'Death Race 2000'

David Carradine stars in this suped up futuristic NASCAR race that is part Frogger and part 'Mad Max'. 'Death Race 2000' is a cult classic that was remade in 2008 by Paul W.S. Anderson and starred Jason Statham. This movie is as campy as movies can get and I pitched a tent several times during it. 'Death Race 2000' is set in the future when the country has gone under and even the president is scared to stay within it. It's here we get to take part in the Transcontinental Road Race, a murderous cross country race from New York to L.A. where anything and everything goes. The problem is, apparently the writers couldn't think of any possibilities whenever "Anything and Everything" could go down. Sly Stallone plays a character called Machine Gun Joe and his roadster has 2 big machine guns on the front of it, however, they might as well been hood ornaments because they never fired. Carridine plays Frankenstein, a character so bruised and battered that he must wear a mask to cover his hideous face. This movie came out 2 years before 'Star Wars' and I'm certain they stole the concept for Darth Vader from Paul Bartel's portayal of Frankenstein. In the film the racers get rewarded points based on how many people they run down in their cars. They have an outlandish scoring system that rewards them more for taking out the very young (toddler age) and the very old. This movie was very bad, but a film like this provides blueprints for up and coming directors so they can take an existing thought and fill in those blanks in such a way to truly enhance a story for a new generation. This movie reminded me alot of 'Rollerball' in the fact that both films have an amazing concept that just sparks the imagintion and then both had action packed remakes, but the originals were both lifeless and dull. Don't get fooled by this one. End result is 1 1/2 out of 5.