Road Rage, Roger Corman-Style
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Sep 6 2010, 2:09 PM
Labor Day is the last get-out-there-and-drive holiday of the year — the traditional end of Summer — and what better way to celebrate than with a few pedal-to-the-metal exploitation movies from the Roger Corman archives? While we’re still waiting on reissues of such rubber-burning drive-in staples like Grand Theft Auto and Eat My Dust!, Shout! Factory has released the definitive version of one of Corman’s ‘70’s best, Death Race 2000, along with a double-bill of Deathsport and Battletruck.
1975’s Death Race 2000 is, without apology or hyperbole, a stone-cold classic. Adapted from Ib Melchior’s straight-faced short story, “The Racer,” the movie takes a wildly satiric approach to the source material, turning what could have been a grim and on-the-nose story — see the 2008 remake for proof — into a rollicking action-comedy, full of wild characters, clever stunt-work and glaringly obvious matte paintings, courtesy of Corman’s in-house effects man Jack Rabin, whose career in Hollywood stretched from TV’s “Gunsmoke” to the cheese classic Robot Monster, that indicate just how tight the $350,000 budget was.
The story is ostensibly about a cross-country road-race, much like star David Carradine’s next collaboration with Paul Bartel, 1976’s Cannonball. But Bartel and writer Charles B. (Chuck) Griffith, who wrote such Corman classics as Attack Of The Crab Monsters, A Bucket Of Blood and Little Shop Of Horrors, take a futuristic approach to the material and play up the absurdity inherent in its premise— the race isn’t just to the finish or to the death, but also tweaked with points earned by the number of pedestrians mowed down, something later played up in videogames like “Carmageddon.” There’s plenty of gruesome violence — some of it added in pick-ups by Chuck Griffith — but nothing that takes away from the cartoonish tone of the film.
Carradine plays Frankenstein, the infamously scarred survivor/winner of previous Death Races, who’s pitted against the likes of Matilda The Hun (Roberta Collins), Nero The Hero (a fey Martin Kove), Calamity Jane (a very sexy Mary Woronov, worlds away from her role as Miss Togar in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School three years later), and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, played by a very young Sylvester Stallone a year before Rocky. The characters are as outlandish as their names and their cars — the work of Hollywood car customizer extraordinaire Dean Jeffries — just as wild. The plot is a little creaky— a subplot involving ‘60’s Italian exploitation star Harriet Medin as rebel leader “Thomasina Paine” goes nowhere and the romance between Frankenstein and his navigator Annie (Simone Griffeth) is so on-again, off-again that you wonder why someone as grizzled as himself doesn’t just rid himself of her. But there are so many great moments scattered throughout— popular ‘60’s and ‘70’s DJ “The Real Don Steele" (of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and Gremlins fame) as smarmy announcer Junior Bruce; Stallone gaining extra points by running over a pit crew that includes a pre-Animal House John Landis; the nervous yammering of Matilda The Hun’s navigator, Herman The German (played by none other than Love Boat’s “Gopher” and future Iowa congressman Fred Grandy!); and a weird subplot involving a suicide team led by director Bartel’s sister Mindy that's oddly affecting despite being stuck amidst the broad comic violence.
Shout! Factory’s packed-to-the-gills Blu-Ray release of Death Race 2000 lives up to the company’s standards, with two audio commentaries (one featuring Corman and Mary Woronov; the other with editor Tina Hirsch and second-unit director Lewis Teague, who’d later direct the very Cormanesque Alligator and Cujo), trailers, still and poster galleries and a number of strong featurettes. “Playing The Game” is a retrospective from the earlier Buena Vista DVD, with interviews with much of the cast and writer Griffith, who died in 2007 (Bartel died of a heart attack in 2000 while trying to get Bland Ambition, the sequel to his cult hit Eating Raoul, off the ground). New featurettes include “Designing Dystopia,” a look at the art direction and car creation; “Killer Score,” focusing on avant-garde composer Paul Chihara; “Start Your Engines,” where Ib Melchior details his career and the genesis of the project, agreeing that the only way this kind of movie works is through satire; and “Ready To Wear,” an interview with costume designer Jane Rhum that’s alone worth watching for her jaw-dropping story about her first encounter with the mercurial, chain-pot-smoking Carradine. A snippet of an interview with Carradine himself, taken from a retrospective documentary about his movie Sundown: The Vampire In Retreat, is alas the only extra featuring the Death Race 2000 star, who died in 2009. The picture quality, with the transfer taken from the original interpositive, is strong throughout, though the increased resolution only makes the primitive special effects stick out more. But this shouldn’t push you away from Death Race 2000’s many charms; both the film and Shout! Factory’s new Blu-Ray and DVD release hold up remarkably well.
Alas, the same cannot be said of what was originally planned to be the sequel to Death Race 2000, 1978’s so-bad-it’s-almost-great Deathsport. Here, Carradine stars as Kaz Oshay, a loin-cloth-clad leader of a group of quasi-primitive trackers “1000 years after the Neutron Wars.” Carradine and other trackers like ex-Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings are captured by the forces of Lord Zirpola (teeth-gnashing David McLean, a former Marlboro Man) and ex-tracker Ankar Moor (genre vet Richard Lynch, delivering the one decent performance here) and forced into the gladiatorial “Deathsport,” which is essentially Carradine wielding a big clear plastic sword and somehow cutting down bad guys driving souped-up motorcycles. A subplot involving mutants with ping-pong-ball eyes and sharp teeth is involved but it, like the rest of the story, doesn’t make much sense at all.
Death Sport is fun for all the wrong reasons— the acting is wooden, the sets are dime-store cheap, the fight scenes and FX are ludicrous (be on the lookout for the burn gag where a mutant set ablaze accidentally lights his colleague on fire), the movie’s copious explosions often defy the laws of physics, and the film has the most full-frontal female nudity you’ll see outside of late-night Cinemax. The print, cobbled together from theatrical and television prints, is rough, but is the most complete one available.
The real draw here is the commentary by editor Larry Bock and co-director Allan Arkush (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, TV's "Heroes"), the latter of whom was brought aboard after original writer-director Nick Niciphor (credited "Henry Suso" here) delivered a clunky, way-too-short first cut that had to be juiced up to be up not just to Roger Corman’s standards, but feature film standards in general. Arkush’s commentary should be essential listening for all budding film students— it’s a great “do’s and don’ts” primer on how to pull together a film on the lowest budget imaginable. Arkush openly admits that Deathsport is a bad movie (though noting that “no one ever sets out to make a bad movie”) and gleefully reads disparaging comments about it posted on the Internet Movie Database. Arkush had just days to pull together action sequences to beef up the film — the lengthy title sequence and extensive voice-overs helped pad out the run-time — and shows how a single block of an army installation in San Pedro was repeatedly re-dressed (including setting material placed in the foreground on fire) to make it look like a seamless chase sequence instead of the reality of Carradine and his pursuers riding up and down the exact same block over and over.
If Deathsport at least has some camp value, Battletruck (released in the U.S. as Warlords Of The Twenty-First Century with an air-brushed one-sheet that promises more excitement than the film ever delivers) is more of a chore. Filmed in New Zealand in 1981 — almost simultaneously with George Miller’s almost identically-plotted The Road Warrior — and released in America following the success of that film, the movie is a very straightforward oppressed-villagers-versus-post-apocalyptic-bad-guys story, right down to the stalwart-but-blasé tough lead the townspeople get to fight for them. Director Harley Cokliss (Black Moon Rising) means well, but the story is flat and predictable and leads Michael Beck (The Warriors, Xanadu), Annie McEnroe (Wall Street), and a post-Empire Strikes Back/pre-“Cheers” John Ratzenberger act like they’re bored with the proceedings; there’s no sense of urgency or immediacy even after Ratzenberger’s camp is decimated by bland, one-note villain Straker (James Wainwright). Even the eponymous Battletruck, which looks a lot like George Romero’s “Dead Reckoning” vehicle from Land Of The Dead, is dull; there’s no sense of visual flair to be found here, even despite Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission, The Reader) behind the camera. To be fair to the filmmakers, however, the full-frame video-sourced transfer, full of artifacts and video noise, is decidedly sub-par. Cokliss takes a very earnest approach, which drains the film of the kind of campy fun which makes Deathsport such a slice of enjoyable cheese; even Cokliss' commentary is understated. He’s an exploitation filmmaker who makes the fatal mistake of thinking what he’s doing is making self-important Art instead of having a good time with what he's got. Battletruck has its moments — the stuntwork is surprisingly good — but it's definitely the poor cousin next to the hugely enjoyable Death Race 2000 and even the flawed-but-silly Deathsport.
You can buy Death Race 2000 from Amazon or directly from Shout! Factory.
You can buy the double-bill of Deathsport/Battletruck from Amazon or directly from Shout! Factory.
Labor Day is the last get-out-there-and-drive holiday of the year — the traditional end of Summer — and what better way to celebrate than with a few pedal-to-the-metal exploitation movies from the Roger Corman archives? While we’re still waiting on reissues of such rubber-burning drive-in staples like Grand Theft Auto and Eat My Dust!, Shout! Factory has released the definitive version of one of Corman’s ‘70’s best, Death Race 2000, along with a double-bill of Deathsport and Battletruck.
1975’s Death Race 2000 is, without apology or hyperbole, a stone-cold classic. Adapted from Ib Melchior’s straight-faced short story, “The Racer,” the movie takes a wildly satiric approach to the source material, turning what could have been a grim and on-the-nose story — see the 2008 remake for proof — into a rollicking action-comedy, full of wild characters, clever stunt-work and glaringly obvious matte paintings, courtesy of Corman’s in-house effects man Jack Rabin, whose career in Hollywood stretched from TV’s “Gunsmoke” to the cheese classic Robot Monster, that indicate just how tight the $350,000 budget was.
The story is ostensibly about a cross-country road-race, much like star David Carradine’s next collaboration with Paul Bartel, 1976’s Cannonball. But Bartel and writer Charles B. (Chuck) Griffith, who wrote such Corman classics as Attack Of The Crab Monsters, A Bucket Of Blood and Little Shop Of Horrors, take a futuristic approach to the material and play up the absurdity inherent in its premise— the race isn’t just to the finish or to the death, but also tweaked with points earned by the number of pedestrians mowed down, something later played up in videogames like “Carmageddon.” There’s plenty of gruesome violence — some of it added in pick-ups by Chuck Griffith — but nothing that takes away from the cartoonish tone of the film.
Carradine plays Frankenstein, the infamously scarred survivor/winner of previous Death Races, who’s pitted against the likes of Matilda The Hun (Roberta Collins), Nero The Hero (a fey Martin Kove), Calamity Jane (a very sexy Mary Woronov, worlds away from her role as Miss Togar in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School three years later), and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, played by a very young Sylvester Stallone a year before Rocky. The characters are as outlandish as their names and their cars — the work of Hollywood car customizer extraordinaire Dean Jeffries — just as wild. The plot is a little creaky— a subplot involving ‘60’s Italian exploitation star Harriet Medin as rebel leader “Thomasina Paine” goes nowhere and the romance between Frankenstein and his navigator Annie (Simone Griffeth) is so on-again, off-again that you wonder why someone as grizzled as himself doesn’t just rid himself of her. But there are so many great moments scattered throughout— popular ‘60’s and ‘70’s DJ “The Real Don Steele" (of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and Gremlins fame) as smarmy announcer Junior Bruce; Stallone gaining extra points by running over a pit crew that includes a pre-Animal House John Landis; the nervous yammering of Matilda The Hun’s navigator, Herman The German (played by none other than Love Boat’s “Gopher” and future Iowa congressman Fred Grandy!); and a weird subplot involving a suicide team led by director Bartel’s sister Mindy that's oddly affecting despite being stuck amidst the broad comic violence.
Shout! Factory’s packed-to-the-gills Blu-Ray release of Death Race 2000 lives up to the company’s standards, with two audio commentaries (one featuring Corman and Mary Woronov; the other with editor Tina Hirsch and second-unit director Lewis Teague, who’d later direct the very Cormanesque Alligator and Cujo), trailers, still and poster galleries and a number of strong featurettes. “Playing The Game” is a retrospective from the earlier Buena Vista DVD, with interviews with much of the cast and writer Griffith, who died in 2007 (Bartel died of a heart attack in 2000 while trying to get Bland Ambition, the sequel to his cult hit Eating Raoul, off the ground). New featurettes include “Designing Dystopia,” a look at the art direction and car creation; “Killer Score,” focusing on avant-garde composer Paul Chihara; “Start Your Engines,” where Ib Melchior details his career and the genesis of the project, agreeing that the only way this kind of movie works is through satire; and “Ready To Wear,” an interview with costume designer Jane Rhum that’s alone worth watching for her jaw-dropping story about her first encounter with the mercurial, chain-pot-smoking Carradine. A snippet of an interview with Carradine himself, taken from a retrospective documentary about his movie Sundown: The Vampire In Retreat, is alas the only extra featuring the Death Race 2000 star, who died in 2009. The picture quality, with the transfer taken from the original interpositive, is strong throughout, though the increased resolution only makes the primitive special effects stick out more. But this shouldn’t push you away from Death Race 2000’s many charms; both the film and Shout! Factory’s new Blu-Ray and DVD release hold up remarkably well.
Alas, the same cannot be said of what was originally planned to be the sequel to Death Race 2000, 1978’s so-bad-it’s-almost-great Deathsport. Here, Carradine stars as Kaz Oshay, a loin-cloth-clad leader of a group of quasi-primitive trackers “1000 years after the Neutron Wars.” Carradine and other trackers like ex-Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings are captured by the forces of Lord Zirpola (teeth-gnashing David McLean, a former Marlboro Man) and ex-tracker Ankar Moor (genre vet Richard Lynch, delivering the one decent performance here) and forced into the gladiatorial “Deathsport,” which is essentially Carradine wielding a big clear plastic sword and somehow cutting down bad guys driving souped-up motorcycles. A subplot involving mutants with ping-pong-ball eyes and sharp teeth is involved but it, like the rest of the story, doesn’t make much sense at all.
Death Sport is fun for all the wrong reasons— the acting is wooden, the sets are dime-store cheap, the fight scenes and FX are ludicrous (be on the lookout for the burn gag where a mutant set ablaze accidentally lights his colleague on fire), the movie’s copious explosions often defy the laws of physics, and the film has the most full-frontal female nudity you’ll see outside of late-night Cinemax. The print, cobbled together from theatrical and television prints, is rough, but is the most complete one available.
The real draw here is the commentary by editor Larry Bock and co-director Allan Arkush (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, TV's "Heroes"), the latter of whom was brought aboard after original writer-director Nick Niciphor (credited "Henry Suso" here) delivered a clunky, way-too-short first cut that had to be juiced up to be up not just to Roger Corman’s standards, but feature film standards in general. Arkush’s commentary should be essential listening for all budding film students— it’s a great “do’s and don’ts” primer on how to pull together a film on the lowest budget imaginable. Arkush openly admits that Deathsport is a bad movie (though noting that “no one ever sets out to make a bad movie”) and gleefully reads disparaging comments about it posted on the Internet Movie Database. Arkush had just days to pull together action sequences to beef up the film — the lengthy title sequence and extensive voice-overs helped pad out the run-time — and shows how a single block of an army installation in San Pedro was repeatedly re-dressed (including setting material placed in the foreground on fire) to make it look like a seamless chase sequence instead of the reality of Carradine and his pursuers riding up and down the exact same block over and over.
If Deathsport at least has some camp value, Battletruck (released in the U.S. as Warlords Of The Twenty-First Century with an air-brushed one-sheet that promises more excitement than the film ever delivers) is more of a chore. Filmed in New Zealand in 1981 — almost simultaneously with George Miller’s almost identically-plotted The Road Warrior — and released in America following the success of that film, the movie is a very straightforward oppressed-villagers-versus-post-apocalyptic-bad-guys story, right down to the stalwart-but-blasé tough lead the townspeople get to fight for them. Director Harley Cokliss (Black Moon Rising) means well, but the story is flat and predictable and leads Michael Beck (The Warriors, Xanadu), Annie McEnroe (Wall Street), and a post-Empire Strikes Back/pre-“Cheers” John Ratzenberger act like they’re bored with the proceedings; there’s no sense of urgency or immediacy even after Ratzenberger’s camp is decimated by bland, one-note villain Straker (James Wainwright). Even the eponymous Battletruck, which looks a lot like George Romero’s “Dead Reckoning” vehicle from Land Of The Dead, is dull; there’s no sense of visual flair to be found here, even despite Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission, The Reader) behind the camera. To be fair to the filmmakers, however, the full-frame video-sourced transfer, full of artifacts and video noise, is decidedly sub-par. Cokliss takes a very earnest approach, which drains the film of the kind of campy fun which makes Deathsport such a slice of enjoyable cheese; even Cokliss' commentary is understated. He’s an exploitation filmmaker who makes the fatal mistake of thinking what he’s doing is making self-important Art instead of having a good time with what he's got. Battletruck has its moments — the stuntwork is surprisingly good — but it's definitely the poor cousin next to the hugely enjoyable Death Race 2000 and even the flawed-but-silly Deathsport.
You can buy Death Race 2000 from Amazon or directly from Shout! Factory.
You can buy the double-bill of Deathsport/Battletruck from Amazon or directly from Shout! Factory.
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