Being a Stallone superfan, Death Race 2000 is an intriguing watch, a film that is unlikely to harness many other motivations from an audience. Unfortunately, it is a terrible film.
A dark comedy, there seems to be little humour, the only line barely passable as comedy being Stallone calling a woman a baked potato. It is far too camp and ridiculous to be anything other than a comedy, but a whole political theme is shoehorned in, and there are no funny scenes whatsoever.
Set up as a dystopian future, Death Race 2000's run time leaves little opportunity to establish context. In fairness that means it gets right into the 'action', but if there was meant to be any political satire, it's entirely superficial and nonsensical. All that can be grasped is that the USA presumably lost the Second World War to the Nazis, and subsequently also lost power to the USSR. Yet, the French remain the enemy, explaining absolutely nothing further than 'Europe is bad'.
To say the entire premise of the film is death, there isn't an abundance of it in the film. Those who do die do so with such little input from an aggressor. Of course it was more difficult to produce films including murder, but if it was going to be done you would assume slapstick wasn't the best medium.
Punctuated with enough (female) nudity to keep an audience interested, acting is weak throughout to say the least. Stallone plays his character well, but that character is a caricature. Some of the actresses have a fair shot, but are hampered by dreadful dialogue and clearly included so the film could have a topless catfight.
The lead character, Frankenstein, comes straight from the imagination of a five-year-old. He is, however, the best representation of how little effort went into costuming and props. Dressed in a gimp suit and equipped with the most tongue-in-cheek plot-twist imaginable, a photo of the costume is surely enough to turn anyone off this film. The cars of course look daft, but then that could be the 'comedy'. Who doesn't find a lizard-car racing a Tommy gun and matador's bull hilarious?
The plot could be forgiven if the concept of the race even made minimal sense. Finish the race first, whilst killing as many people as possible (which apparently when racing from the East Coast of America to the West, is about 10), but only the last part of the race matters for timings, all based on a point system alluded to but seemingly meaningless.
Cars are clearly shown driving through a camera on fastforward, with actors who are constantly steering side-to-side to remain on on a straight road. The audio when switching angles of driver to navigator changes quality with each shot, not that the script was all that important.
A good snapshot of the entire film is a scene depicting a trap set up which is frame-for-frame a copy of Wile-E-Coyote trying to catch Roadrunner on Looney Tunes.
Death Race 2000's appearance in the 21st century is nothing more than a Z-list film on a shoestring budget. Maybe with some backing it could have been a good film, but I doubt it, no element seems salvageable. In it's defence, I did watch the whole thing, but then again it is only 80 minutes.
If you want to see a better (but also ludicrously camp) dystopian action based around sport on TV, I recommend Schwarzenegger's The Running Man.
A dark comedy, there seems to be little humour, the only line barely passable as comedy being Stallone calling a woman a baked potato. It is far too camp and ridiculous to be anything other than a comedy, but a whole political theme is shoehorned in, and there are no funny scenes whatsoever.
Set up as a dystopian future, Death Race 2000's run time leaves little opportunity to establish context. In fairness that means it gets right into the 'action', but if there was meant to be any political satire, it's entirely superficial and nonsensical. All that can be grasped is that the USA presumably lost the Second World War to the Nazis, and subsequently also lost power to the USSR. Yet, the French remain the enemy, explaining absolutely nothing further than 'Europe is bad'.
To say the entire premise of the film is death, there isn't an abundance of it in the film. Those who do die do so with such little input from an aggressor. Of course it was more difficult to produce films including murder, but if it was going to be done you would assume slapstick wasn't the best medium.
Punctuated with enough (female) nudity to keep an audience interested, acting is weak throughout to say the least. Stallone plays his character well, but that character is a caricature. Some of the actresses have a fair shot, but are hampered by dreadful dialogue and clearly included so the film could have a topless catfight.
The lead character, Frankenstein, comes straight from the imagination of a five-year-old. He is, however, the best representation of how little effort went into costuming and props. Dressed in a gimp suit and equipped with the most tongue-in-cheek plot-twist imaginable, a photo of the costume is surely enough to turn anyone off this film. The cars of course look daft, but then that could be the 'comedy'. Who doesn't find a lizard-car racing a Tommy gun and matador's bull hilarious?
The plot could be forgiven if the concept of the race even made minimal sense. Finish the race first, whilst killing as many people as possible (which apparently when racing from the East Coast of America to the West, is about 10), but only the last part of the race matters for timings, all based on a point system alluded to but seemingly meaningless.
Cars are clearly shown driving through a camera on fastforward, with actors who are constantly steering side-to-side to remain on on a straight road. The audio when switching angles of driver to navigator changes quality with each shot, not that the script was all that important.
A good snapshot of the entire film is a scene depicting a trap set up which is frame-for-frame a copy of Wile-E-Coyote trying to catch Roadrunner on Looney Tunes.
Death Race 2000's appearance in the 21st century is nothing more than a Z-list film on a shoestring budget. Maybe with some backing it could have been a good film, but I doubt it, no element seems salvageable. In it's defence, I did watch the whole thing, but then again it is only 80 minutes.
If you want to see a better (but also ludicrously camp) dystopian action based around sport on TV, I recommend Schwarzenegger's The Running Man.