Death Race 2000

Death Race 2000 (1975) is Paul Bartel's cult science-fiction satire, and you can watch it online on iFILM. In a totalitarian America of the future, the biggest national holiday is a coast-to-coast road race where drivers rack up points not for speed, but for the pedestrians they run down.

The star of the event is a masked, mysterious champion called Frankenstein (David Carradine), whose monster-shaped car and patched-together body have made him a national idol. His rivals are no less colorful: a snarling gangster named Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, played by a young Sylvester Stallone, a Nazi-themed driver, a cowgirl called Calamity Jane. Above it all sits the decrepit Mr. President, who uses the slaughter to keep the public docile. Then a resistance courier is slipped into Frankenstein's car, and the champion turns out to have plans of his own.

Made on pocket change by producer Roger Corman, the cheapness is the charm: rubber stunts, gallons of fake blood and a mean streak of satire aimed at television, politics and the public appetite for violence that has only sharpened over fifty years. The gore comes wrapped in pitch-black comedy, so this one is for fans of trash with a brain rather than the squeamish. Stream Death Race 2000 (1975) online on iFILM.