Death Race 2000 is set in the 'future' year of 2000 (surprise, surprise!) & starts at the New York Memorial Raceway where the 20th annual Trans Continental road race is about to get underway. The rules are simple, drive to New Los Angeles quicker than your competitors, have a stupid name & pick up bonus points for mowing down innocent pedestrians. This years five competitor's line up at the start line, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins), Nero the Hero (Martin Kove) & the infamous Frankenstein (David Carradine) the current reigning champion. The races gets underway & America is gripped as every inch is covered on TV, however a group of revolutionists are determined to sabotage the race in order to stop it...
Directed Paul Bartel who also has a small cameo role as Frankenstein's doctor at the start I thought Death Race 2000 was OK but far from the cult classic many would have you believe. The script by Charles Griffith & Robert Thom was based on a story by IB Melchior is quite fun in a silly sort of way but it's rather repetitive & it tries to be too clever for it's own good. It has a stab at a little political satire & pokes fun at media stereotypes as a lot of the film is played out like a sports event with annoying TV show hosts popping up every few minutes, a running commentary & interviews with victims loved ones who win prizes. To be honest I didn't find any of it particularly effective & scene after scene of stupid looking cars driving along empty stretches of Californian highway became very boring very quickly. With a title like Death Race 2000 the film has obviously dated badly, we are seven years past 2000 & this films vision of the future has been proved to be totally wide of the mark so in that respect it failed, as an action film it fails & as satire it fails. Having said that it moves along at a decent pace, at less than 80 minutes long it doesn't outstay it's welcome, there are one or two fun scenes & it provides a certain amount of undemanding entertainment, just don't expect the solid gold classic many would have you believe Death Race 2000 is.
Director Bartel doesn't do much to liven the film up, in fact this film has some of the most boring & unimpressive car chases ever & as I've already said scenes of awful looking cars driving along empty roads is just totally dull & there's no other word I can think of to describe it. The cars themselves are supposed to be futuristic looking but in actuality they look terrible, they look like their bodies are made out of cardboard & they were painted by 10 year old's. Death Race 2000 sure was low budget & boy it show's. The action scenes are lame, there's some violence & a bit of blood but not much although there's a fair amount of naked female breasts on show if that sort of thing interests you. This being a Roger Corman production I'd have thought Death Race 2000 was designed as a rip-off of another futuristic sports action film Rollerball (1975).
With a supposed budget of about $300,000 I told you it was low budget, to be honest one can question why the makers set out to make such an ambitious film on such a meagre budget, the film looks pretty cheap & doesn't have any sort of style. The one thing that makes Death Race 2000 stand out is that it was a very early staring role for Sylvester Stallone who would go on to mega stardom in Hollywood, he's pretty good in this & well worth the $1,000 a week he was paid! Carradine is pretty good too.
Death Race 2000 is an OK time waster, some of it is pretty fun although for the most part it's rather dull & cheap looking. Average at best in my opinion. Followed by the sequel Death Race (2008).
Directed Paul Bartel who also has a small cameo role as Frankenstein's doctor at the start I thought Death Race 2000 was OK but far from the cult classic many would have you believe. The script by Charles Griffith & Robert Thom was based on a story by IB Melchior is quite fun in a silly sort of way but it's rather repetitive & it tries to be too clever for it's own good. It has a stab at a little political satire & pokes fun at media stereotypes as a lot of the film is played out like a sports event with annoying TV show hosts popping up every few minutes, a running commentary & interviews with victims loved ones who win prizes. To be honest I didn't find any of it particularly effective & scene after scene of stupid looking cars driving along empty stretches of Californian highway became very boring very quickly. With a title like Death Race 2000 the film has obviously dated badly, we are seven years past 2000 & this films vision of the future has been proved to be totally wide of the mark so in that respect it failed, as an action film it fails & as satire it fails. Having said that it moves along at a decent pace, at less than 80 minutes long it doesn't outstay it's welcome, there are one or two fun scenes & it provides a certain amount of undemanding entertainment, just don't expect the solid gold classic many would have you believe Death Race 2000 is.
Director Bartel doesn't do much to liven the film up, in fact this film has some of the most boring & unimpressive car chases ever & as I've already said scenes of awful looking cars driving along empty roads is just totally dull & there's no other word I can think of to describe it. The cars themselves are supposed to be futuristic looking but in actuality they look terrible, they look like their bodies are made out of cardboard & they were painted by 10 year old's. Death Race 2000 sure was low budget & boy it show's. The action scenes are lame, there's some violence & a bit of blood but not much although there's a fair amount of naked female breasts on show if that sort of thing interests you. This being a Roger Corman production I'd have thought Death Race 2000 was designed as a rip-off of another futuristic sports action film Rollerball (1975).
With a supposed budget of about $300,000 I told you it was low budget, to be honest one can question why the makers set out to make such an ambitious film on such a meagre budget, the film looks pretty cheap & doesn't have any sort of style. The one thing that makes Death Race 2000 stand out is that it was a very early staring role for Sylvester Stallone who would go on to mega stardom in Hollywood, he's pretty good in this & well worth the $1,000 a week he was paid! Carradine is pretty good too.
Death Race 2000 is an OK time waster, some of it is pretty fun although for the most part it's rather dull & cheap looking. Average at best in my opinion. Followed by the sequel Death Race (2008).