In the near future the ultimate sporting event is the deathrace. Contestants get score points for running people down as they speed across the country. The sport has crazed fans who sacrifice themselves to the drivers. An overt agency is trying to bring an end to the immoral deathrace and has infiltrated one of their followers in to the race as a navigator. In the end of the race the lives of the competitors, the President and the deathrace itself are in peril. A champion of a brutal cross-country car race of the future where pedestrians are run down for points has a change of heart while being hounded by rivals and a conspiracy seeking to stop the race. I'm astonished by the number of reviewers who see this film as "stupid". It has one hell of a witty script, with amazingly accurate jabs at everything from media hype to uber-patriotic propaganda. Just listen to the president blaming everything on "the treacherous French and their stinking European allies". Sounds chillingly like "Freedom Fries", doesn't it?<br/><br/>This wonderful little gem is far more intelligent that it's usually given credit for, and certainly smarter than 99.9% of the films made today. Those who dismiss it as stupid junk because of its outrageous premise are missing the point. I haven't seen anyone write a film this smart in at least 20 years. **SPOILERS** After the disastrous stock market crash of 1979 the US was left with no means of economic support and degenerated into a fascist dictatorship. It was in 1980 that the unelected chief of state known only as Mr. President, Sandy McCallum, inaugurated the exciting and dangerous Transcontinental Road Race to distract the American public from the real crisis at hand. A dark and dismal future for themselves and their children.<br/><br/>It's now 2000 and former two-time Transcontinental Road Race champ and national hero Frankenstein, David Carradine, is back fully reconstructed-after a number of near fatal crashes-and ready to defend his title. What Frankenstein is really interested in is to end the race in an earth shaking fashion. Not by just winning it but putting an end to Mr. President's fascist regime as well as Mr. President himself. <br/><br/>Fast and furious racing action without the use of computer enhanced special effects makes "Death Race 2000" fun to watch even though the race calls for the running down and killing of innocent civilians in order to score points, as well as finish first, to win it. Frankenstein's chief rival is the Chicago mobster Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, Sylvester Stallone. Veterbo is nothing but a brainless thug who's had it in for the man of "nuts and bolts" since he beat him hands down in his two previous races against him.<br/><br/>While the race in going on the great, to the tenth power, granddaughter of the American Revolutionary Thomas Paine the feisty Thomasina Paine, Harriet Medlin, and her band of modern 21th Century American revolutionaries are attempting to sabotage it and at the same time assassinate Mr. President when he hands out the winning prize, together with a handshake, to the winner of the race. <br/><br/>Not as corny and unbelievable as people thought at the time of its release back in 1975, the same year that the similar movie "Rollerball" came out, "Death Race 2000" shows how a dictatorial regime can come to America by using both entertainment as well as patriotism as, like a Trojan Horse, its cover. <br/><br/>****SPOILER****Frankenstein despite giving the impression of being a company man was really fed up with Mr. President and everything that he stood for. But it took the grueling three day 3,000 mile Transcontinental Road Race, that almost cost Franknsein his life, for him to finally achieve his life long dream: At the winners circle in New L.A where the race came to its bloody and destructive end. I was torn between walking out immediately and staying to witness a spectacle more dismaying than anything on the screen: the way small children were digging gratuitous bloodshed.
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291 weeks ago