Death Race 2000

Death Race 2000 is a 1975 American science fiction sports film produced by Roger Corman, directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine. The film takes place in a dystopian American society in the year 2000, where the murderous Transcontinental Road Race has become a form of national entertainment. The screenplay is based on the short story The Racer by Ib Melchior.[4]

For the 2008 remake, see Death Race (film).
Death Race 2000
Theatrical release poster by John Solie
Directed byPaul Bartel
Produced byRoger Corman
Jim Weatherill
Screenplay byRobert Thom
Charles B. Griffith
Based onThe Racer
by Ib Melchior
StarringDavid Carradine
Simone Griffeth
Sylvester Stallone
Louisa Moritz
Don Steele
Music byPaul Chihara
CinematographyTak Fujimoto
Edited byTina Hirsch
Distributed byNew World Pictures
Release date
  • April 27, 1975 (1975-04-27) (United States)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$300,000–530,000[1][2][3]
Box office$5–8 million[1][3]

Plot

After the "World Crash of '79", massive civil unrest and economic ruin occurs. The United States government is restructured into a totalitarian regime under martial law. To pacify the population, the government has created the Transcontinental Road Race, where a group of drivers race across the country in their high-powered cars and which is infamous for violence, gore, and innocent pedestrians being struck and killed for bonus points. In the year 2000, the five drivers in the 20th annual race, who all adhere to professional wrestling-style personas and drive appropriately themed cars, include Frankenstein, the mysterious black-garbed champion and national hero; Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, a Chicago tough guy gangster; Calamity Jane, a cowgirl; Matilda the Hun, a Neo-Nazi; and Nero the Hero, a Roman gladiator. Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, the second-place champion, is the most determined of all to defeat Frankenstein and win the race.

A resistance group led by Thomasina Paine, a descendant of the 1770s American Revolutionary War hero Thomas Paine, plans to rebel against the regime, currently led by a man known only as Mr. President, by sabotaging the race, killing most of the drivers, and taking Frankenstein hostage as leverage against Mr. President. The group is assisted by Paine's great-granddaughter Annie Smith, Frankenstein's navigator. She plans to lure him into an ambush in order to have him replaced by a double. Despite a pirated national broadcast made by Ms. Paine herself, the Resistance's disruption of the race is covered up by the government and instead blamed on the French, who are also blamed for ruining the country's economy and telephone system. At first, the Resistance's plan seems to bear fruit: Nero the Hero is killed when a "baby" he runs over for points turns out to be a bomb, Matilda the Hun drives off a cliff while following a fake detour route set up by the Resistance, and Calamity Jane, who witnessed Matilda the Hun's death, inadvertently drives over a land mine while trying to leave the area. This leaves only Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo in the race. As Frankenstein nonchalantly survives every attempt made on his life during the race, Annie comes to discover that Frankenstein's mask and disfigured face are merely a disguise; he is, in fact, one of a number of random wards of the state who are trained exclusively to race in the identity, and each time they die or are brutally mutilated, they are secretly replaced so that Frankenstein appears to be indestructible.

The current Frankenstein reveals to Annie his own plan to kill Mr. President: when he wins the race and shakes hands with Mr. President, he will detonate a grenade which has been implanted in his prosthetic right hand. However, the plan goes awry when Machine Gun Joe Viterbo attacks Frankenstein and Annie is forced to kill him using Frankenstein's "hand grenade". Having successfully outmaneuvered both the rival drivers and the Resistance, Frankenstein is declared the winner of the race, although he is wounded and unable to carry out his original "hand grenade" attack plan. Annie instead dons Frankenstein's costume and plans to stab Mr. President while standing in for him on the podium. Before she is able to do so, Thomasina shoots "Frankenstein", convinced that he killed Annie. The real Frankenstein takes advantage of the confusion and rams Mr. President's stage with his car, finally fulfilling his lifelong desire to kill him. Frankenstein becomes the new president, marries Annie and appoints Thomasina as the Minister of Security to rebuild the state and dissolve the dictatorship. Junior Bruce, the announcer of the Transcontinental Road Race, opposes the race's abolition and impertinently claims that the public needs performances of violence. Annoyed by his complaints, Frankenstein hits Bruce with his car and drives off with Annie to the cheers and applause of the crowd.

Cast

Production

Development and writing

Roger Corman wanted to make a futuristic action sports film to take advantage of the advance publicity of Rollerball (1975). He optioned a short story by Ib Melchior and hired Robert Thom to adapt it. Director Paul Bartel felt this was unshootable, so Charles B. Griffith rewrote it. Corman wanted Peter Fonda to play the lead, but he was unavailable, so David Carradine was cast instead. Carradine was paid 10% of the film's gross.[3]

Bartel later recalled "We had terrible script problems; David had to finish his 'Kung Fu' series before starting and we had bad weather. We all worked under terrible pressure. Roger and I had an essential disagreement over comedy. He took out a lot of the comedy scenes. He may have been right and was probably more objective."[1]

In a 1982 interview, Bartel said, "Most of my guilty pleasures in this film were ripped out by the roots by Roger Corman before the film ever saw the light of day and substituted with crushed heads and blood squibs. Nevertheless, there is a joke about the French wrecking our economy and telephone system that I still find amusing. And I am pleased by the scene introducing the Girl Fan (played very effectively by my sister Wendy) who is to sacrifice herself beneath the wheels of David Carradine's race car and wants to meet him so that the gesture will have "meaning"."[5]

Release

Home media

Shout! Factory released a Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu-ray on June 22, 2010 in Region 1/A.[6]

Previous video editions were released on VHS and DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and New Concorde, among others.[7]

Reception

Box office

According to Variety, the film earned $4.8 million in rentals in the United States.[8]

Critical response

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote that the film had "nothing to say beyond the superficial about government or rebellion. And in the absence of such a statement, it becomes what it seems to have mocked—a spectacle glorifying the car as an instrument of violence."[9] Variety called the film "cartoonish but effective entertainment, with some good action sequences and plenty of black humor."[10] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the comic conceits were "too shaky to hold the movie together and tend to self-destruct some distance short of any pop allegory for America."[11] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and wrote that it "may be the goofiest and sleaziest film I've seen in the last five years."[12] Tom Shales of The Washington Post praised the film as "one of the zippier little B pictures of the year," adding that "it is designed primarily as a spectacle of kinetic titillation, and on that level, it's a foregone smash hit."[13] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times was also positive, calling it "a fine little action picture with big ideas" and finding Carradine "terrific" in his role.[14]

Roger Ebert gave the film zero stars in his review, deriding its violence and lamenting its appeal to small children.[15] However, during a review of The Fast and the Furious on Ebert & Roeper and the Movies, Ebert named Death Race 2000 as part of a "great tradition of summer drive-in movies" that embrace a "summer exploitation mentality in a clever way".[16] While Ebert hinted that he did not find the film as awful decades later as he did in 1975, he made it plain he would not alter or disavow his original zero-stars rating for it either.[17][18]

The film has garnered critical acclaim over the years, having a score of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 6.85/10, deeming it "fresh". The site's critical consensus states, "Death Race 2000 is a fun, campy classic, drawing genuine thrills from its mindless ultra-violence."[19]

The film has long been regarded as a cult hit,[4] and was often viewed as superior to Rollerball, a much more expensive major studio drama released later in the same year; another dystopian science-fiction sports film similarly focusing on the use of dangerous sports as an "opiate" for the masses.[4]

Accolades

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

Other media

Video games

The 1982 video game Maze Death Race for Sinclair ZX81 computers (and 1983 for Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers) resembles the film by its cover artwork, title, and car-driving content.[21]

The Carmageddon video game series (Carmageddon, Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now and Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000) all borrow heavily from the plot, characters and car designs from the film Death Race 2000. The original game was supposed to be a game based on the comic series in the 90s, but the plans were later changed.

Comic books

A comic book sequel series titled Death Race 2020 was published in April–November 1995 by Roger Corman's short-lived Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics imprint. It was written by Pat Mills of 2000 AD fame, with art by Kevin O'Neill. The pair had already worked together on several comics, including Marshal Law. The comic book series, as the title indicates, takes place 20 years after the film ended and deals with Frankenstein's return to the race. New racers introduced here included Von Dutch, the Alcoholic, Happy the Clown, Steppenwolf, Rick Rhesus and Harry Carrie.

The comic book series lasted eight issues before being cancelled and the story was left unfinished in the end.

Remake series

Paul W. S. Anderson directed a remake entitled Death Race, which was released August 22, 2008, starring Jason Statham. The remake began production in late August 2007.[22] Besides Statham, this new version also stars Ian McShane, Joan Allen, and Tyrese Gibson.[23] It also includes a cameo (by voice-over) of David Carradine, reprising his role of Frankenstein. Two direct-to-DVD prequels, titled Death Race 2 (2010) and Death Race 3: Inferno (2013), starring Luke Goss, Tanit Phoenix, Danny Trejo and Ving Rhames, and a direct-to-DVD sequel, titled Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018), were also produced.

Sequel

An official sequel film to the original film, Death Race 2050, was produced by Roger Corman[24] and released in early 2017.[25]

Other references
  • At the beginning of the song "Isle of Dead" by Buckethead, a short excerpt from the film can be heard.
  • In the 1992 Roger Corman-produced film Munchie Strikes Back, clips from the film (including the helicopter chase) are used as part of a video game called Death Race 2000.
  • The Alex Jones Show frequently uses the audio of the scene where Harold explains the scoring system as a bumper. The program also airs similar bumpers, which feature clips from other dystopian films such as Soylent Green and They Live.

See also
Films, TV series and comic book series
Video games

References
  1. "9 Directors Rising From the Trashes" Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times, 21 Dec. 1975: m1.
  2. "Death Race 2000 - The Numbers". The Numbers. Retrieved 2011-07-24.
  3. Christopher T. Koetting, Mind Warp!: The Fantastic True Story of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Hemlock Books, 2009, p. 80-83
  4. Bosnan, John and Nichols, Peter, "Death Race 2000" in Clute, John and Nichols, Peter, eds. (1998) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2nd edition) Orbit
  5. Bartel, Paul (September–October 1982). "Paul Bartel's Guilty Pleasures". Film Comment (18.5 ed.). pp. 60–62.
  6. Creepy, Uncle (2010-04-01). "The Original Death Race Gets the Deluxe Blu-ray and DVD Treatment and More Corman Classics to Come!". Dreadcentral.com. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
  7. "DVD releases for: Death Race 2000". allmovie.com. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  8. "All-time Film Rental Champs", Variety, 7 January 1976, p. 48
  9. Van Gelder, Lawrence (June 6, 1975). "The Screen: 'Death Race 2000' Is Short on Satire". The New York Times: 17.
  10. "Film Reviews: Death Race 2000". Variety: 48. May 7, 1975.
  11. Combs, Richard (February 1976). "Death Race 2000". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 43 (#505): 27.
  12. Siskel, Gene (June 22, 1975). "Dismal duo for a drive-in double bill". Chicago Tribune. Section 3, p. 5.
  13. Shales, Tom (June 11, 1975). "'Death Race 2000': Smashing And Ruthless Exploitation". The Washington Post: B6.
  14. Thomas, Kevin (May 2, 1975). "Barbarism in Big Brother Era". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 21.
  15. "Roger Ebert's review". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. 1975-04-27. Retrieved 2014-05-27.
  16. "Ebert & Roeper: The Fast and the Furious (Year 2001)". YouTube. 2010-03-07. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  17. "'Death' Be Not So Good. Still". RogerEbert.com. 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  18. "Those Coen Boys, What Kidders". RogerEbert.com. 2008-09-11. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  19. "Death Race 2000 (1975)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  20. "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-20.
  21. "ZX81 Cassette Tape Information for Maze Death Race". Zx81stuff.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  22. Graser, Marc; Garrett, Diane (2007-06-01). "Film: Universal Restarts 'Spy Hunter', Paul W.S. Anderson To Direct Adaptation". Variety. Retrieved 2007-06-01.
  23. "Ian McShane Joins Death Race". ComingSoon.net, sourcing The Hollywood Reporter. Aug 8, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
  24. Alexander, Chris (April 6, 2016). "Roger Corman Turns 90! Releases BTS Stills from DEATH RACE 2050!". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  25. Alexander, Chris (January 10, 2017). "Roger Corman's Death Race 2050 Blu-ray Review". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
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