The Best Movie Critic   +  sport

Death Race 2000

Justin here with a look at the exploitation classic, Death Race 2000.

Death Race 2000 is one of those weird science fiction movies that has a lot to buy into as the entry price for an awesome and ridiculous time. The premise is that once a year there is a race across the United States where the drivers try to kill as many people as possible. Their score is based on how ruthless and evil the kill is with infants, the elderly, and women netting a bonus. There are no heroes per se in this movie. Daivd Carradine's Frankenstein character is the protagonist, but he is still a murderer.

The movie functions on a few different levels. It's awesome to watch as a spectacle, it's one of the best racing or car movies I've ever seen, and it also has a fair amount of social commentary. The race distracts people from the evils of the government. There is a cult of celebrity around the racers that even blinds some of them and no one seems to be bothered by the fact that so many innocent people die for entertainment. Without getting too sanctimonious, it's easy to see parallels between this and our current incestuous relationship between sports, politics, and the media. But that's all the icing on Death Race 2000.

The movie has classic early 70's style with dress and set design. Everything has a mod sparkle to it. The cars are like a kid's Hot Wheels fantasy. Carradine's car looks like an evil dinosaur or lizard complete with teeth and scales. This is one of Sylvester Stallone's first roles, in this he plays a dumb 1920's style gangster. He drives in a gray pinstripe suit and his car has built in Tommy Guns. One car has bull horns, one has swords. The kills are brutal, there's lots of fake blood. The women are buxom and don't wear a lot of clothes. In other words, this may be the perfect Roger Corman movie.

Corman's fingerprints are all over Death Race 2000. It was directed though by Paul Bartel, a frequent Cormon collaborator on both sides of the camera who's acting credits include Rock and Roll High School, Grand Theft Auto, Piranha (1978), and lots more. The directing choices reminded me a lot of the late 60's Dino DeLaurentis movies Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik. Death Race 2000 has the same sense of style and cool.

Serious thinking about Death Race 2000 may be a little like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. I know the movie isn't dumb. On the surface it's about running people over in outrageous cars with lots of boobs thrown in for good measure. I also know that there's more to it than that and that Death Race 2000 is actually a pretty good piece of satire. But intellectualizing it really takes something awesome away from it. I love big dumb spectacles of movies, and when they're as stylish as Death Race 2000, then it's a huge bonus. This is everything exploitation cinema should be.