It's a Death Race 2000 spiritual successor with the dystopian satire, dark humour, and absurdity subbed out in favour of the carefree vibes of a '70s hangout flick, where a bunch of hip young people get into gas station brawls, car crashes, and fun campy sex comedy antics while racing across the country for cash. There's splashes of violence and strangeness throughout but the last 15 minutes is home to one of the great examples of extreme tonal whiplash — one of the drivers gets sniped in the head causing a massive vehicle pile-up with bodies everywhere, explosions nonstop, and blood constantly flowing. It's truly mad.
Unfortunately for the majority of its runtime it plods along at a humdrum pace, rarely locking into anything truly exciting outside of the pile-up. During the production of Cannonball, Paul Bartel feared he was being typecast as an action director and it shows in the final product that his heart's clearly not in it. There are a few fun moments amidst the drudgery but if you want a Roger Corman-produced carsploitation film worth watching, Death Race 2000 is the one to see.
Look out for the scene where Bartel, Martin Scorsese, and Sylvester Stallone eat KFC.
It's a Death Race 2000 spiritual successor with the dystopian satire, dark humour, and absurdity subbed out in favour of the carefree vibes of a '70s hangout flick, where a bunch of hip young people get into gas station brawls, car crashes, and fun campy sex comedy antics while racing across the country for cash. There's splashes of violence and strangeness throughout but the last 15 minutes is home to one of the great examples of extreme tonal whiplash — one of the drivers gets sniped in the head causing a massive vehicle pile-up with bodies everywhere, explosions nonstop, and blood constantly flowing. It's truly mad.
Unfortunately for the majority of its runtime it plods along at a humdrum pace, rarely locking into anything truly exciting outside of the pile-up. During the production of Cannonball, Paul Bartel feared he was being typecast as an action director and it shows in the final product that his heart's clearly not in it. There are a few fun moments amidst the drudgery but if you want a Roger Corman-produced carsploitation film worth watching, Death Race 2000 is the one to see.
Look out for the scene where Bartel, Martin Scorsese, and Sylvester Stallone eat KFC.
