DAVID CARRADINE VS SYLVESTER STALLONE IN 'DEATH RACE 2000'

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000 Year: ****

Director Paul Bartel's cult classic Roger Corman production DEATH RACE 2000 is known as a guilty-pleasure — and the pleasure's in seeing civilians being mowed-down by race cars for points... 

Yet it's really an action-packed dystopian science-fiction cautionary-tale where television consumers watch lethal violence as sports-entertainment, inspiring blockbusters ranging from THE RUNNING MAN to THE HUNGER GAMES while the running-over-people aspect actually makes the least sense because, if the race was broadcast worldwide, why would anyone go outside? 

Opening Credit Artwork from DEATH RACE 2000

But DEATH RACE is really about the racers, starring David Carradine weeks after leaving KUNG FU, playing a folk-hero champion named Frankenstein with the same slowburn, enigmatic prowess...

Literally in this case, wearing a cape and mask covering a face that's supposedly mangled... unveiled by beautiful blonde Simone Griffeth as his new shotgun-riding navigator (all the drivers have one)... and her character's secret-revolutionary subplot is initially intriguing, but winds up spoiling some of the road-raging fun...

From DEATH RACE 2000

Although penny-pinching Roger Corman would give his directors artistic free reign, the only demands were nudity, blood, and a subtle left-wing message... herein about insurgents blocking/crashing the televised transmission with their own free-the-world rhetoric against the acting dictator/president (a device later used in John Carpenter's THEY LIVE)... but after a while, the message goes from subtlety into downright preachy...

Yet the rebels' most intriguing purpose is sabotaging the cars with deadly Wile E. Coyote-style traps, making this DEATH RACE not only a body-count massacre of random civilizations, but of the creative ensemble of offbeat drivers...

Opening Credit Artwork from DEATH RACE 2000

Including Sylvester Stallone's Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, the second greatest wanting to defeat Carradine's all-time-great at all costs, only a year before becoming a living legend in ROCKY, and, with an intense old-school gangster-film performance so deadly earnest, you'll forget he's in a dark comedy...

Although the action-genre aspect ultimately reigns... with the editing and direction pieced together in a series of random documentary-style cuts that would seem shoddy if Paul Bartel weren't surprisingly effective beyond his passive screen demeanor: providing each driver character-driven command over their fittingly-suited supped-up hot-rods that... although technically keystone-cop sped-up in post-production... really look and feel legitimately fierce and formidable...

Opening Credit Artwork from DEATH RACE 2000

Featuring blonde exploitation starlet Roberta Collins and former Warhol-turned-Corman-regular Mary Woronov, two females even more intensely pitted than the men (including Martin Kove)...

And as these characters effectively overshadow the pop-culture-parodying camp-value (like FM DJ Don Steele's exterior play-by-play alongside Joyce Jameson's interior interviews), the action-packed DEATH RACE 2000 also inserts genuine romantic chemistry between Carradine and Simone Griffeth within the handsomely stylized matte-painted future  — a cult movie phenomenon with pretty much everything! 

David Carradine and Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000 with Louisa Moritz

Roberta Collins in DEATH RACE 2000

Mary Woronov and William Shepard in DEATH RACE 2000

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000

Louisa Moritz in DEATH RACE 2000

Wendy Bartel in DEATH RACE 2000

David Carradine and Simone Grifffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

From DEATH RACE 2000

Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

David Carradine and Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

From DEATH RACE 2000

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000

Mary Woronov in DEATH RACE 2000

Roberta Collins in DEATH RACE 2000

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000 with Louisa Moritz

David Carradine in DEATH RACE 2000

Sylvester Stallone in DEATH RACE 2000

From DEATH RACE 2000

Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

David Carradine in DEATH RACE 2000

Martin Kove in DEATH RACE 2000 with Leslie McRay

Sylvester Stallone in Death Race 2000 with Louisa Moritz, Martin Kove and Leslie McRay

Lewis Teague (director of Alligator) in DEATH RACE 2000

Martin Kove in DEATH RACE 2000 with Leslie McRay

Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

David Carradine in DEATH RACE 2000

Wendy Bartel in DEATH RACE 2000

Director Paul Bartel in DEATH RACE 2000

Joyce Jameson in DEATH RACE 2000

Fred Grandy (The Love Boat) & Roberta Collins in DEATH RACE 2000

Richard Shepard and Mary Woronov in DEATH RACE 2000

Simone Griffeth in DEATH RACE 2000

From DEATH RACE 2000