Another Roger Corman produced movie makes its way this time taking the B-movie into an apocalyptic future, where civilization has been reduced to isolated cities and groups of nomads that wander the barren plains.
As with many movies that feature “Deathsport” is a terrible movie made for a shoestring budget to capitalize on some of the popular trends of the day the first Star Wars film, “Rollerball” and the surprising success of “Death Race 2000”.
Corman got David Carradine, lead from “Death Race 2000”, to star in this sci-fi flick, gave director Allan Arkush a tiny budget and told him to put some Playboy Playmates in the film. Claudia Jennings was cast as one of the female rangers, capable of bringing the pain to the film’s equivalent of Stormtroopers.
Part of the pain in watching this film is the monotonous footage of motorcycle racing. the film uses the idea of “deathsport”, a gladatorial arena where prisoners are forced to fight against citizens driving motorcycles armed with disintegrator rays.
There’s little point in describing more of the film, though you can fill in the blanks yourself. Carradine and Jennings are desert guides, who speak in awful pseudo spiritual dialogue and then get freaky and couple in soft lighting to the soundtrack of electronic dischordia.
Why would I review a movie that appears to be this awful? Well, despite the failings of the film, I’m still amazed that someone would put this much effort into a production of this obvious failing. Carradine was a rather big name and Jennings would go on to star in a number of B-movies -even the soundtrack has a big name attached to it Jerry Garcia!
If any movie is begging to be remade, it’s the concept isn’t bad, but the execution was flawed from conception. There’s enough fake history given in the film to create an interesting futuristic film, one that could examine the path that humanity took to get to this apocalypse. Not an original plot, but one that could be refashioned into something interesting, instead of dulling the viewer’s senses with more motorcycle footage.
I say: Only for B-movie lovers!
See it for: Filthy Friday readers will love the natural look of the women it’s almost hard to imagine a time when Playboy didn’t feature models that had nearly identical figures and faces. Jennings is surprisingly good in front of the camera, and there’s a notorious dance scene in the film that raises eyebrows.
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