Frankenstein (David Carradine) with his co-driver Simone GriffethĪnd, as with any Roger Corman film, Death Race 2000 contains at least several up and coming talents hoping to break into the industry including a young Sylvester Stallone Martin Kove, who would become a minor B action star in the 1990s a young John Landis, later director of The Blues Brothers (1980) and An American Werewolf in London (1981) in the role of a mechanic and shooting second unit a young Lewis Teague, later director of Alligator (1980), Cujo (1983) and Navy Seals (1988).ĭeath Race 2000 is directed, edited and photographed in a crude and unappealing way but inside hides a drollness. Subsequently, David Carradine managed to etch out for himself the role of a sort of Zen Clint Eastwood in a number of low-budget films like this.
DEATH RACE 2000 POINTS SERIES
Death Race 2000 starred David Carradine, who had just come off the end of his cult tv series Kung Fu (1972-5). Also on board was Paul Bartel’s Raoul and frequent co-star, low budget cult queen Mary Woronov. Bartel had previously directed the little-seen kinky black comedy Private Parts (1972) and would go onto create the cult black comedy Eating Raoul (1982) about a couple killing swingers. Griffith who scripted some Corman’s more amusing cult films like A Bucket of Blood (1959) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and Robert Thom, who wrote the quirkily satirical science-fiction film Wild in the Streets (1968) and the very strange The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976). In the producer’s seat was Roger Corman and on the script were Ib Melchior, a B-budget director/producer of the 1960s who made films like The Angry Red Planet (1959), Reptilicus (1961), Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) and The Time Travelers (1964) Charles B. Indeed, Death Race 2000 gained a cult reputation in some quarters for a number of years.ĭeath Race 2000 brings together some of the more fertile talents that were then gathered under the New World Pictures roof. The irony is that Death Race 2000 was a far more enjoyable film than the much more ponderous and heavy-handed Rollerball was. It’s a straight-to-video flick so it won’t hit the big screen, but it’s coming out on Blu-Ray on January 17, 2017.This quirky little low-budget production was designed to exploit the success of the far bigger budgeted Rollerball (1975) and its vision of future sports. The film is directed by Roger Corman, the storied 90-year-old independent producer and director who made the original film over four decades ago. Adults in the prime of life are merely worth ten points, while senior citizens are worth 50 points each. Fins, spikes, and other sharp, metallic objects help each team score as many points as possible. None of this matters in 2050, though, and the racers are sitting behind the wheel of cars specifically modified to inflict as much damage as possible to innocent bystanders. Pedestrians stand a better chance of surviving an impact with a car today than ever before thanks to modern safety standards that dictate what a car can and can’t look like, and thanks to tech features like automatic emergency braking (AEB). Eight racers line up at the starting grid to participate in a deadly, highly-speed jaunt across the nation called simply Death Race. It’s been re-named the United Corporations of America, and the states have been replaced by bigger regions with satirical names such as Onepercentia, Gasarcana, and Pharmatopia. The movie’s official trailer reveals that the United States of America no longer exists in 34 years’ time.
DEATH RACE 2000 POINTS MOVIE
The movie is scheduled to come out early next year. Death Race 2000, however, has become a cult classic, so it’s not surprising that a remake named Death Race 2050 is in the works. The new millennium has come and gone and motorists still get jail time instead of Grand Theft Auto-style bonus points if they plow down a pedestrian. In fact, they would constitute the national sport, and a way to get bonus points while participating in a fictitious event named the Transcontinental Road Race. The 1975 film Death Race 2000 was based on the premise that hit-and-run incidents would no longer be illegal in the year 2000.