Death Race 2000, a frightening tale of things to come?

Since entering college, that refuge of higher learning and experimentation, I have gained the opportunity to expand my repertoire of a category I have long been a fan off, namely, B-movies. I can, in all honesty say that Roger Corman's masterpiece, "Death Race 2000," is one of the greatest B-movies ever made. Combining the fine (wink wink) acting abilities of David Carradine and a young Sylvester Stalone, "Death Race 2000" meets every requirement of a B-movie, namely sex, violence and, more sex.

Set in the not-so-distant present, "Death Race 2000" tells the story of an an America which has decided to cleverly combine euthanasia, genocide, homicide and race car driving in the form of the Death Race, a cross-country race where the winner is determined by not only speed, but the amount of innocent people run over with total impunity. Through this form of entertainment the government is not only able to keep down the rising population, but provide family entertainment as well. In this way the government is able to kill two birds, or in this case pedestrians, with one stone.

The hero of the film, a strange and mysterious driver known as Frankenstein (Carradine), finds himself paired with an intelligent young woman who just happens to be a spy of the Resistance force. Of course the two of them get it on, as is expected of a Roger Corman film, and of course the two of them run over a plethora of innocent people, even driving a mile through a corn-field to mow one guy down. As you see these two committing atrocity after atrocity, you can't help but root for them, there's is a Bonnie and Clyde meets Jules and Vincent type attitude between the two of them.

Cinematically the movie stinks. The film work is grainy, the dialogue is laughable, the sound is bad, the special effects are corny and the direction is almost non-existent, and yet it's still one fo the best movies i've ever seen. There's a happy, corny, joyous, revolting feeling to the movie that makes you forgive it's obvious technical faults. Besides, somewhere in the dark recesses of most of our brains, we've wanted to just run someone over, just for the heck of it.

Overall "Death Race 2000" is raunchy, badly acted, poorly directed and thoroughly entertaining. If you haven't seen this film yet, do so, as quickly as you can, just don't stand out in the middle of the street when you go to pick it up.