Today's Mini-Review: Death Race 2000

Rating: ***/*****, or 7/10

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, David Carradine, Simone Griffeth

Directed by Paul Bartel

USA: New World Pictures, 1975

Ah, dystopian societies... If they're not engaged in brutalizing their own population, they're exploring new avenues of keeping the crowd in line by trite but true methods of 'panem et circenses', also guaranteeing their own existence is kept in check by ruling through that most potent combination of fear and wonder. Some form of gladiatorial event is ever a popular choice, appealing to the inhabitants of the totalitarian regime (or simply intimidating them) as well as to cinemagoers around the globe who cannot help but be mesmerized by the ruthless spectacle that ever delivers a paradoxical sense of blatant abjection and undeniable attraction. While these days the rage consists of teenagers battling each other to the death in fancy arenas, far more colourful and bizarre forms of contest have been portrayed at the movies in earlier decades. In 1975 Rollerball introduced spectators to the sport of the same name, an odd combination between hockey and boxing, that helped set new standards of onscreen violence. Capitalizing on the advance press publicity for this film, producer Roger Corman wasn't afraid to cannibalize the notion of 'blood sports' in order to produce an exploitation film making use of similar themes, thereby taking advantage of the media interest in the topic and subsequently beating Rollerball's theatrical release by a mere two months. And so a cult hit was born with Death Race 2000.

As the title successfully indicates, the premise of the movie revolves around a lethal race set in the then futuristic sounding year 2000. After the merger of the two major American political parties when the economy collapsed, a dictatorship runs the country and the titular contest is used to keep the populace satiated, bound to their television screens instead of giving them the opportunity to go out and start plotting the government's downfall. Contestants drive across the continent and win the race not only by driving faster than their opponents but also by the number of accidental bystanders they purposefully run down. Throwing out all morality, killing kids and old folk scores you more points than hitting people in their prime, as it's the utter depravity of the kill that determines the number of points awarded. To make matters even more interesting (and weird), each driver has a theme applied to their car, so we witness zany cars in Roman, Western and gangster style designs. Commentary on the race is given by the most obnoxious sportscasters imaginable to enhance the viewer's general sense of 'what-the'f**k'. The most popular participants of the 2000 race are Frankenstein (David Carradine, the world's most (in)famous autoerotic asphyxiation victim) and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone), both very able killer car drivers with little to no compunctions about hitting pedestrians hard. Frankenstein however finds himself caught in a ploy from a resistance movement to sabotage the race and assassinate the president, but he holds his private motives and political convictions (if any) as well. As the deplorable race progresses, Frankenstein must both survive his race rivals and outwit political insurgents who would abuse him as a puppet for their own shady agenda.

As you may have gathered, unlike Rollerball, Death Race 2000 has no pretensions of being a serious film, as it's more occupied with satirizing the social mores and the role of the media than with exploring the changing nature of violence in present day society; a major theme in the Seventies, as movies got increasingly more bloody and gory and actual violent incidents were allegedly inspired by such audiovisual fare, making society fear civilization was rapidly spiralling out of control. Though a fair amount of blood and gore (and nudity to top it off) is present in Death Race 2000, the movie mostly feels like a comedy and wants to do just that, making ample fun of people's projections of the future debasement of political standards and the mental deterioration caused by the media dumbing people down by pushing mindless drivel down their throats. It's easy to read social commentary in this film, even though Corman and the film's director Paul Bartel have no desire to come off as overly political, instead opting only to make a simple fun and ridiculous movie appealing to bored teenagers, appropriating themes and trends of the day just to ensure the movie makes more money than it cost (always a specialty of Corman's). Their intentions are adequately underscored by cheap production design, cheesy oneliners and completely over-the-top performances throughout the picture. With such ingredients and lack of willful message, it's no surprise Death Race 2000 became a smash cult hit, generating quite a profit from its obvious low budget (only around 300,000 bucks). A remake (and two sequels to that) starring Jason Statham would eventually follow, which traded in the good humour for a much grittier and convincing look and cars and stuntsto match that actually delivered the spectacle dystopian society already promised its audience three decades earlier.