Cinema legend Roger Corman has produced a metric buttload of movies in his long and illustrious career (over 400 according to IMDb), but few of his productions have had as long lasting a legacy as the 1975 action comedy, Death Race 2000, directed by Paul Bartel. It told of a futuristic world where race car drivers and their opposite-sex navigators try to get from New York to Los Angeles as quickly as possible, killing as many pedestrians as they can along the way to rack up points. While several other Death Race movies have been over the years, on January 17, 2017, we’ll get one much closer to the spirit of the original with Roger Corman’s Death Race 2050.
The above red band trailer assures that this new take on the classic story will have loads more violence, and probably just as much nudity, than the 42 year old original did. This time, the movie’s co-written and directed by G.J. Echternkamp and it recasts the heroic, bionic driver Frankenstein—played in the original by David Carradine—with Arrow‘s very own Deathstroke, Manu Bennett. The weird-haired bad guy, the chairman of the United Corporation of America, is played by none other than Malcolm McDowell, who seems to be particularly relishing his scene-chewing.
I’m pretty impressed that they’ve decided not to go the “dark and gritty” route with this and are keeping it as light and campy as the original. While this one doesn’t have a young and eager Sylvester Stallone (who played “Machine Gun Joe” Viturbo a year before writing and starring in Rocky), we’re pretty sure it’ll have enough custom car carnage to make us forget about the Italian Stallion.
Let us know your thoughts on Death Race 2050 in the comments below!
Image: Universal
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
