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Paul Bartel (USA, 1938) was mostly an actor but he also directed some
independent films, starting with shorts such as
The Secret Cinema (1966).
His films include:
the farcical horror movie Private Parts (1972),
the satirical dystopian movie Death Race 2000 (1975) for Roger Corman (almost a parody of Rollerball with political overtones),
Cannonball (1976),
the black comedy Eating Raoul (1982),
the screwball comedy Not for Publication (1984),
the comic western Lust in the Dust (1985),
The Longshot (1986),
the black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989),
and
Shelf Life (1993).
Death Race 2000 (1975) is as amateurish as it gets.
The world in 2000 is ruled by the US president/dictator, who lives in Beijing's
Summer Palace. Every year the government sponsors
the "Transcontinental Road Race" in which dare-devil drivers race across the North American continent in custom sport cars and get points for killing innocent pedestrians.
The television announcer Junior Bruce introduces the five teams of the current edition, each made of a driver and a navigator. Two of the drivers are women (and their navigators are men).
The crowd is especially thrilled to witness the return of the legendary
Frankenstein, who wears a black cape and a black mask to hide the many
disfiguring injuries of his past. He is pared with a beautiful young woman, Annie, as his navigator.
Frankenstein is hated by the gangster-like "Machine Gun".
There are rebels, led by an old woman, Thomasina, who are planning to sabotage the race.
The race begins and soon one of the driver gets blown up by a bomb disguised as a baby.
Junior is instruted to downplay the accident but Thomasina's rebels manage to
hijack national television and she spoke directly to the nation about her desire
to liberate the country from the dictator and denounces the race as evil.
Frankenstein and Machine Gun kill innocents right and left, accumulating points.
Frankenstein confesses to Annie that there is nothing wrong with his body: all parts are in perfect conditions.
The rebels manage to kill the two female drivers, first sending one down a cliff and then blowing up the other one with a landmine.
Now there are only two teams left: Machine Gun and his girlfriend, and Frankenstein and Annie. Frankenstein realizes that Annie is actually a spy working for the rebels to send him into a trap, but she quickly becomes his lover and assistant.
We also learn that Annie is Thomasina's
granddaughter and the rebels have no intention of getting her killed.
And we learn that Frankenstein is merely a government-appointed driver, replacing the Frankenstein who died: the mask simply serves the purpose of making people believe that it's always the same Frankenstein surviving all the accidents when in fact it's a whole bunch of Frankensteins trained to replace whoever gets killed.
Frankenstein confesses to Annie that he wants to win the race so that he will have a chance to shake the president's hand, and he is hiding a grenada in his
prosthetic hand.
The grenade ends up being useful when a desperate Machine Gun attacks Frankenstein: Annie uses it to blow up Machine Gun's car.
Frankenstein survives repeated attempts by the rebels to stop him and kidnap him and reaches the end of the race. As he walks to the podium, Frankenstein is shot by a rebel... but it is not Frankenstein wearing the costume, it is Annie, who
nonetheless survives. Frankenstein takes advantage of the commotion and drives into the podium, killing the president/ dictator.
Some time later
Frankenstein has been appointed the new president and is marrying Annie, appointing Thomasina as prime minister.
Junior, the announcer, is angry live on television that Frankenstein wants to abolish the race, and Frankenstein simply runs him over.
The crowd cheers this new killing.
(Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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