DEATH RACE 2000: Days of Future Passed, Part 2

By: Frederick C. Szebin
Date: Thursday, January 27, 2000

Preproduction for DEATH RACE proved to be an intense experience. Getting the cars was easy enough; five junkers were bought, and designs by James Powers were turned into customized killing machines by Dean Jeffries (of Jeffries Auto Stylings, also responsible for that nifty, futuristic Winnebago in DAMNATION ALLEY). Casting proceeded with a few quirks. According to David Carradine, Lee Majors was originally set to star as Frankenstein, hero of the people. Majors was still hot from his worldwide success as THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, but other forces were secretly in the works that would quietly take him off the DEATH RACE project. Carradine had, in his own right, become a world sensation when ABC decided not to use Bruce Lee on the KUNG FU series he helped to create, and picked up the son of actor John Carradine instead. But the actor walked away from the program after three seasons when he felt KUNG FU's innovative urge had dwindled to common theatrics. He had worked with Corman three years earlier when starring with Barbara Hershey in Martin Scorcese's first feature, BOXCAR BERTHA The DEATH RACE script was sent to him, and he stopped reading it after only 30 pages or so.
'There's a scene,' Carradine says, 'when Annie asks Frankenstein what he looks like under the black leather mask he wears. She takes it off of him and there's just me. No horrible make up or anything, and he says, 'Did you think I was just another pretty face?' At that point, I closed the script because I knew I wanted to be in this movie.'

As it turns out, Carradine's and Majors' agents knew each other. An agreement regarding Carradine's fitness for the role was reached, and Majors' agent talked his client out of the film, which made the part of Frankenstein available for Carradine. 'It's a slightly shady thing to do,' Carradine admits, 'but that's agents for you.'
Another point of casting contention was the role of Annie, Frankenstein's navigator and anti-race double agent. Carradine preferred his romantic interest at the time, Season Hubley, who would eventually appear in HARDCORE with George C. Scott and in John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Paul Bartel's choice was New World favorite leading lady Roberta Collins, who had given an impressive performance in the B-movie classic CAGED HEAT. Collins was eventually cast in the smaller role of Mathilda the Hun, an excitable racer who cheers herself and even 'scores' Calamity Jane's navigator.
The problem of casting Miss Hubley, however, was taken care of by the actress herself, as Carradine relate: 'Season and I were just breaking up at the time. She is a person of great honor, and she felt that it would be wrong for us to stay together just for the movie, so she pulled out, which gave Simone the opportunity. Now, Simone is just the most perfectly proportioned, most beautiful example of the female form I have ever had the honor of being near, or touching. And she turned out to be a very fine actress.'
Simone Griffeth appeared on such popular '70s TV shows as MARCUS WELBY, MD, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and STARSKY AND HUTCH. Along with her in DEATH RACE were Mary Woronov (NIGHT OF THE COMET), Louisa Moritz (CHAINED HEAT), Martin Kove (CAGNEY AND LACY), as well as Los Angeles DJ 'The Real' Don Steel as the grating Junior Bruce. Future US Senator Fred Grandy (THE LOVE BOAT) didn't hurt his political future by appearing as Mathilda's swastika-wearing navigator, Herman the German, and even struggling director John Landis (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) has a cameo as a pleased racing fan.
Behind the scenes, Charles Griffith directed second unit with Lewis Teague, the future director of such genre favorites as ALLIGATOR and CAT'S EYE, as well as the underappreciated CUJO, one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date. Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto would go on to lens such impressive and award-winning films as MELVIN AND HOWARD and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.
And as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, we have pre-ROCKY Sylvester Stallone. Up to 1975, Stallone was a struggling actor who had worked his way up from the porno activities of A PARTY AT KITTY and STUDS to more credible films like Woody Allen's BANANAS, the highly-regarded LORDS OF FLATBUSH, the Corman-produced CAPONE, and the Jack Lemmon comedy THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE.
Stallone, Carradine says, was a bit of a loner, 'with his Sylvester Stallone Mafia entourage. His stuntman kept beating up my stunt man, so to take care of that, during the scene when Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe get into it, I beat him up! After our fight, he said, [taking on Stallone's famous drawl], 'He pulls his punches all right. But he pulls his punches when they're four inches into my stomach!' I like him. I don't think we'd be able to spend hours together in a locked room, but I like him.'
Contradicting Carradine's Lee Majors story, Bartel says the KUNG FU star was always their first choice for the role. The actor had the properly mysterious and intense depth to pull Frankenstein off. And, according to Bartell, Carradine brought his then-famous short temper to the production as well. 'He had just come off of KUNG FU,' says Bartel, 'and I think he was feeling frustrated and disappointed that that aspect of his career was over, and he was hoping to move on to bigger and better things. I think he may have felt that DEATH RACE 2000 was small potatoes. In any case, he was difficult about his costume; he didn't like it and ripped it up. For a while, he was insisting on his teen-age girl friend being cast in the female lead. He was just generally uncooperative for a while. Indeed, Roger fired him. Then there was a reconciliation, and we moved forward. During the actual shooting he was terrific.'
'They made the outfit out of a white material with that molded muscle look they used in BATMAN,' Carradine offers in his defense, 'and it was a beautifully-made outfit. But I told them, 'This is wrong. Everything Frankenstein wears should be blackthe outfit, his underwear, everything. And there should be zippers everywhere.' I just thought that was keeping in the image we wanted to portray for a character named Frankenstein who runs people over.
'They took the outfit back,' he continues, 'and instead of remaking it out of black material, they just sewed black material over it. And with that and the fact that the stitches showed just didn't make it look real anymore, so I tore it off.'
Carradine says Bartel tried to have him fired because, as the director stated to him, 'This is a film of compromise and you're not a compromiser.' Eventually disagreements were ironed out in a meeting with Corman; a suitable costume was made, including an appropriate helmettheir original concept was a simple crash helmet, but Carradine insisted on something a little more threateningand the project went on.
Carradine remembers DEATH RACE as a difficult shoot, saying that it rained practically every day, and the modified cars were still only modified clunkers that didn't work all that well and caused endless delays. Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto had to make do without certain lights, as the cast and director were limited in the amount of takes possible due to the low budget. A moment when Miss Griffeth's charming proportions caused a bit of trouble was during her nude dance with Carradine, who was in black underpants. Roger Corman chose this scene, Carradine says, to make a rare on-set visit and made it expressly known that there was not enough flesh showing. 'Roger is a very urbane gentleman,' says Carradine. 'The only way I know of to tell when he's mad is his sharp blue eyes turn black. And that's what happened when we were doing that scene. I just adjusted my position slightly so that Simone's arm wasn't blocking her breast. I mean, she's so beautiful that it's a shame not to see them if they're uncovered.'
This was one of many moments when Corman influenced the film more in the direction of being a hard-edged action-exploitation film, instead of the relatively light-hearted satire that Bartel wanted. Years later, however, the producer downplays any difference of opinion between him and the director. 'It was, of course, a big success critically and commercially,' says Corman of the film. 'The only difference of opinion that Paul and I had on the filmand it was very minorwas that I wanted it to be a comedy without going into farce. I felt once or twice Paul pushed it closer to farce, but we simply discussed it and found solutions in the editing process. I myself am very pleased with the film and am very pleased with Paulwhat he did on that picture and what he's done since. He may look back on DEATH RACE as a learning process, but I would say that's one of the best films I've ever seen from a young director.'