Gangsters, Nazis, Boobies and Close Personal Friends: Deathrace 2000 for SCIENCE!

stefstef
edited May 2006 in Movies and Shows
"You know Myra, some people might think you're cute. But me, I think you're one very large baked potato." -Machine Gun Joe Viterbo

This movie made a whole lot of WTF into something amusing. I think, though, we have to start right off discussing America's 'Swastika Sweetheart', Matilda The Hun. Also her navigator, Herman the German. She had an accent identical to Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and only had one surprisingly inoffensive joke about the master race. Even though I've seen the movie before, a crowd of cheering sports fans waving swastika flags at a car race was shocking and pretty creepy. Wasn't the swastika as offensive in the early seventies as it is now?

Comments

  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    I don't think anything was offensive back then. Except being 'close minded'.

    That said, maybe they just decided that seeing as how they were making a film that involves euthanasia by car, that they might as well see how far they could go with it.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    We were discussing here a second ago that perhaps they were using that as just another way to show that people were pretty desensitized to everything except entertainment.

    OR, they needed to start the movie off with some serious WTF. And they succeeded. The high points of WTF in the movie, for me, were Matilda the Hun, the first killing, and David Carradine inexplicably ballroom dancing with his navigator whilst wearing some really dorky black underpants.
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    That does make sense. Especially considering that Machine-Gun Joe firing off a tommy gun at the crowd of Frankenstein fans is pretty much ignored by everyone.

    But you've missed the biggest WTF of all: The Hand Grenade. I mean, over an hour buildup of what's under the glove, to possibly the worst visual pun in the history of film.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Oh god, yeah. I groaned loudly at that. Not that the happy-happy wedding at the end wasn't a big WTF as well-- I mean, they spend the whole movie playing mind games and running people over, but then they get married and live happily ever after AS THE PRESIDENT??
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    Because Stef demanded that I bring this up: there sure were a lot of boobies in this film. The brazen nudity being displayed on national television during the first pit stop seemed odd to me, not because it was inappropriate (it seemed to fall in line with the overall moral decay that goes hand in hand with dystopic films), but because it was just the ladies. Matilda the Hun was all talking about the master race being women (showing that women are empowered to some extent), and yet there didn't seem to be much in the way of equal rights! Even though there were multiple female racers, they were still being objectified. Quite odd.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Hey now. David Carradine had those dorky little Vader-panties, and they were constantly undressing him to prove that he was not bionic.
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    Stef wrote:
    but then they get married and live happily ever after AS THE PRESIDENT??

    And then ran somebody over. Although, I was waiting for that guy to die. Way too hyper and annoying.

    As for the nudity? Yeah. Seriously gratuitous. And frequent. But that, once again, was the 70's for you. As soon as they were able to put the nudity into films, they did with great abandon.
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    As is evidenced by Logan's Run, but the guys undressed as well, if I remember correctly.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Yeah, Jon, as soon as you saw that the newlyweds were getting into a car and Junior the Sportscaster was there, you knew Junior's fate.
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    The narrative during the end credits was completely unnecessary. Corman was probably trying to give deeper meaning to his film than was actually there. Kind of sad, really, but I think this was probably the best film he ever made (after all, it never showed up on MST3K, probably mostly because it knew it was cheesy and bad and played on that to some extent).
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    What MST3K films did Corman do?
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    Looked up via Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt:

    Episode 311 - It Conquered The World
    Episode 315 - Teenage Caveman
    Episode 317 - Viking Women
    Episode 503 - Swamp Diamons
    Episode 511 - Gunslinger (the only one in this list I've seen)
    Episode 806 - The Undead
    Episode H01 - The Day The World Ended
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    More importantly, a quick skim of IMDB reveals that Deathrace 3000 is in production.

    Truly the B-gods will smile upon this project.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    It better be as awesome as it totally should be.

    Do you think they'll bring David Carradine back? I mean, he isn't doing much besides Kill Bill, is he?
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    I really hope so.

    It just wouldn't be the same without him.

    Maybe he'll have a new artificial limb-weapon by that point! Like a laser shooting eye. Or a shotgun leg.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Or a presidential pancreas!
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    Maybe tiny rocket launchers built into his right nostril. And a flamethrower in the other.

    It'd make for great party tricks.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Mario pointed out that the next appendage has got to be something that is a pun to top the "Hand Grenade". I suggested a "Head of State".
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    I think Corman will need to out-pun the previous weapon. I suggest that his feet be outfitted with TOW missile launchers.
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    Ok, but one more non-pun weapon first: Eyebrows that can be used as a garotte.

    As for pun armaments: The Elbow. And the Tomohawk.
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    I was actually pretty excited at the beginning of this movie because it was taking a unique perspective on the dystopian future: it chose to focus on a limited subset of the future culture instead of the state of the world at large. Through the perspective of the race, we were shown things like the diminished respect for human life, the use of entertainment by Mr. President to placate the masses, the fact that women appear to have lost the battle of the sexes (although the navigators do seem to garner a certain amount of respect in their esteemed positions)... That was what I liked about the George Romero films as well, so at first I really enjoyed Death Race 2000. My only problem was that the movie didn't maintain this distancing from the big picture towards the end. Unlike most stories of this kind, wherein the masses don't know the full extent of their subjugation (1984, Brave New World, Logan's Run), this movie pretty strongly suggested that a large chunk of people were dissatisfied with the way things were run, despite their love of violence. It's one thing to have a limited subset of the population (in the form of the creatively-named Resistance) be opposed to the status quo, but here's where it broke down: the best racer in the world was a terrorist scheming to kill Mr. President, and when he succeeded in his mission, all the citizens of the United Provinces of America loved him, and he was somehow appointed President for this act. Why was there no Mr. Vice President? Why in the world would Mr. President have abolished that particular aspect of American government? He could have used his dictatorly powers to pick a worthy successor that would have carried on his ideals. The movie's concept sort of falls apart after that (dystopian movies should never have a happy ending! That defeats the whole purpose of seeing how people behave in imperfect societies!).

    Overall I still enjoyed the film (the graphics with the point values for women, children and senior citizens ought to be made into a t-shirt), but thought the ending could have been better. By which I mean more depressing, as is the main requirement for such stories. I don't know how Coleman Francis intends to make a sequel, since presumably the race was abolished... you know, like the new President Frankenstein just told us.
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    Maybe he was just kidding.

    After all, he did abolish it and then run a guy down in cold blood.
  • mariomario
    edited May 2006
    I thought he was being ironic! The guy asked for violence, and he gave it to him. Truly a man of the people, that Frankenstein.
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    Well you could fit it into your dystopian unhappy ending needs.

    Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    Frankenstein kills the president, takes his job. Then sets up his wife-to-be and her family up with cushy government jobs and generally starts up with the power abusin'.
  • BehemothBehemoth
    edited May 2006
    I see two reasons for a dictator not wanting to have a successor: First; his successor would be a little too tempted to move into his position and probably hire any number of assassins. Second; If you're a greedy dictator who's only goal is to keep yourself in power, you don't care what happens after your death.
  • SilverwardSilverward
    edited May 2006
    I watched this over the weekend. Most of the hits on people didn't acutally seem fatal. Which makes me wonder, do you still score if you dont kill the person? Or are cars in the year 2000 equipped with a special device to kill anyone it comes into contact with?
  • ApathyApathy
    edited May 2006
    You definitely need a kill to score.

    I think it's less that there is a device that kills people and more that they were just really wussy people.

    I mean, they couldn't even head-butt a car in half as it tried to run them down. They obviously deserved to die.
  • stefstef
    edited May 2006
    Yeah, plus they were dumb enough not to go inside while the deathrace was happening. They were probably really sub-par survivors in general.

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