Film review: Death Race 2000 (1975)

This is the granddaddy of all those Running Man/Battle Royale/Hunger Games type plots.  It's also really cheaply made and incredibly heavy-handed.  I would've thought it was GREAT when I was about 11 (maybe 13, because of the nudity).  I knew the plot involved a points system whereby the racers were motivated to run over pedestrians (extra points for the very young or the very old) but I didn't know that there was a subplot about a rebel group wanting to disrupt the race because (a) it's barbaric (although the rebels' tactics are pretty bloodthirsty) and (b) because it's being used as the opiate of the masses by the autocratic president (who keeps blaming France for all that goes wrong, including the collapse of the economy).  There's not half as much gore as I would've expected - only a couple of very quick glimpses of heads being squished or people being gored by the horns on the front of one of the cars, and it's surprisingly egalitarian (every car has a driver and an opposite-sex navigator, who is also more-or-less obligated to satisfy the drivers lusts, but there are two female drivers to go along with three male drivers (David Carradine,

a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone,

and a guy who I recognize from the TV show Cagney and Lacey)

(I know, no same-sex couples, but I guess that was too much for 1975).  Is it entertaining?  Well, it's blessedly short, and there are a couple of good scenes (like when the nurses at the old folks' home leave their most decrepit patients out in the middle of the road for "euthanasia," but our anti-hero "Frankenstein"

(so named because he's supposed to have so many artificial limbs added after past accidents, but it turns out he's actually fine because there hasn't been one Frankenstein, just a succession of people playing him) refuses to run them over and instead cuts over to where the nurses are hiding and mows them down instead), and there's an actual HAND grenade, which is stupidly awesome.  Paul Bartel the director (also of Eating Raoul) is a sort of John Waters for teens, I guess.  Watch it for the pale, flaccid 70's bods and cheesy 70's view of the future (now our past), but don't say I didn't warn you.