Death Race 2000 (1975)

In a dystopian future, a cross country automobile race requires contestants to run down innocent pedestrians to gain points that are tallied based on each kill's brutality. 

Death Race 2000 is a 1975 cult action film directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone.  The screenplay is based on the short story The Racer by Ib Melchior.

Let me go ahead and bottom line it.  This film is awesome. Here we have a murderous trans-continental road race. The race has five participants - Frankenstein (Carradine), Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Stallone), Calamity Jane (Woronov), Mathilda the Hunn, and Nero the Hero.  They are joined by navigators where the goal is to kill as many pedestrians as possible along the way. Stallone is particularly amusing, and gets great support from his sidekick. Carradine is typically bizarre, and even parodies himself with a few poorly choreographed kung fu techniques during his absurd fight scene with Stallone. If one thing is disappointing, it is the fight scene in the middle of the movie between these two. I mean, it's Kung Fu vs. Rocky! That should have been an awesome fight.  Roger Corman produced this film and did I mention..... it's fucking awesome.

It's Frankenstein.....

The film delivers plenty of over-the-top gory carnage and a pleasing smattering of tasty female nudity.  It also pokes fun at fascist politicians, cruelty as entertainment, inept revolutionaries, mindless fan worship, the duplicitous and manipulative media, and America's wholehearted affinity for extreme violence. Although it's a cheesy movie, it never takes itself seriously and is just plain stupid fun! All in all, "Death Race 2000" is an immensely enjoyable experience, which is truly well-deserving of its cult classic status.

Cut It Mick....

 Trivia:

The speech mannerisms of the character Harold parody those of Howard Cosell. 

According to Roger Corman, several of the custom cars featured in the movie were later sold to car museums for considerably more than it cost to build them.

 The film retains only the basic premises of the original short story by Ib Melchior; the characters and incidents are all different. The story focuses on just one mechanic and driver, and one anti-racer. In particular, it does not include the President or the special driver Frankenstein.

The racetrack used for the opening track and grandstand scenes is the Ontario Motor Speedway near Los Angeles. 

The car in which President Frankenstein and Annie drive away after their wedding is a Richard Oaks Nova kit-car, actually based on the Volkswagen Beetle chassis (but obviously not the body). These were available in kit form for many years starting in the mid-1970s.

And there's 20 points for Frankenstein.

 Several of the cars in the movie are re-bodied Volkswagens, including a VW Karmann-Ghia (Matilda's Buzz Bomb). The white Resistance Army car that chases Frankenstein very briefly before crashing and blowing up is a 1965 or 1966 Ford Mustang. Nero's car was based on a Fiat 850 Spider, and Frankenstein's on a Chevrolet Corvette.

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. 

Both Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine did much of their own driving. In addition, producer Roger Corman drove in scenes that were shot on public streets, since the custom-built cars used in the movie were not street legal and the film's stunt drivers did not want to be caught driving them by the police.

 Mary Woronov, who plays Calamity Jane, did not know how to drive a car, so a stunt driver did all the actual driving for her in the movie. For close-ups, Woronov sat in a car towed behind a truck with a camera crew riding in it.

The role of Frankenstein was originally offered to Peter Fonda, who considered the movie too ridiculous for words. 

Explaining why he took the Frankenstein role, David Carradine says, "I started that picture two weeks after I walked off the Kung Fu set, and that was essentially my image, the 'Kung Fu' character, and a lot of people still believe I'm that guy. The idea actually was: No. 1, if you walk off a television series, you better do a movie right away or you might never get to do one. And the second thing was to do something right away that would create the image of a monster to get rid of the image of that little Chinese guy that I'd been playing for four years. And, you know, it did kick-start my movie career."

Was theatrically re-released in France in the mid-80s with its title changed from the literal translation "La Course a la Mort de l'an 2000" to a more evasive "Les Seigneurs de la Route" (meaning "Lords of the Road"). This time, David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone shared the top billing on the posters. 

David Carradine refused to wear leather, so costume designer Jane Ruhm had to make Carradine's iconic black outfit out of another fabric that looked just like leather.

Director Paul Bartel had Jane Ruhm design the opening titles using money from the budget without getting Roger Corman's permission first. 

The cars didn't run most of the time, so they had to be pushed down hills in order to get them to move. Moreover, the cameras used to film the cars were undercranked in order to perpetuate the illusion that they were moving faster.

Sylvester Stallone wrote some of his own dialogue. 

The opening sequence was shot at an actual racetrack in between races.