Death Race 2000
In the year 2000, hit-and-run driving is no longer a felony. It's the national sport!
Welcome to the year 2000, a place plagued by a lack of morals and political unrest. The only thing society looks forward to is the three-day Transcontinental Death Race, a high-speed competition that is won by the driver who collects the most points by killing spectators and pedestrians. But this year the driver have something to worry about other than getting killed by rival contestants - there is a group of anti-race activists trying to stop the race for good. The game's all-time champion, Frankenstein (David Carradine), takes on such colorful characters as "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Nero The Hero (Martin Kove) and Matilda The Hun (Roberta Collins) in this dark comedy-science fiction classic directed by Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul).
Member Reviews
Aims for satire, achieves camp - Superdave
The idea of a sport featuring high powered cars armed with offensive weaponry to use against your opponents has potential as a satire on violence in entertainment. The idea of adding a bonus point system for killing innocent bystanders adds an absurdist element to this satiric potential. Playing everything as a cheesy B-action movie, complete with silly dialogue, nutty costumes, kooky looking cars basically ruins any chance of achieving satire and strands the film in the realm of camp. The problem is the choice of Paul Bartel as director. Bartel has a lazy off-handed approach to satire that wrecks any potential in the material. Satire needs to be sharp, and to the point, and Bartel's casual, random working in of elements that might be satirically useful and then doing nothing to link them or build them up into something larger seems lazy, sad and incompetent. And failing to successfully mesh the movies disparate elements - action, comedy, satire and social comment - also shows a lack of coherent cinematic vision and a loose directorial hand. This movie had so much potential. Deathsports of the Future is a surprisingly large sub-genre of science fiction, including The Tenth Victim (kind of a fully lethal version of Gotcha), The Running Man, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, plus dozens of other 'fight to the death in the name of sport' imitators. How a society chooses to entertain itself says much about its moral and aesthetic values and this message managed to come out in other of these films but not here. Death Race 2000 just wasn't smartly enough made to fulfill any of its obvious aims to make more than just a bloody b-movie mess. What a waste.Could have been classic with a budget - rnhaas
Like many Corman films, this suffers from a lack of a budget. There are a number of horrible continuity errors that really hurt this movie. And the script could have been a lot better. But of course they weren't aiming high, so I guess I should grant them that the cheesy lines are de rigeur for this kind of film. Fortunately, the film has a great sense of humour. One real groaner of a gag they spend most of the movie setting up. It is such a groaner, but because they put so much time into it, you want to like it. I can't help but think that with a little bit more money and talent, they might have made one hell of a movie.
Member Reviews
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Aims for satire, achieves camp - Superdave
The idea of a sport featuring high powered cars armed with offensive weaponry to use against your opponents has potential as a satire on violence in entertainment. The idea of adding a bonus point system for killing innocent bystanders adds an absurdist element ...Could have been classic with a budget - rnhaas
Like many Corman films, this suffers from a lack of a budget. There are a number of horrible continuity errors that really hurt this movie. And the script could have been a lot better. But of course they weren't aiming high, so I guess I should grant them ...