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If Rollerball is the intellectual vision of “blood sport as opiate for the masses,” then Death Race 2000 is the loopy grindhouse inversion of it. Not directed by Roger Corman but shepherded by him, Death Race 2000 is a vision of American life at its most nihilistic. Whatever political framework we once had has long since fallen away, given rise to a Mr. President that presides from overseas, and provided an outlet for the collective sense of anger in a yearly drag race that encourages random acts of violence.
Not just encourages but rewards them with a system that places various values on human life. Eventually the curtain drops, and the death race is revealed as an elaborate political machinery with its poster boy driver a blank vessel that’s been inhabited by various performers. Throw in an underground rebellion that wants to destroy the race and restore the state and dissolve the autocracy that has taken over. Did I mention the leader of the rebellion was named Thomasina Paine? No one could accuse this movie of being subtle in its political commentary.
There’s a trash-art brilliance at play here. Any movie that gives Sylvester Stallone, pre-Rocky, a part as supersized gangster, Mary Woronov as a cowgirl with steer horns on her car, and David Carradine as a Frankenstein monster that functions as a symbol of the state has something wonderful going for it. Or maybe it’s something terrible but I was just in the mood for something big, loud, and dumb? I don’t know, but Death Race 2000 worked on some puerile level for me.
