Review of Death Race 2000 (1975) by Josh G — 24 Jun 2009

You kinda gotta accept Death Race 2000 on its own terms if you're really going to appreciate it. Even then, it's not exactly the sort of movie one is likely to fall in love with.

The premise of the film sounds pretty wacky and hilarious! In the not-too-distant future (the year 2000!), the world has undergone a major overhaul. There is a shadowy President godhead that lives in a magical, Heaven-like palace in Moscow. The United States is now called the United Provinces, although how much of the world has been absorbed into the U.P. is not explained. The favored pastime of the country is a cross-country race known as the DEATH RACE. Actually, it has a much lamer name in the film. Five drivers compete with each other, racing from New York to Los Angeles, while attempting to rack up points along the way by hitting and killing pedestrians. Most of the spectators know enough to stay inside during the DEATH RACE, but there are a lot of idiots out there who like to do stupid things like pretending to be a matador and holding a red cape up in front of the cars.

Despite the inventiveness of the premise, the execution is less than stellar. The movie was produced by Roger Corman, a man whose name has become synonymous with B-movie trash, so perhaps it's not surprising that Death Race 2000 trades in its story for limitless action/race sequences. It's funny to read Ebert's review of the film, where he complains: "The killings are depicted in the most graphic way possible." Oh, how times have changed since 1975. Hardly any of the violence is shown on-screen for more than a second, and when it is shown it looks as though it was done with bright red clay, a la "Gumby". The drivers race past one another in fast-forward, impaling construction workers with headphones on, and continue racing. That's what the movie is about.

Oh, there's also something about the most famous driver, Frankenstein (Carradine), and his navigator - a woman who turns out to be working for a secret band of rebels that are trying to sabotage the race. The deception isn't really important, though, so much as the nudity that ensues while Frank's navigator falls for him. The deeper theme here is in the Orwellian society that is presented - some sort of satire or warning about the dangers of fascism, a critique on the government and on religion. But the satire/criticism is so thin and weak, it doesn't really work. Oh-ho, the government is corrupt! And the movie ends with a seeming tacit admission that there are times when the government is required to use brute force to shut the other guy up.

The actors don't do a lot. Carradine and Sylvester Stallone are the big names here, and neither really progress much beyond, "I'm gonna get you!" I love Sly as much as the next guy, but his attempts at being angry are awkward and unconvincing. The actiony sequences are rarely that amusing either - there are few chases and too many explosions. And as I mentioned before, the sparse pedestrian kills are hardly the gory spectacle that my desensitized eyes have grown accustomed to.

If the movie works at all, it is on some campy level where the filmmakers understood the limits of their movie and decided just to focus on an occasional pair of breasts and cars, you know, driving. Come to think of it, if only the cars transformed into anthropomorphic fighting monsters, Death Race 2000 could very well be one of today's summer blockbusters, just absolutely completely mindless fun.