Paul W.S. Anderson’s reboot of the Corman classic ditches pretty much everything from the original, but still ends up being a perfectly fun car carnage action programmer
Welcome to Reb00t! A series where I dig deep through the 2000’s to find all the horror remakes that we were inundated with over that weirdly bleak decade. Sometimes they’ll be good, sometimes they’ll be terrible, sometimes they’ll be great. In a few, rare times, they’ll be better than the original! These are all my personal views, obviously, so feel free to tell me I’m insane in the comments.
This week, I’ll be revisiting both 1975’s Death Race 2000 and the 2008 remake, Death Race! From the price sticker of my incredibly old Blu-Ray, it appears I once paid $40 dollars for the remake. Hope the revisit is worth it!
Released during the peak of New World Pictures, the original Death Race 2000 was one of the most profitable films of Roger Corman’s career, grossing $4 million dollars for the young independent studio. Death Race 2000 is a film of its time, released in the years right after the Watergate Scandal, and the final official year of the Vietnam War, Death Race 2000 envisions an America that has only gone steadily downhill in the preceding 25 years. The world is on life support, autocratic rule reigns, and the last remaining entertainment for the masses is violent and cruel.
The Death Race is a cross country trek, the combatants looking to both go from shore to shore the fastest, while also racking up as many points as possible by killing any civilians they come across in their journey. Death Race 2000 is a bleak satire, showing us a vision of America that is not only cruel, but tacky. The lowest denominators have won out, and what is left is terrible reality TV and starvation. It’s a mean film, but also a genuinely funny one, whose message, an America gone dumb, sadly echoes far into the future.
As is surprisingly common of Corman productions in this era, the cast is shockingly stacked with future stars and character actors. At lead is David Carradine, essentially walking off the set of Kung Fu to be in this, but you’ve also got a baby face Sylvester Stallone, a year before Rocky would make him a superstar, as well as Mary Woronov, Martin Kove, and Paul Bartel (who also directed).
It also, arguably, has one of the most “pulled punches” endings I’ve ever seen (spoilers for a 50 year old movie ahead). There is a very clear setup to how this is all supposed to end; Frankenstein, the winning combatant, has plans to kill the American President, and decides to have his navigator, a member of the resistance, dress as him to plunge the knife into his heart. This plan being unknown to the resistance, they plan their own assassination, that of Frankenstein, at the championship banquet. We are set up for what is very clearly a nihilist ‘70s ending, where good intentions cause the downfall of revolution and the tightening of fascism.
But, instead of that ending, the navigator gets a flesh wound from the assassin’s bullet, the real Frankenstein comes in to save the day, and then they become Mr. and Mrs. President, for some reason, and rescind all the fascist policies. It’s a real weird, bubblegum ending to a pretty mean spirited satire, and I’ve always wondered if it was a case of satirizing the common-at-the-time dour, defeatist endings that was popular at the time, or if Roger Corman got flashbacks from The Intruder’s box office, and made sure the ending left audiences with a smile. Either way, real fucking weird.
33 years later, the world was once again dealing with a corrupt government and an unwinnable war. The people needed a new Death Race. And who else to give it to ‘em but Paul W.S. Anderson!
Stripped of pretty much all its satire and political messaging, 2008’s Death Race is just an out-and-out action film. Sure, it still takes place in a dystopian future, where prisoner death battles are now big money, but any sort of political bent is abandoned for Jason Statham mugging and flexing, and Tyrese Gibson in one of those rare “crazy tough dude” roles he used to play before the F&F series made him a bit of a clown (no shade; goofy Tyrese is best Tyrese).
Still, even with all the politics stripped out, Death Race still rules? Paul W.S. Anderson has made a name for himself in that specific DTV action space, and Death Race delivers. It’s got rad car chases, practical effects and explosions, and just the right level of mugging and sneering from the cast to make for a great melodramatic heroes vs. villains setup.
The action is where Death Race shines. While the original had a minimal budget (it being a Corman picture, after all), the remake makes sure to turn the car carnage all the way up, as we watch cars explode, get crushed under mechanical traps, and thrown halfway across the race track. In a particularly memorable sequence that involved both practical and digital effects, an 18-wheeler assault vehicle, dubbed “The Dreadnaut”, crashes into a bollard, sending weapons, car parts, and bodies everywhere. It’s exactly the type of action you want to see in a film called “Death Race”.
It also packs a kinda perfect cast for this type of B-movie. There’s obviously Statham nearing his prime, and a pre F&F fame Gibson, but we’ve also got Ian McShane chewing on every piece of scenery with that Mahogany voice of his, as well as a baby faced Jason Clarke who plays a convincing shithead correctional officer. The real fun, though, is in Joan Allen, playing the nefarious prison warden. What could’ve been a slumming paycheck gig, Allen seems to be reveling in the chance to play someone truly evil, using her quiet demeanor to portray someone who is completely convinced of their superiority, and their ability to always come out on top.
Death Race 2000 and Death Race are both films very much of their times. The original is a satire that leans into an audience that wants to see the insanity of their own reality warped in a cartoonish, if not vulgar, way. The remake is a mean spirited action film that understands that an audience that lived through 9/11 and two wars wanted their action gritty and a bit cruel. They are both worth checking out, even if they are two vastly different films.
