The Next Reel Film Podcast

“A perfect hit! And no pain for the target. Too bad the guy was only 38; just two years older, he'd have been worth three times the points.”
Roger Corman's Vision of a Dystopian Future
In 1974, Roger Corman learned about Norman Jewison's upcoming film Rollerball and decided to capitalize on its publicity by producing his own futuristic sports film. Based on a short story by Ib Melchior inspired by his experiences at the Indianapolis 500, Corman brought on Paul Bartel to direct what would become a satirical commentary on violence in entertainment and totalitarian control. With a budget of just $300,000, Corman assembled a cast including David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone to create this violent vision of America's future. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we continue the Roger Corman series with a conversation about Bartel’s 1975 film Death Race 2000.
Racing Through the Film's Key Points
The film's unique blend of dark comedy and social commentary creates an engaging discussion about its place in both exploitation cinema and political satire. We explore how Corman's influence shaped the film's development, particularly his push to emphasize comedy and include gratuitous elements that became his trademark. The movie's transformation from a serious script to a more satirical piece showcases Corman's understanding of what would appeal to audiences.
Additional Pit Stops in Our Discussion
• The cultural context of car-themed movies in the 1970s and their connection to American car culture
• David Carradine's performance as Frankenstein and whether he was the right choice for the role
• The film's commentary on media manipulation and fan culture
• How the limited budget affected the scale of the cross-country race
• The surprising franchise legacy, including multiple sequels and remakes
• Tak Fujimoto's cinematography and how it enhanced the racing sequences
A Victory Lap Worth Taking
Despite its low budget and exploitation elements, Death Race 2000 succeeds as both entertainment and satire. While some critics initially dismissed it, including Roger Ebert who gave it zero stars before later acknowledging its merits, the film has earned its place as a cult classic. Both hosts thoroughly enjoyed the film, with Andy giving it four stars and Pete giving it three stars with a heart on Letterboxd. We have a great time talking about it, so check it out then tune in. The Next Reel – when the movie ends, our conversation begins!
Film Sundries
This is a member bonus episode. We'd love it if you became a member to support our show, but you’d love it because of everything you get. We have monthly member bonus episodes that only members can access. You also get other monthly member bonus episodes, access to members-only Discord channels, and early releases for every episode. Plus, no ads! And you get to vote on the movies we discuss in our members only episodes! What can we say? It pays to be a member. Learn more about supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast through your own membership — visit TruStory FM.

Creators and Guests

Host
Andy Nelson
With over 25 years of experience in film, television, and commercial production, Andy has cultivated an enduring passion for storytelling in all its forms. His enthusiasm for the craft began in his youth when he and his friends started making their own movies in grade school. After studying film at the University of Colorado Boulder, Andy wrote, directed, and produced several short films while also producing indie features like Netherbeast Incorporated and Ambush at Dark Canyon. Andy has been on the production team for award-winning documentaries such as The Imposter and The Joe Show, as well as TV shows like Investigation Discovery’s Deadly Dentists and Nat Geo’s Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers. Over a decade ago, he started podcasting with Pete and immediately embraced the medium. Now, as a partner at TruStory FM, Andy looks forward to more storytelling through their wide variety of shows. Throughout his career, Andy has passed on his knowledge by teaching young minds the crafts of screenwriting, producing, editing, and podcasting. Outside of work, Andy is a family man who enjoys a good martini, a cold beer, a nice cup o’ joe. And always, of course, a great movie.
Host
Pete Wright
#Movies, #ADHD, & #Podcasting • Co-founder @trustory.fm🎥 The Next Reel Family of #Film Podcasts @thenextreel.com🎙️ Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast @takecontroladhd.com📖 Co-author of Unapologetically ADHD • https://unapologeticallyadhdbook.com

What is The Next Reel Film Podcast?

A show about movies and how they connect.
We love movies. We’ve been talking about them, one movie a week, since 2011. It’s a lot of movies, that’s true, but we’re passionate about origins and performance, directors and actors, themes and genres, and so much more. So join the community, and let’s hear about your favorite movies, too.
When the movie ends, our conversation begins.

Pete Wright:

I'm Pete Wright. And I'm Andy Nelson. Welcome to the next reel. When the movie ends, our conversation begins. Death race 2000 is over.

Pete Wright:

You know, mirror, some people might think you're cute, but me, I think you're one very large baked potato.

Trailer:

The year 2000. America is a vast speedway. People line the streets to witness the greatest drivers on Earth in a race from sea to shining sea. This is a death race. You finish 1st or not at all.

Trailer:

Death race 2,000. Every car a deadly weapon. Every spectator a potential point. It's a cross country road wreck and the traffic is murder. Who are you anyway?

Pete Wright:

Best driver on her.

Trailer:

I don't want you to die. He was built by the world's finest surgeons to drive the fastest car ever designed, and nothing can stop him now. Deathrace 2,000 rated r.

Pete Wright:

Oh, dear. How did we get roped into this movie?

Andy:

How did we get roped into it? You sound like you didn't enjoy it when you say it like that.

Pete Wright:

No. I loved every minute of it. I loved every it's such a stupid movie. I love David Carradine and his fake mask so much.

Andy:

Frank, good side. This is, again, we're continuing our year long journey through Roger Corman's projects, whether he produced or directed or just distributed. We're kind of walking through those. And for this particular month, we were looking at, what was the options? Like, director's first opportunities to make something.

Andy:

And Paul Bartel, who had acted, and I think I know him mostly as an actor, not necessarily director, but certainly is, has directed a lot of things like eating Raul. You know, he was on the list. And so, yeah, everyone voted, and here we are. Death race 2,000.

Pete Wright:

I guess seeing all of the other possible movies on the list, I don't know how you could pick anything else. But I do wonder if we're if if we keep doing movies like this, people won't take us seriously anymore.

Andy:

Well, you know, we had, early Coppola was an option, you know, on the list. True. True. I think there's something interesting with that of Scorsese, Carl Franklin, Ron Howard, Alan Arkish, and Joe Dante, Jonathan Kaplan, Irving Kershner, Curtis Hanson, and Timur Bekmambutov. So there were some interesting first, first films on the list.

Pete Wright:

And we're here with death race 2,000, David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Simone Griffith racing. It's essentially cannonball run, but you keep score by killing pedestrians.

Andy:

What was the zeitgeist that led to so many car race movies across the country or around the world that like, why was that a thing? Do you know? Because I like, when I watch this, I immediately also thought of the Cannonball Run movies, which I adored. Like, I never was into just car race movies, like, were they just going on a track? But, like, if they're driving across the country, I was in.

Andy:

Like, the other one that I loved was the Hanna Barbera, the one where it was, like, all the different, characters in the vehicles, wacky races. That's what it was called, where they were traveling around the world, and it was all the different silly Hanna Barbera characters. They made, like it was a TV show and they made a movie. And so I don't know. What was going on at the time?

Pete Wright:

Okay. So here's my I was thinking about this, and here is my thought. I think that the sixties seventies were really. Kind of peak car adoption culture in America, right? Like cars were a big deal and there was the sort of symbol, that cars were the symbol of freedom.

Pete Wright:

You could do anything you want. You could go anywhere you wanted. They were, they were a sign of, of financial economic prosperity. And I, I just think that was sort of the cultural symbol at the time of you know, that that was just this wave that was cresting of people doing fun things with cars. This on top of the fact that, you know, we've talked about youth sort of disillusionment around this time, and that had a direct impact on movies too, the the sort of counterculture impact.

Pete Wright:

I think you put those two things together, and, of course, you have people driving symbols of freedom and killing other people with them. Like, that just seems that that just seems to be the symbol of, of post apocalyptic America if you're gonna make a movie at the time. This is the message you wanna send.

Andy:

I suppose that you're right. The sixties seventies. Because also, like, that was also the era. Aside from the car culture booming, that's when, like, they really started, like, expanding Le Mans and, all the different Formula 1. Like, it really race culture kicked in.

Andy:

And so maybe it was just part of it, like and I don't know. Were there actual cannonball run race types of races that were cross country races?

Pete Wright:

I think the cannonball run was a real thing, if it's not anymore. Yeah. It is, and it still is. Is it really? Yeah.

Pete Wright:

Unsanctioned illegal street race.

Andy:

But and it's across the country?

Pete Wright:

Yeah. Unsanctioned. Or

Andy:

is it just like fast and furious down the streets of LA?

Pete Wright:

From this is this is is very telling. It's an unsanctioned speed record for driving across the United States ex typically accepted to run from New York City's red bull garage to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach near Los Angeles, covering a distance of 29 106 miles. As of October 2021, the record was 25 hours and 39 minutes with an average speed of a 112 miles per hour, driven by Arnie Tormann and Doug Tabat. Wow. I did I am I'm a little bit blown away, but look at what the so the Cannonball Run began as an unofficial unsanctioned automobile race run 5 times in the 19 seventies.

Pete Wright:

So here we are. Like, it's it started when we're talking about peak car culture.

Andy:

Yeah. Right. And not just peak car culture, but car culture that was that's getting people to take those long road trips, but in a more interesting way than just, like, lollygagging along, you know, the the the new highways. Right?

Pete Wright:

Let's make use of these bananas long highways. Let's really take them for a spin,

Andy:

so to speak. To work. Well and then and that's what's, interesting about this is that then you have this story with Paul Bartel making a film that, as you said, we're kind of entering this. I mean, I think you said postapocalyptic. I don't think it's really postapocalyptic, but it certainly is kind of a dystopian future where,

Pete Wright:

is it? Is there was the fall there was

Andy:

the fall

Pete Wright:

of the world?

Andy:

Yeah, they'll talk about that the act and was it like the something in 1979? Right? The I can't remember what it was called. But yeah, it was like a collapse of society in 1979 that led to

Pete Wright:

The global president. Right? The American president now holding office in his palace in Peking. Right.

Andy:

Yeah. Yeah. And then, they still blame the French for things.

Pete Wright:

Oh, blame the French

Andy:

for everything. So, yeah, kind of a dystopian mess, and they've created this, totalitarian regime with martial law. And this is kind of the entertainment, this transcontinental road race where they, race across the car across the country in wildly decked out cars that, again, really reminded me of the wacky races because they're all, like, so absurdly tied into the driver's own persona that they've created. You know, like, it just it's so silly.

Pete Wright:

I don't understand how Frankenstein's is supposed to be scary.

Andy:

Yeah. Well, or or how it ties into Frankenstein. It looks just like as it is, like some sort of dragon or, like, I don't remember that in the Frankenstein stories. But yeah. And then then the, you know, killing people.

Andy:

And that's kind of the whole goal with this game. Be the first, but also you can get more points by actually, hitting and killing pedestrians.

Pete Wright:

And they soften it by by saying you're not killing when you're driving in the race. You're not killing people. You're scoring them. Right. And I and I think that's kind of an important note.

Pete Wright:

Right? Like, the they're they're creating sort of a linguistic distance between violence, the act of violence and the and the result of violence.

Andy:

Well and it's also, there's some satire on fan culture because you also have people who want to be hit because they are such a fan of a particular driver that they are willing to, like, go out in front of them. They're like that girl who goes out to get sacrificed by Frankenstein because she is such a hardcore fan. Like, that is another level of this that is kind of disturbing, but also kind of satirizing how society is operating in this particular future.

Pete Wright:

Yeah. And it there's an interesting point to that. Like, there are a couple of those elements of satire that I think cut both ways. You do have fan culture and the sacrifice. You also have the euthanasia culture.

Pete Wright:

Right? When they take all the all the the, geriatric patients who are ready to end their lives. And what's interesting about it is they they put them in the middle of the road to be run over by the cars, and then the car goes the other way and kills all the nurses.

Andy:

Well, Yeah. I think that was a fun little bit of countering the satire of this future society willing to sacrifice the old by having a euthanasia day where they all put them in the road. But then how Frankenstein sews like, nah. I'm gonna get back at all the nurses who are part of this. Like, that was an interesting bit of commentary on his own personality as we learn over the course of the film and what his end goal really is.

Andy:

Right? Right.

Pete Wright:

Right. Right. As an assassin, right, to to kill the president. Yeah. It's it's an interesting movie.

Pete Wright:

I mean, it's it's yet again, it's one of those movies that on the surface looks crazy. But there's more going on in this movie than you could tell. Like, Bartel and, Robert writers Robert Thumb and, Charles Griffith, Ib Melchior.

Andy:

Melchior. Yeah.

Pete Wright:

But they had something to say, about this movie. It's something that, you know, is is a representation of, once again, violence in entertainment and totalitarian control and and media manipulation. We haven't even talked about that, but that that it is, you know, their efforts again, you mentioned to blame the French, but also to just take things that we saw and say other things happened. And amazing we're still in the middle of that.

Andy:

Alright. Listen up, you bloodthirsty bunch of cinephiles. It's your old pal Andy, and I've got a proposition for you that'll make your engines purr and your movie loving hearts race. What you just heard was a tantalizing taste of our pedal to the metal dissection of death race 2,000, But that's all the carnage you're going to get for free. There's a whole world of bonus content waiting at the finish line and the only way to join this twisted cross country rally through the world of cinema is by becoming a member.

Andy:

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Andy:

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Andy:

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Andy:

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Andy:

Until then, keep your eyes on the silver screen and your foot on the accelerator. Over and out.