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| Wayne and His Towering Pompadour |
Speaking about death and car crashes, this weeks kooky film recommendation is 1975's Death Race 2000. Picture this: 20 years ago America fell on some hard times, in fact, the whole world has. Corrupt politicians jump on the whole civil unrest thing and discover that they can pacify the populace by holding a vicious transcontinental race featuring vehicular murder. While the film is obviously humorous and satirical, one could argue that in some ways the film foreshadowed the "Reality TV" boom of the early 2000s. Now, I don't want to get too egg headed and scholarly, but I think understanding what was going on in America around this time provides some context for all of the film's wild symbolism and buffoonery. Death Race 2000 is a sort of mishmash of Wacky Racers, the Watergate scandal, the 1973 oil crisis, 1970s Nascar and it's rampant cheating, professional wrestling, and the prevalence of violence found in the local news. The film is off the wall but that's sort of how I prefer my dystopian fiction. In other words, I dig it.
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| Death Race 2000's point system |
During the show I mentioned the popular 90s PC game Carmageddon but there was also an arcade game named Death Race that was developed by Exidy and released just a year after Death Race 2000 hit theaters. Both games, as expected, generated a bunch of controversy as parents were horrified by the depictions of pixelated humanoid murder.
Check out the songs that were featured on this week's episode below:
Namelosers - Land of 1000 Dances
The Outlaws - Hold Up
J. Frank Wilson and The Cavaliers - He'll Learn About It
Satan's Breed - Laugh Myself To The Grave
Chrichan and The Gamblers - Answer Me My Love
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