Review of Deathsport (1978) by Alan P — 20 Apr 2013

Deathsport attempts to use a budget of $150,000 to convince us that the setting is the year 3000 through obviously painted sets and a cheaper version of the motorbikes from Megaforce, as well as crummy cinematography and laughable editing, as well as unconvincing prosthetic makeup. So it doesn't exactly work, convincingly.

Also, the sound effects are terrible and the screenplay is almost awesome in it's stupidity thanks to the series of nonsensical names given to be characters,.

Deathsport's top qualities are the cheap battle sequences with random explosions and the repetitive scenes with a naked woman dancing around a series of dangling light-up poles.

Plus the cheap motorbike chases are kinda fun in their own way, and the whole use of the disintegrator beams is a decent addition to the sci-fi genre, and the synthesised musical score is fairly decent.

And the acting is crap, but It's what you'd expect from a Roger Corman production of this calibre. And then again, the whole film practically is, it's just not as enjoyable is the previously successful collaboration between Roger Corman and David Carradine, Death Race 2000. Basically, it's just a cheap exploitation style science fiction film with cheap fun.

So Deathsport pretty much reaches the standards set by the genre and the participants who worked to make it a film, but it just isn't as fun as it could have been. It probably inspired the film Megaforce, but it's a better film than that.