Directed by
Paul Bartel
80 minutes
Rated MA
Reviewed by
David Michael Brown
Death Race 2000
Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, the President of the World sates the blood lust of his angry people by holding a trans-American road race. The special attraction with this race is that the drivers can score extra points by adding to the already huge amount of human road-kill littering the streets. Meanwhile, in a bid to stop the race forever, an anti-government group have infiltrated the race by having one of their own pose as the co-driver for Frankenstein (David Carradine), the world’s most famous racer.Paul Bartel’s Death Race 2000, produced by cult legend, Roger Corman, is an action comedy that cranks up the speed, piles on the gore and has a unique perspective on car racing. The pitch black conceit, strangely dropped from Paul W.S. Anderson’s recent Hollywood remake, has the drivers earn points for maiming and/or killing anyone who they run over, with more points for children and the elderly. The scoring process is played mainly for laughs although Bartel is obviously making a comment on the burgeoning fame business when he has a fan of Frankenstein wilfully throwing himself in front of his hero’s car for the kudos of being killed by his idol.
The cast is a who’s who of cult icons: Sylvester Stallone plays Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, constantly in a furious rage, he even reverses into his own pit crew to gain extra points, so desperate is he to defeat Frankenstein, the world’s most loved driver, played by David Carradine. The duo are joined by Warhol Factory member and Bartel regular, Mary Woronov, as Calamity Jane, in a role as far from the studied cool of her appearance as Hanoi Hannah in Chelsea Girls as you could ever imagine. Roberta Collins, a veteran of Corman’s exploitation output including The Big Doll House and Women In Cages, plays a Nazi driver called Matilda the Hun and Martin Kove, of Cagney and Lacey and Last House On The Left infamy rounds off the racers as Nero the Hero.
Death Race 2000 is Wacky Racers meets Dawn of the Dead. Its mix of fast cars, nudity, outrageous dialogue and real life DJ and TV host “The Real Don Steele” make this a perfect fusion of black humour, gore and social comment. Bartel went on to shoot the cannibal comedy Eating Raoul, again starring Woronov and stole Divine from John Waters for his camp western Lust In The Dust but he never managed to revisit the high octane thrills of Death Race 2000 (and judging by reports on Anderson’s remake, starring Jason Statham, neither has that director).
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