Deliciously Reprehensible: Death Race 2000 (1975)

Directed by:

Paul Bartel

Written by:

Robert Thom, Charles B. Griffith

Cast:

David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Simone Griffeth, Mary Woronov

Cinematography:

Tak Fujimoto

Carradine vs Stallone:

You would have never guessed Sly would become such a star.

 

Death Race 2000 exemplifies what I love about grindhouse movies.

 

Well, okay, your interpretation of what the word “grindhouse” means might be a bit different from mine. It’s like that slasher flick, The Burning; how is it different from Friday the 13^th? It has the same level of technical proficiency, the same level of talent in front of the screen, the content is very alike (with Tom Savini doing the butchery at both), the setting is the same, and its budget is actually higher by some million bucks.

 

But The Burning was produced by some unknown lowlife company (and the “lowlife” bit comes from Harvey Weinstein), so it’s a grindhouse movie, unlike Friday the 13^th, which was made by Paramount, a major motion picture studio.

 

That makes sense to you?

 

Well, Death Race 2000 is a movie that feels like a movie—lots of theatrical releases can’t say the same. It has David Carradine on the starring spot, fresh off his victorious ass-kicking in Kung Fu, Sly Stallone is supporting him (one year before he went full Hollywood with some movie about a boxer), Roger Corman is producing and Tak Fujimoto is the DP. You know, the same guy who was DP at Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Star Wars? That guy is handling the camera here.

 

This is a bit like The Hunger Games, but with weird-looking cars, more tits, and a budget below $500,000. The world has turned into a full dystopia after “the World Crash of ‘79”; to entertain the residents of the totalitarian U.S. of A. (governed from abroad), we have the Transcontinental Road Race: racers who look like comic-book characters must run a race trying to kill each other, and trying to run over anyone in the way, “for bonus points” (children under 12 are 70 points and the big score is anyone over 75 years old, 100 points). The great star of this system is a mysterious pilot only known as “Frankenstein” (Carradine), who wears a full-body black leather suit (it’s not really leather, but you wouldn’t know) and is assisted by a charming new navigator, Annie Smith—secretly working for an anti-race organization who wants Frankenstein dead.

 

But Frankie here has a plan of his own, and this time the game is going to change forever… if he lives long enough.

 

Roger Corman once said he could film The Fall of the Roman Empire with five extras and a bush, and it’s hard to deny that after watching Death Race 2000; for pocket money, these guys created a futuristic decadence, with re-bodied cars, explosions galore and even a small plane going around. Director Paul Bartel says he did the movie for just $5,000 and Carradine took less pay, going instead for a 10% of the movie profits. Of course, by the time Corman produced this movie, he already had a very extensive career making great-looking movies for pennies, and the success this project had on release (over five million bucks) has also a lot to do with a very cormanesque tone. You could even say that the movie belongs more to Corman than to Bartel, with the producer exerting a lot of creative control and deciding what would be in the final cut.

 

And what we have here is, in the words of the very idiosyncratic race pundit Junior Bruce, “violence, violence, violence!” The movie is flashy and fucking imaginative—key elements for sci-fi. There’s a scene, a little after the race begins, where pilot Joe Viterbo (Stallone), an asshole burning with envy against Frankenstein, finds some road workers doing their thing right in the middle of the street. You’d have to wonder why anyone would do such a job when the biggest spectacle in the nation is going on, and it implies killing people just like you, but whatever, this is a dystopia. One of the road workers looks so happy to be enjoying such a sunny, lovely day, with headphones on playing some wholesome music. Viterbo’s car (which sports a hunting knife right in front of the hood) gets this guy full on in the crotch, and from behind. It’s not terribly graphic—Death Race 2000 cuts away from gore just when you’re about to go “Jesus!”—, but you can see what’s happening. This happy dude’s dick and butt get exterminated and he’s left butchered on the road, everyone cheering for how many points this kill means.

 

There’s chopped-off arms, splattered heads, dozens of run overs, at least five people going to hell in fiery explosions, there’s a gunshot and there’s a fistfight. It’s absolutely gratuitous (as much as the nudity), but it’s also farcical, cartoon-like. Characters watch people picnicking on a field and talk about “getting the babies” and how hard it is to run over those fast Boy Scout kids. I imagine people who get easily offended would smash a fist across the screen, but in the context of this movie, you’d really have to be a moron to get upset.

 

The script is surprisingly well written, too. Now, don’t take me wrong, this isn’t Hermann Melville. But, first-off, you can follow the plot, which means someone sat down and went through all the trouble of writing an actual screenplay. Second, there are many good lines here. Junior receives Frankenstein into the race as, “Ripped up, wiped out, battered, shattered, creamed, and reamed, a dancer on the brink of death, Frankenstein, who lost a leg in '98, an arm in '99! With half a face and half a chest, and all the guts in the world, he's back!” Later, Frankenstein laments his adventures through the many editions of this sacrificial bash: “I lost my right eye in ‘95, and my nose and my left eye in ’97, and most of my cranium in ’98. I’m held together with patches of plastic and steel. It’s not a pretty sight (under the mask). You wanna see?”

 

And when one of the racers first shows up, and tell his navigator that his fans are here to see him, the nav goes, “Why, they’ve never seen a has-been before?”

This is utter trash, meaning: it's really good.

 

That particular pilot, by the by, is played by Karate Kid’s (and Cobra Kai’s) very own John Kreese, Mr. Martin Kove, and it’s just delightful to watch them together, David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone and Martin Kove wanting to rip out the guts from each other. The movie is very well cast; Sly plays an irredeemable cunt in Joe Viterbo, and his navigator, Myra, is played by the loveable Louisa Moritz. There are two female pilots here, too, the nazi Matilda The Hun (played by Roberta Collins) and Calamity Jane Kelly (played by Mary Moronov), and the two of them are just great, on their own and when they’re against each other. The characters are memorable, and everyone gets their time on the screen, they do grow on you and you’re sad to see them go. Simone Griffeth is a perfect foil for Carradine, playing Annie, a girl that you just can’t help falling in love with. Good players all around, folks, this is an example of how good actors can elevate your material.

 

Not in the movie: Sly still upset about playing second fiddle to Frankenstein.

 

I remember when Suzanne Collins published the Hunger Games books, and particularly when the first movie came out, that a lot of people went around with the spiel of “Oh, she copied Battle Royale! She took her plot from The Running Man!” entirely missing that the reason her series works is because of the characters, same as it happens with our case in point. Because the “people killing each other as entertainment” plot device isn’t very original, this is a movie from 1975—and you can take this aaaall the way back to when your granny was having nasty thoughts over Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (Death Race even makes an explicit reference to gladiators in its opening seconds). Once again, it’s not about the premise and it’s not about the gore, or the sex: it’s the characters and the story.

 

Even stupid Junior Bruce is fun to watch!

 

Death Race 2000 is a miracle of film-making (most of those cars didn’t even work, and in some scenes you can tell that the camera has been sped-up). This isn’t going to win any awards at the classy circles, and you won’t find cinephiles, like that, in italics, discussing the finer merits of this carnage. But that’s the thing about art: it doesn’t have to be in good taste. And I, for one, had way more fun watching this than I had with Manchester by the Sea.