SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! At your local megaplex (or VHS flea market booth) get your engines revved up for the motor crashing, laser blasting, (plastic) sword-fighting epic of all time! The first two hundred people to enter the stadium will most assuredly not get their minds melted by the blue lights flashing from the roof! Free foam shark-fin helmets for the kids! If your idea of fun is watching David Carradine roll around the dirt with his shirt off, watching a stuntman get his head ripped off by a sword that looks like an 80s brush handle, and Richard Lynch chews up the scenery with every sneer known to man, then burn rubber to your local drive-in to catch the Roger Corman produced Deathsport, a semi-quasi-in-a-weird-but-not-so-weird-way sequel to Death Race 2000 again starring David Carredine! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!
If you eat a regular diet of ketchup flavored cheez-whiz cinema like myself (does anyone have any Pepto-Bismol?) then you are used to some of the cheap cut-corner tricks Corman and company do here, but one thing I cannot forgive: the Looney Tunes sound effect of the Deathbikes! It’s a little hard to enjoy a Mad Max rip-off when hearing sound effects similar to a Yosemite Sam cartoon (“When I say whoa, David Carradine, I mean whoa!”). In the late 70s, rearing from the realities of Vietnam, skyrocketing oil prices in conflicted Middle Eastern countries, and Watergate, there was an uprise in the post-apocolup[tic film genre with other classics (beyond the Mel Gibson/George Miller sleeper hit) like Damnation Alley, Stalker, A Boy and His Dog and Zardoz (yes, the one with Sean Connery in a red speedo/bondage suit) mutating into you local theatre, but Roger Corman (never one to be out-B’ed) released one of the most bizarre even against his better judgment. Knowing the mix of comedy with action was a strong formula, this film was taken way too seriously from a script that reportedly was so bad Corman himself (who was the producer) trying to persuade Carradine to not do the film! In several interviews over the years, Carradine has been vocal about the chaos that was the shooting of this movie, from wild directors who refused to film the love scenes out of fear of their behavior (a weird way to be commendable I guess) to massive reshoots where most of the deathbikes were blown up. Carradine even claims it is because of this film that his career was ruined for many years and it took a while before he worked with Corman and company again (or until the money ran out). Filled with excellent stunt work throughout, the film is enjoyable for those interested in this genre and offers some clever trick photography, but if it wanted to be a true followup to Death Race 2000 it needed to tell a few more jokes and laugh-out-loud (lol) moments for crying out loud (col)!
In the future (duh!), after something called The Neutron Wars, the world is surrounded by barbaric tribes who guide the elites from city to city to avoid the chud mutants that remain, scrounging on the flesh of those left. One such elite is Lord Zirpola (played by David Mclean, one of the original Marlboro men) who is preparing to go to war with another collection of elite socialites in the neighboring colony, who they are attacking for their fuel. To distract the citizens from all this, they have created a game where the criminals compete for the life gladiator style in what is known as ‘Death Sport’ As the war begins, local tribe leaders Kaz Oshay (Carradine) and Deneer (played by Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings) try to stop the war and find themselves surviving ‘Death Sport’ long enough to escape, but not before the villainous former tribesman Ankar Moor (played by always underrated villain actor Richard Lynch) vows vengeance to stop them. Motorcycle chases, cannibalism, and naked laser shows are just a few examples of how our society has fallen from grace according to these filmmakers, but will Kaz and Deneer find their way back to rescue their people from the war before Ankar loses his patience and his mind (and possibly his head)?
Flashlighting your way at a bulb-popping eighty-two minutes, and co-directed by Nicholas Niciphor and Allan Arkush (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and Caddyshack II), the film had a short pre-production as Niciphor has reported he only two weeks to write, produce and shoot the film (talk about an apocalyptic schedule). You can find this film on streamers like Amazon and Tubi, but be sure to catch a riffed version on the newest incarnation of MS3TK. George Wald once said “The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one,” yet I feel the only reason to make a movie that takes place in the deserted wastelands of our own devices is to prevent anyone else from making another one (and another one after that…)
