Movies From the Hat III – Death Race 2000 (1975)

This is my 1,975th movie review

Thanks to Mutant for recommending this film to me!

“All right, all right, and yes-sirree! A clean hit! A perfect hit! And no pain for the target. Too bad the guy was only thirty-eight; just two years older, he’d have been worth three times the points.” – Junior

Number of Times Seen – 1 (1 Feb 2016)

Brief Synopsis – A futuristic game show where contestants must race across the US killing as many people as possible before they reach the finish line.

My Take on it – It’s interesting to look back at the way a movie was scripted to try and figure out what the film makers were thinking at the time.

Roger Corman is not known for making great movies but it can’t be said that he didn’t know what the future audience of reality TV would want; Blood, lots of blood..

Who woulda thought back in the early 70’s that by the tine we’d get to the new millennium, we’d all be so captivated by reality TV that it would dominate ratings (and in some cases our lives).

Yes, this movie takes things to the extreme but yet, it hits the mark as to what direction things were heading.

The story itself is truly secondary to the message trying to be conveyed here that we still are really no different than the Romans of days long gone who showed up weekly to watch the Gladiators.

The movie is quite short (80 min) and might have been even better had it been a bit longer, but it was still lots of fun.

I thought it was quite humorous seeing Sylvester Stallone play one of the bad guys here because this came out a year before his breakthrough role. as Rocky Balboa; at the time, I’m sure no one had a clue as to who he was.

I tettered back and forth on the rating here, because I would want to give it higher than Globe (7/8), but still lower than Oscar (9/10), so I’ll have to give it a high Globe (8.5 approx).

I willing to bet that Mutant (the sadist that she is) expected me to fully have this movie when she recommended it to me, but evidently, she can pick movies for me to enjoy. T

Tnx again C… Mutant 🙂

Bottom Line – Corman’s movies don’t necessarily have a name for making good movies, but this is one that shows he knew the future of TV and ratings. The script is too short to be really effective in this kind of story. Funny seeing Sly here before anyone knew him. Says so much about the direction society was/is heading and they got the theme and message nailed down perfectly. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Roger Corman wrote the original treatment of the film, which was serious in tone, but thought it was not right and, in his words, was “kind of vile”. He decided the dark material of the story would be better served by making the movie into a comedy and had Robert Thom rewrite the treatment. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z