Having seen this film as a relatively unsophisticated and less-than-knowledgeable teenager back in the day, I was pretty unimpressed by this film. However, I found a new special edition on sale for $4 at a drugstore and thought that I might try it again. I figured for $4 I could always sell it at a used video store, plus it had a commentary by Corman himself along with cult actress Mary Woronov that I figured would be worth the money itself. I’m glad I gave this one a second view several decades after my initial viewing.
Of course, Corman is famous for all the careers he started; this isn’t news to Rogue fans. But this film is chock full of both actors and crew that would go on to be not just famous but also award-winning. Of course we have the star of the show, David Carradine as Frankenstein, the best race car driver in the world (fresh off of “Kung Fu”) and a gorgeous Mary Woronov, but we also see a very young Martin Kove as well as a kid named Stallone who was not only playing the heavy, but was also busy writing a screenplay about boxing.
The crew is a “Who’s Who” of filmmakers: John Landis is credited as a mechanic; Tak Fujimoto is the cinematographer; Lewis Teague is a producer and assistant director; and Tina Hirsch is the editor. I’m sure there are other names, but these are just a few of the folks that went on to become major contributors in their chosen field.
The film itself is a fun little action flick with plenty of racing, chasing, and crashing. In case someone hasn’t actually seen this film, the plot revolves around the idea of a future world in which the United States has become globally dominant (the President has a summer home in Peking, China!), but is suffering from several major problems (a possible war with France is hinted at, as well as a major recession and poor telecommunications). The leading form of entertainment is an annual race from New York to L.A. where the racers not only score by how fast they reach their destination but also by how many bystanders they take out along the way. Points are assigned to various groups (babies and the elderly are particularly high-scoring targets).
We have several colorful drivers along with their navigators. Carradine as Frankenstein is the only racer to have won the race twice and is trying for an historic third win. Frankenstein is a legend in Death Race circles. In addition to having a proclivity for killing his navigators, he has suffered so many accidents that most of his body is rumored to be made of metal. He has his own following of devoted acolytes, some of who want nothing more than to be run over by him so they can be a part of his historic third win. Sporting a black leather body suit and face mask to hide his hideous scars, Frankenstein drives a green Godzilla-like car complete with scales and teeth along the front bumper.
Frankenstein’s primary nemesis is Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Stallone), the only other racer to have won a previous death race. Dressed like a classic Chicago gangster, his black and silver race car has machine guns and a large blade across the front, because, hey, why just run over hapless pedestrians when you can have so much more fun maiming them?
Other drivers include Mary Woronov as Calamity Jane driving a brown car designed as a steer, complete with huge sharp horns on the hood; Martin Kove as Nero the Hero, a snobby, narcissistic character dressed in medieval warrior garb; and Roberta Collins as Matilda the Hun, a neo-Nazi in a car designed like a German soldier’s helmet from WWI. The characters are outlandish caricatures with the potential to be a bit controversial (I’d like to see a Nazi driver in a film made in these politically correct times).
There are lots of subplots, including a group of people devoted to sabotaging the death race, the hatred between Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe, and even a sexually-charged romantic link between Frankenstein and his spy-navigator who is being pulled between her loyalty to the group wanting to end the death race and her feelings toward Frankenstein.
This all makes for an entertaining—if a bit unrealistic—low budget romp. Beautiful women, cool cars, lots of crashes, and several bloody scenes. But what really impressed me was the care that went into making this quickie. Making a low-budget film is hard enough, but making a low-budget film set in the future can be really tough when you don’t have much money for sets and art direction. The one scene that really fails is near the beginning when Bartel is trying to show the viewers the future of America and the background is clearly a matte painting—and not a particularly good one at that. But even with this, the care involved is pretty amazing; a bright green train is shown moving across the background to try and draw some of the viewer’s attention away from the unreality of the painting itself.
There are very few buildings in the film. Corman explains in the commentary that this was planned so that the few buildings that were shown would look new and futuristic while the shots of the countryside were planned because the filmmakers figured the countryside of the future would look largely like the countryside of the present. Set design was minimal, primarily due to budgetary constraints, but again, Corman designed the film to reflect a minimalist design for the future. There was also a great deal of care taken with the scenes of the car race, too. During the commentary Corman explains how each scene showing a car chase or part of the race was undercranked at just the right speed to make the cars seem like they were traveling at a high rate of speed without getting that unrealistic feeling from the cowboy films from the 40’s. They had certain frame rates for straightaways, curves, etc. They even made sure that the dust kicked up from the cars moved at the proper speed! I came away from the commentary very impressed with the amount of attention and care that was taken on this film and even more appreciation for Roger Corman as a filmmaker.
Something else that was easy to notice as an adult that I totally missed as a teenager was the various subtexts of the film. It was interesting to note the predictions for the future the film made. For instance, satellite television played a huge role in the film just as it does today. It was also a bit ironic that the movie portrays the U.S. and France as enemies. While I wouldn’t necessarily characterize the two countries as “enemies” today, there certainly has been significant friction between the U.S. and France over our Middle Eastern policies during the last decade or so.
The film also satirizes society’s craving for violence. Of course, the whole idea of a world wide audience watching a death race is a statement itself, but when Frankenstein becomes “Mr. President Frankenstein” he decides to abolish the race. A reporter asks him about the irony of abolishing a race due to its violence even though Frankenstein’s political success is due to his success in the death race. As the reporter shouts, “The American people won’t stand for it! Sure the race is violent, but we love it! Violence is the American way of life. Violence, violence,violence!” Frankenstein’s answer is unequivocal: he runs the reporter down. And during the end credits, we get a soliloquy on the human penchant for violence: “[Weapons] were created in two million B.C. by the Australopithicines, a tribe of four-foot primates that had no brains to speak of but who nevertheless invented the tomahawk and used it on each other. This practice led to the enlargement of the brain, another useful weapon. Yes, murder was invented even before man learned to speak.”
It doesn’t matter whether you enjoy this film for some bloody, very politically incorrect entertainment or to see the dead-on commentary of American life, but track it down one more time and give it another viewing.