#311: Death Race 2000

Release Date: April 27th, 1975

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Charles B. Griffith and Robert Thom

Directed by: Paul Bartel

3.5 Stars

Death Race 2000 is a rollicking, high-speed exploitation flick that delivers on the goods. Producer Roger Corman gives us exactly what’s featured on the film’s shocking poster (which is more than a lot of exploitation flicks can say): tricked-out sports cars, babes in one-piece driving suits, fiery explosions, and David Carradine in a Darth Vader-esque gimp suit, as the film’s race car folk hero, Frankenstein. 

What more could you ask for?

As director Paul Bartel tells it, Death Race 2000 was a somewhat troubled production. The original script from Charles B. Griffith (frequent Corman collaborator and writer of The Little Shop of Horrors) was too serious, so Corman brought in Robert Thom (Crazy Mama, The Witch Who Came from the Sea) to punch it up with some thrills and melodrama. Bartel, meanwhile, saw it more as a goofy, political satire.              

In the end, Death Race 2000 becomes an endearing amalgamation of all these different attitudes. It’s an 80-minute zap of battles, blasts, boobs, and bluster, about a transcontinental road race in which the five drivers see how fast they can go and how many children, women, and old people they can kill along the way.        

Roger Corman, folks! A man who knows what the people want!