Deathsport (1978)

I really can’t find words to describe Deathsport – but I guess ”stupid”, “ridiculous” and “awesome” could be fitting. It’s basically a rip-off on Roger Corman’s earlier Death Race 2000, but with zero budget and zero script. Not a bad thing really, but don’t expect to see any interesting satire or witty dialogue here, this is just very cheap entertainment!

Carradine is Kaz Oshay (!?!), a lone and spiritual warrior who rides around on his horse. But when it’s vaporized by the baddies, he finds himself in deep shit. But deep shit together with a sometimes nude woman isn’t bad, so lucky for him Deneer (Claudia Jennings) also is in prison and together with some of the other prisoners, they have to fight in Deathsport – which is a game where they’re driving around on motorbikes and shooting lasers on each other!

It’s not much more than that. Sometimes the story cuts to the president of this future country when he’s having a head ache in a strange black room where a naked woman is dancing around, and sometimes being tortured with sounds (I think). Richard Lynch is the president’s closest man and is evil, evil, evil. Jesse Vint (from Forbidden World) is his closest man and is kinda evil too.

Deathsport is a mess, and is filled with strange editing choices, cheap costumes and even cheaper sets. It has cannibalistic mutants with ping pong-eyes that live in caves, lots of nudity, stupid music and the corniest dialogue since the bible was written. But to be honest, it has a lot of entertainment value and is never boring – though the first half is very close to be boring. But then the game starts and it’s almost non-stop action until the end.

The action is cheap, but quite good. Nice stunts (very impressive fire stunts), a high body count, tons and tons of explosions and slow-motion and David Carradine in a very inspired performance. Both him and Lynch give it all here and makes surprisingly good performances, rather than sleeping thru another Corman-gig.

Trash, without a doubt, but good old American Corman-trash that never lets you down with it’s mix of boobs, explosions and stunts.