Death Race 2000 ★★★
FIVE decades on it may look cheap and sound nasty, but Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 is still better than any of the remakes and sequels that followed.
A guy named Paul Bartel actually shot the dystopian sci-fi horror film, but the famously low-budget and prolific independent producer/director Corman was the driver.
Released in 1975, Death Race 2000 suffered in comparison to the big studio release of Rollerball, which had similar themes but was much better directed by the more acclaimed Norman Jewison and starred James Caan.
Based on a 1956 short story, Bartel’s film is set a couple of decades after an international stock market crash that triggered economic ruin and civil unrest.
In the year 2000 the United States government is now a totalitarian regime under martial law (not far from the truth, some would suggest) and to distract the population from its problems it has created a brutal televised race contest in which drivers tear across the country at unlimited speed.
As well as getting to the finishing line first, along the way competitors gain points by killing innocent pedestrians using their high-powered, armoured cars.
There are five themed entrants in the 20th annual race – the mysterious masked champion Frankenstein, who is returning from a severe injury; his main rival, Chicago gangster Machine Gun Joe; cowgirl Calamity Jane; Neo-Nazi Matilda the Hun; and Roman gladiator Nero the Hero. Each driver is accompanied by a navigator, all of whom are female.
A resistance group is determined to sabotage the race and take Frankenstein hostage as leverage against the President, who by the way blames the French for ruining his country (again, sounds familiar).
It’s a strong premise and makes for an interesting and sometimes entertaining film, but the main problem is the tone which careers wildly between the serious and comic.
Apparently, there was conflict behind the scenes between Bartel and Corman over how seriously the satire should be presented, but the uneven script also lends itself to this confusion.
The quality of acting is also a problem with this struggle in tone typified by David Carradine’s odd performance as Frankenstein. You never really know whether he’s playing it for laughs or not.
The best performance is given by Sylvester Stallone as Machinegun Joe because he does stick to playing it straight.
Of interest is that Stallone went from acting in a soft-porn film in 1970 to this film in ’74 and then writing and starring in the Academy Award-winning Rocky just two years later. How’s that for a career path.
Watched on Tubi.