Death Race 2000

Anna’s Staff Pick!

It should come as a surprise to no one that Anna picked this vintage 1975 sleazebucket production from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, loaded with sex, violence, and general vulgarity, but orchestrated by one of the most interesting personalities then operating in the exploitation field, Paul Bartel (director of the notorious Private Parts and, later, Eating Raoul). The story, about a road race in the not-too-distant future for which the drivers are given points for running down pedestrians, becomes an elaborate and telling fantasy about our peculiar popular entertainments. Fine work carved from minimal materials. With David Carradine, Mary Woronov and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. – David Kehr, Chicago Reader.