Death Race 2000 (1975) Review

You gotta love Death Race 2000. Anyone with a sense of humor has played the game: drive down the street and assign points to the various pedestrian targets you encounter along the way. "Five hundred points for the paraplegic transient. A thousand for the divorced family of three..." They must have been playing the game back in the 70s, too. Death Race 2000 is everyone's fantasy of point-based vehicular manslaughter brought to life. The year is 2000, Frankenstein and "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo duke it out in a cross country murder race - the ultimate in futuristic gladiatorial mayhem. The French resistance is hard at work trying to throw a monkey wrench in the race, which is the pride of the post-apocalyptic American empire. Will they succeed? Is Frankenstein really a personal friend of the President? Will Sylvester Stallone ever learn to talk to women without hitting them in the face?



That's right, Sylvester Stallone plays Joe Viterbo, the bitter rival of the champion racer Frankenstein, played by David Carradine. Legendary producer Roger Corman helped bring Death Race 2000 to life, along with director Paul Bertel - who I am sure knew exactly what he was doing when he made it. It would have been pretty hard to have any illusions about what the end product would look like. I doubt he ever told an actor on the set to tone it down, either. It cracks me up that in the future, the most important sporting event in the most powerful nation in the world revolves around used cars with swords tied to the hood. Death Race 2000 is a expertly mixed cocktail of B-movie flavor. The acting, the 1970s shooting and cutting style, the bright red blood, the nudity. Au jus. It's the type of movie that seems like it came together as if by magic (B-movie magic). It's the type of movie that should never be remade. Alas, no movie is safe from the idea-starved cadre of Hollywood hacks working in the industry today. Bring back Roger Corman!

Check out the coming attractions article for the remake