DVD of the Week: "Death Race 2000" (Paul Bartel, 1975)

This selection is somewhat self-explanatory – the death of an important actor or actress is always an immediate call to go back and see more of their work. In this case, you might as well start with the nasty fun of the 1975 cult film Death Race 2000. Sure its a bit dated now, but anything that ever received a zero star review from Roger Ebert is worth your time in one way or another.

Even though I prefer the more recent incarnation (which featured a voice over cameo by Carradine), Death Race 2000 features David Carradine in a highly memorable performance as the unbeatable Frankenstein. Taking place in the year 2000 (funny how things work out, eh?) the United States has been destroyed by a financial crisis and has become a fascist police state. The Transcontinental Road Race, a violent race across the country where you get points for hitting specific groups (and even more for pedestrians!), is a main source of entertainment for the blood thirsty citizens. Some crazy shit goes down between Frankenstein and his rival Machine Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone). Cars wreck. Things explode. And the State is taken over by, well, Frankenstein. Long live Le Cinema!

Not all that sleek or smooth, Death Race 2000 serves its 70s grunge well. And although its not his more “refined” performance, Carradine is commanding as ever.

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Reviews In Brief: "Death Race" (Paul WS Anderson, 2008)

Updating the 1975 Roger Corman cult film Death Race 2000 and building on the premonitions of Network and The Running Man, the new Death Race places the viewer in a strange predicament between unwanted involvement and blood thirsty consumerism. On the one hand, assuming you are actually in the multiplex, everyone becomes inherently involved in the morally and politically corrupt “watch until they drop” mentality that most self-conscious liberals (including, from the looks of other reviews, most professional film critics) distance themselves from. On the other hand, Death Race constructs itself not only as a film, but, oftentimes, as the actual online event where hits, and our pulses, go up as prisoners continue to die in increasingly violent ways. Problematic? Maybe. But you’ve got to wonder at some point, in the midst of this 90 minute action sequence, who the hell cares?

Jensen Ames, an ex-con framed for the murder of his wife, is sent to Terminal Island where the most popular sport on the planet takes place: a car race where inmates kill one another for victory, promised freedom if they can win four races. Ames, a former driver, begins piecing together the mystery when he is offered the chance to drive as the masked Frankenstein, who won three races prior to his death at the hands of Machine Gun Joe. The public doesn't know that Frankenstein is dead, and he keeps the pay-per-view ratings soaring for the evil people behind the prison. Death Race puts its chips all-in, lights the chips on fire, and taunts the audience to do the same. In a film with hysterically egregious PBR product placement, constant machine gun fire out of hummers, semis, and Mustangs equipped with flamethrowers, napalm, and rocket launchers, all there to increase the varying possibilities of destruction, not to mention that Joan Allen (!) is the evil henchwomen behind it all, its not so hard to do. The shit doesn’t just hit the fan in Death Race...it bitch slaps it.

by James Hansen


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DVD of the Week: "Bucket of Blood" (Roger Corman, 1959)

Roger Corman’s satirical horror film, A Bucket of Blood (1959), presents an oftentimes disturbing and always hilarious parody of 1950s Beatnik culture. A young philistine, Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), is transformed into a Bohemian icon after he covers his landlady’s dead cat in sculpting plaster to hide the fact that he accidentally killed it but then has the plastered cat mistaken for a work of art. Pressured by the assumption of his creative genius and a growing reputation in the high-falutin’ café cliques, Walter moves to human figures and quickly turns homicidal in the name of preserving the haunting appearance of death described in his “sculptures” and continuing his artistic success. Scripted by Corman’s fellow B-movie master Charles B. Griffith, this surprising film lampoons cultural pretension and makes a mockery of upper-crust artsy types, shooting an arrow through the heart of the 1950s San Francisco zeitgeist.

Full of laughs and campy shocks, the film is a one-of-a-kind mixture of technically proficient filmmaking, witty humor, and macabre conceit. It’s the sort of film that might feel at home alongside Mary Harron’s American Psycho (1999) – in fact, the two would make an excellent double feature. Both films are wonderfully and unusually entertaining and provide scathing insights into social phenomena integral to understanding a certain period in American culture. What American Psycho does for 80s yuppies, A Bucket of Blood does for 50s hipsters.

by Brandon Colvin

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