Unlike many Corman cheapies, the stark, spartan setting of "DR2K" only adds to the bleak atmosphere, where Mr. President rules from overseas, and old folks are routinely euthanized as part of the game. The game, in this case, being the Transcontinental Road Race where anything goes, and where pedestrians are run over and assigned kill points. Based on a short story by sci-fi novelist Ib Melchior, the wildly eccentric script for DEATH RACE 2000 comes from the pens of Robert Thom and Charles Griffith, a long-time Roger Corman collaborator. Produced with the usual economic precision by Corman for his New World Pictures and directed by the late Paul Bartel (whose. Every once in a while, Roger Corman, "a dear friend of mine" =8), comes out with a little gem among the tons of coal he produces every year, and "DR2K" is one of them.
Also stars Mary Woronov("Eating Raoul", "Rock & Roll High School")as Calamity Jane, Roberta Collins("Eaten Alive", "Hardbodies")delightful as Matilda the Hun, and 60's DJ Don Steele as a mincing little announcer. One of Corman's many little social cowmentaries, this one about the all-too American obsession for violence and sports thankfully he allows Bartell to deftly and briskly direct. Still, it's a fairly low-budget affair pedetrians get crushed, and things git blowed up real good, but it only makes you wonder what the film cud have been with a larger budget. Oh well, at least there isn't a giant evil pickle from Venus in this one.Death Race 2000 is low in budget, but very high in chutzpah. Definitely schlock filmmaking at its absolute finest, but great fun at the same time.
Very violent, campy, and cheap special effects, make this an ultimate Corman.“My children, whom I love so deeply, it has been my duty in the long and difficult years since the world crash of ’79 to serve you as best I could. President), Harriet Medin (Thomasina Pain)Amazon.com: Death Race 2000 : David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone. David Carradine (Frankenstein), Simone Griffith (Annie Smith), Sylvester Stallone (Machine Gun Joe Viterbo), Mary Woronov (Calamity Jane), Roberta Collins (Mathilda the Hun), Martin Kove (Nero the Hero), Don Steele (Junior Bruce), Joyce Jameson (Grace Pander), Sandy McCallum (Mr. Many unnamed people are hit and killed in the race, mostly by Joe Viterbo, some by Calamity Jane and Matilda the Hun, and some by Frankenstein, but only those who are either evil, willingly let him hit them, or. Death Race 2000 is a 1975 film set in 2000, about America being ruled by an evil president that hosts a race in which contestants receive points for hitting pedestrians and spectators.
The racer kills a man and faces his bereaved loved one, as he goes on he’s haunted by the reaction from the grieving woman and when he has a chance to score a ton of points by hitting a group of children at a crosswalk he chokes. The story concerns a racer in a cross-country road race where winning is based not just on who finishes first, but how many pedestrians each racer hits on the way to the finish line. Why is that? Is it simply nostalgia? Are people that shallow? Or is there something about Death Race 2000 which cuts to the heart of its damning message?Death Race 2000 is based on an almost impossible to find short story by writer Ib Melchior. Where Rollerball is somber and brutal Death Race 2000 is hokey and ridiculous, yet just over 40 years later despite there being a lot of love for both films it’s Death Race 2000 which is more fondly remembered. Just a couple of months prior to the release of Rollerball, Death Race 2000 hit the scene.Though the basic premise is largely the same, the plot trajectory and set-pieces of Rollerball and Death Race 2000 are very different. It was a damning send-up of classism, capitalism, and humanity’s love of violent spectacle and also a very serious film.
Death Race 2000 About This Problem Of Violence Drivers Sexually As
Next Calamity Jane Kelly ( Night of the Comet’s Mary Woronov) in a car shaped like a bull. First up is Nero the Hero (played by the sadly underutilized Martin Kove), dressed as a Roman Centurion and driving a car that looks like a lion. Our dystopian future is comically over-the-top with fans waving Nazi flags, an actual religion seemingly built around the big race, the fact that the cars’ navigators are actually there to pleasure the drivers sexually as well as navigate and ensure that the vehicles are in good working order.The drivers themselves are out of some twisted adult-oriented version of The Wacky Races. While more than one would expect is lifted from the story (the points system listed by Junior Bruce is taken almost word-for-word from The Racer), the film takes the concept to absurd excess. The story was inspired by a real-life incident: Melchior attended a car race where a driver crashed and burned to death in his car, he was up in the VIP box with the driver’s grieving widow whose tearful response was in sharp contrast to the giddy fans gleefully snapping photographs of the carnage below.Death Race 2000 goes it’s own way.
There is so much that is so much camp on display. But a sense of over-seriousness would sink this movie quickly, pointing out plot holes like why anybody would be anywhere near a roadway during a big national road race where people are hit by cars every year.In a special feature on Shout! Factory edition of Death Race 2000 Ib Melchior recounts being at first horrified by the changes to his story but soon realizing that by making it a farce it just hammers the point home that much harder. Frankenstein (played by David Carradine fresh off his time in Kung Fu) is a man so battered and torn up by years of racing that he’s more machine and scar tissue than man dressed in a gimp suit and driving a car that looks like a dragon.There is a serious plot underneath all the hokum, involving a resistance group that is attempting to put a stop to the race for good, going so far as to planting one of their members as Frankenstein’s navigator. Loved by thousands and hated by millions, Joe is the petty rival of the star of our show Frankenstein. And what would Wacky Races be without Dick Dastardly? That’s where Sylvester Stallone, mere minutes from actual fame, comes in as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo an Italian-American gangster type with a car sporting dual Tommy guns and a massive Bowie knife on the front.
Grace Pander is a delight, sort of a Barbara Walters type who conducts interviews, she’s always so cloyingly happy and refers to each of the racers as a dear friend of hers. There’s an actual bullfighter with a cape who challenges Calamity Jane’s car.Then there’s Junior Bruce and Grace Pander, our media personalities for the film. There’s a hospital that holds a Euthenasia Day during the race each year where the more hopeless elderly patients are wheeled out into the middle of the street for the racers to find.
Everything about Frankenstein is already funny but in giving a portrayal of the man that shows just how seriously he takes himself it becomes one of the best understated comedic performances of all time. Carraddine plays Frankenstein’s straight-faced lunacy to the hilt, deadpanning some of the film’s most hilarious bits. Frankenstein is easily the most ridiculous among a group of extremely ridiculous characters if only because he’s the only one we’re meant to take seriously. I’ve already talked up Don Steele’s greatness but I also have to give the nod to David Carradine. The balance of zaniness, false gravitas, dark undercurrent, and cheery tone is masterful, this whole movie is a tightrope walk and though the last third of the film gets pretty wobbly on that front there are still some great deadpan lines like from Frankenstein (after showing his navigator the grenade embedded in his robotic hand):It really should be no surprise how well this movie works considering that Paul Bartel, one of cult films’ most underrated filmmakers, directed and legendary cult figure Roger Corman produced.Then of course there’s the cast.
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