Sylvester Stallone Sci-Fi Classic Death Race 2000 Now Free to Stream on Tubi

Roger Corman spent 70 straight years as an independent filmmaker between 1926 and 2024. In that time, he produced or directed well over 500 movies and mentored a murderer’s row of Hollywood directors ranging from Francis Ford Coppola to Ron Howard to James Cameron. He also gave early roles to Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and William Shatner. If you have ever seen a movie made in America in the last 50 years, it is to some significant extent the product of an environment that Roger Corman helped to create.

That said, even Corman would have probably told you that not too many of his movies are what one might call good. Corman specialized in fast, cheap productions that took full advantage of any and every corner he could cut. Most of them were proper B-movies in the original sense of the term, in that they existed to fill schedules and take up space. Actual quality was a distant secondary consideration. It is faster to talk about the movies in Corman filmography that are actually still worth watching, and 1975’s Death Race 2000, directed by Paul Bartel of Eating Raoul, sits right at the top of that list. It is a black comedy about murder as entertainment that has aged surprisingly well, and it is available for screening right now via Tubi.

Bread and circuses

Death Race 2000 is set 21 years after the World Crash of ’79, and America has been rebuilt into a dictatorship. The most popular sport in the country is the Transcontinental Road Race, where drivers in customized muscle cars race across the country for fame and fortune. Anyone they happen to kill along the way, from random bystanders to members of their own pit crew, is worth bonus points towards each racer’s final score.

The returning champion and odds-on favorite in the 2000 race is a man known only as Frankenstein, played by David Carradine. His competition includes former gangster Machine Gun Joe, played by a young Sylvester Stallone, and Calamity Jane Kelly, played by Mary Woronov of The Devil’s Rejects. They also face interference from a revolutionary movement that wants to disrupt the race as a strike against the current American dictatorship.

It almost takes longer to summarize Death Race 2000 than it does to watch it. Despite its weird dystopian setting, large cast of characters, and relatively elaborate concept, Death Race 2000 is only 80 minutes long. It features just enough exposition to get by and spends the rest of its runtime on stunt driving, black comedy, and vehicular homicide. The budget is low and the concept is crazy, but it gets by on momentum and adrenaline.

The black comedy is arguably the heart of the piece. Death Race 2000 does not have time to dwell on any single part of its setting, but its scenario is built on a cheerful acceptance of murder that would be chilling if it were not handled so matter-of-factly. Nurses wheel elderly people into the middle of the race path for Euthanasia Day, a man with a matador cape deliberately plays chicken with Jane car, and fans of the race choose to sacrifice themselves beneath the drivers wheels, all accompanied by running commentary from some of the most vapid television hosts ever put on film. If it were not ridiculous, it would be quietly terrifying.

Death Race 2000 was not reviewed well upon release. Gene Siskel called it the goofiest and sleaziest film he had seen in the last five years. On the other hand, the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called it an ideal drive-in movie. Subsequently, video rentals and word of mouth made Death Race 2000 into a cult classic.

That has led to Death Race 2000 exercising a certain influence over later pop culture, whether you knew it was there or not. Video games like Carmageddon and Twisted Metal obviously copied its homework straight across, but there is some of the DNA of Death Race in the next 50 years of murder-as-entertainment dystopian fiction. Wherever there is a questionable plot about adults forcing teenagers to kill one another in order to amuse the masses, Corman and his movie are there in spirit.

Corman himself eventually made a sequel, 2017’s Death Race 2050, that is nowhere near as famous as the original. There is also a 2008 remake by Paul W.S. Anderson, director of Resident Evil, which stars Jason Statham and spawned three sequels. These are all watchable in a schlocky sort of way, but they do not have the staying power of the 1975 original.

Some jokes in Death Race 2000 have faded in relevance over time. The television hosts in particular come off as parodies of public figures that have since ceased to be relevant, like the person who appears to be doing an SNL-tier Walter Cronkite impression. However, a few could have been written yesterday to mock TikTok stunts and reality television. It is worth every second of its 80-minute runtime. Check it out.

Death Race 2000 is available to stream for free on Tubi.

Source: Polygon