One year before he first strapped
on the gloves as Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone was taking part in
an entirely different sort of sports movie – an
infamously violent satirical sci fi romp in which racers thunder across
the highways of an economically ruined America, scoring points by killing
civilians.
Watched over by a distant and ineffectual President, who rules the US
while on a seemingly permanent overseas vacation, the Transcontinental
Road Race is the sole outlet Americans have in this bleak future, the
drivers themselves elevated to the level of uber-celebrity.
Top of the pile is Frankenstein (David Carradine), a ruthless man whose
crash-mangled body has been rebuilt so many times that he conceals it
beneath a black leather costume and mask. Also in the race are Calamity
Jane, a cowgirl themed racer with razor sharp buffalo horns mounted on
her car; Matilda the Hun, a gleefully offensive Hitler loving femi-nazi;
Nero the Hero, a Roman emperor themed smooth operator and Machine Gun
Joe Viterbo, the perpetually angry Chicago mobster and Frankenstein’s
perennial nemesis, played with blustering zeal by the 29-year-old Stallone.
Complicating matters is a small band of resistance fighters, led by nice
old lady Thomasina Payne, who want to sabotage the race and overthrow
the president. Thomasina wants to achieve her goal through non-violent
means, and conspires to get her great-granddaughter Annie assigned as
Frankenstein’s navigator with the aim of kidnapping the nation’s
best loved racer and holding him to ransom. Meanwhile, Thomasina’s
restless cohorts want to take direct action – and they begin blowing
up the racers with booby traps.
Once the race gets underway, Machine Gun Joe scores first blood (ho ho!)
when he castrates a hapless workman with the enormous knife thrusting
from the hood of his car. The groin-damaged fellow is but the first of
the road rage victims, with squashed heads and mangled limbs a regular
sight as the racers splatter their way across the country.
There is, of course, a twist in the tale. Frankenstein turns out to be
a fraud. His face and body are actually far from mangled, as Annie discovers
when she inevitably hops into bed with him. Raised from childhood for
the sole purpose of killing people in the name of entertainment, he’s
got his own little rebellion up his sleeve. Quite literally, in fact.
He’s got a grenade embedded in the palm of his hand. When he wins
the race, and shakes the President’s hand, he plans to bring the
dictator’s reign to an explosive end.
But to do that he actually has to win the race, and that means defeating
arch rival Machine Gun Joe. Having already beaten him to a pulp for manhandling
Annie at a pitstop (and the sight of Carradine smacking Stallone
around is really quite hilarious) Frankenstein has no qualms about bumping
off this swaggering mobster. As the two cars speed towards the finish
line in New Los Angeles, Annie takes desperate measures to ensure Frankenstein
(who she now loves, naturally) wins the race. Unscrewing his bomb-hand,
she tosses it into Joe’s car. Understandably perplexed by the notion
of his enemy throwing body parts at him, Stallone is still ranting and
raving when the hand explodes, removing him from the competition – and
the movie – in a ball of fire.
Frankenstein goes on to topple the President anyway – he crashes
his car into the podium – and is thus crowned the new President,
ushering in an era of peace and love. Though, gripped with a fit of irony,
he does run over one final victim - an odious TV reporter who is outraged
at the race being abolished.
Need to know: A Death Race videogame briefly appeared
in US arcades in 1976. The idea was to steer your black and white car
and run over as
many stickmen as possible. Only 500 cabinets were produced, and it was
swiftly withdrawn after complaints. It is believed only 3 or 4 still
survive today. The role of carnage-obsessed cowgirl Calamity Jane was
played by Mary Woronov, who went on to grace many cult genre movies – including
an ill-fated turn as the fortune teller who has her eyes ripped out in
Warlock (see: Richard E. Grant). David
Carradine returned to vehicular violence, though not as Frankenstein,
in the unofficial 1978 semi-sequel,
Deathsport which swapped cars for motorbikes. The modern remake of Death
Race 2000 – imaginatively updated as plain old Death Race – features
Jason Statham.
Honorable mentions: Yet another product of Roger Corman’s bargain
basement B-movie factory (the opening credits are actually hand drawn)
Death Race 2000 represented one of Stallone’s first proper acting
roles, after several years of alternating between cheap porno, such as
the infamous Party at Kitty and Studs, and uncredited walk-on roles like
Subway Thug #1 in Woody Allen’s Bananas. One of Stallone’s
earlier films, the failed radical thriller No Place To Hide, was re-edited
to appeal to the flower power crowd and released again as Rebel. It was
later redubbed as a comedy and re-released again in 1990 as A Man Called
Rainbo. All three versions are horrendous, though for very different
reasons.
Availability: Death Race 2000 is available on DVD.
