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Pat’s Shame List consists of classic films he hasn’t seen yet. I also have a shame list. I don’t have it listed out in Your Face! (though you’ll find a partial list in the poll at the end of this post), but there are a whole bunch of classics that I haven’t check out yet either. Of course, I have a slightly different definition of “classic” than most people.
Which brings us to the Roger Corman-produced Death Race 2000. Hey, Netflix says it’s a classic, so that’s good enough for me.
Death Race 2000 opens with some muscle car drawings made by a high school kid in shop class. It does not instill confidence.
Death Race 2000 opens with some muscle car drawings made by a high school kid in shop class. It does not instill confidence.
We’re in The Future, where all the TV personalities dress like George Jetson, and we’re tuning in for the 20th annual Transcontinental Road Race. The movie does not waste any time, moving directly to introducing the racers — all five of them. Yeah, I know. What Death Race 2000 lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. Anyway, here are the racers:
“Calamity” Jane, driving a bull-car, complete with giant bull horns
“The Swastika Sweetheart” Matilda the Hun, driving a fully stocked Nazimobile
The narcissistic “Nero the Hero,” driving a glammed-out lion car
“Machine Gun” Joe (Sly Stallone!), in what I assume is a mafia-themed roadster (because when I think “mafia,” I think about giant knives strapped to the hood of a car) — we know he’s the villain by the way Joe fires his tommy gun into the stands
The enigmatic “Frankenstein” (David Carradine), a caped gimp who has “lost a leg, lost an arm, half a face and half a chest, but has all the guts in the world!” and drives a big lizard of a car
After a quick word by Mr. President from his Stairway to Heaven, and we’re off! Vroom-vroom-vroom!! And then the commentators run down how many points each kind of pedestrian run down is worth.
Yeah, it’s a bit stunning. Not that the racers are encouraged to run over pedestrians or even the violence of watching nearly 20 people get run down. Even “euthanasia day” at the hospital isn’t so stunning. What’s stunning is that anyone would be on the road at all. Seriously: It’s the biggest televised event of the year, where for a couple days racers are actively encouraged to run over people – why are you having a picnic now?
You may be starting to suspect that Death Race 2000 is a very silly movie.
I went into it ready for all the awful auto-related violence that made this film so controversial at the time, but I can’t imagine how anyone took Death Race 2000 so seriously because it’s a very silly movie. It’s tempting to compare Death Race 2000 to such biting satires as Series 7: The Contenders, but tonally it’s a lot closer to The Running Man.
Or hell, even Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races.
And I haven’t even touched on the subplot involving Thomasina Paine’s resistance movement and her granddaughter covertly posing as Frankenstein‘s navigator. The Resistance strikes back at the Mr. President’s regime by ambushing the racers one at a time — including a priceless scene where a racer is detoured Wile E. Coyote-style through a fake tunnel to nowhere.
That’s the second time I’ve compared Death Race 2000 to a cartoon, and with good reason. In his original treatment of the film, Roger Corman played it straight and found the story to be “kind of vile” — hence the cartoonish approach. The end result is ridiculous… and ridiculously fun.
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