virgins gets involved in a messy feud with some biker punks. After his said virgin girlfriend is raped, Hal responds by having the punks beaten up by his buddies at the local karate school (naturally). Of course, the punks don’t take this lying down and arming themselves with machine guns and grenades, they come calling on our hero...

The UK VHS sleeve on the Merlin / VCL label

As artless as a blocked toilet, The Mad Foxes is nevertheless an enjoyable piece of Z-grade trash – full of outrageous violence and sleaze, and despite some mindless padding, zips by so fast there’s hardly a minute to consider how inept the film is. The acting here is strictly porno level, the hero is as wooden as it gets, while the punks themselves, too buffoonish to be any way believable look like bargain basement cast-offs of the biker gang in Dawn of the Dead.

While there’s much female nudity on parade, there’s quite an alarming level of full frontal male skin on show, adding to the utter seediness (not to mention ugliness) of the film. Drenched in cheap splatter, no one exits the film without being disemboweled, sprayed with machine gun fire, castrated or stabbed in the head with a garden shares. The shoddiness of the film even extends to the dubbing of the film, which is especially careless here, the actors’ mouths flapping like beached fish, long after the dialogue has run out. Quite possibly the dubbing was entirely improvised with delirious lines like “I’ll cut your neck off”, and "She fell from a horse and became paralytic". Add to the mix, some terrible heavy metal courtesy of Krokus, horribly dated disco dancing, and a bit of clowning around in Nazi bondage gear, The Mad Foxes is truly astonishing. Yeah, I loved it.

An alternative use for garden shares courtesy of the mad foxes

The Mad Foxes was once available on DVD courtesy of ABC DVD with a fabulous transfer but this disc is now long out of print and if you do find a copy, be prepared to lay down some serious cash. Until another edition surfaces, the film shouldn't be too difficult to find online...