Cruisin' and Killin' across the USA

I still remember flipping through TV guide, and noticing that a movie called Death Race 2000 was about to begin. I was only eleven years old, but it was some of the best two hours I've spent in front of the television.
I literally could not believe the gall of the premise; in the future, a wildly popular transcontinental road race is won by the driver who racked up the most pedestrian kills. And in a true perversion of the gladiatorial spirit, where the most challenging targets confer the most respect, the biggest points are gleaned from the most helpless and vulnerable ones. For example, geriatric patients and children are worth the most, while a healthy 35 year old male, for instance, wouldn't be worth much at all.
The characters are wild; Frankenstein, the main character and returning champion - a masked enigma who has suffered one debilitating accident after another. Machine Gun Joe, Sly Stallone in an early role, full of cocky machismo. Some other great B-movie actors appear, too, such as Mary Woronov, director Paul Bartel's wife, and Martin Kove,
After a period of war and economic ruin, America has become a weird sort of ultraconservative right-wing dictatorship that smacks a bit of theocracy, too. The President makes regular TV appearances on a gleaming white, fog-filled set to deliver his usual platitudes.
There is a rebel faction comprised of 70's style hippie counterculture warriors, who accurately display the spent look of actual mid-70's hippies. It gives DR2K a suprisingly au courant feel that I'm not sure the filmmakers were fully aware of.
Their purpose of course is to unseat the stifling government, and believe that the best way to go about it is to undermine the Transcontinental Road Race. Good point - after all, without our sports and hit TV shows, what exactly would we do with all of that time? Perhaps think a bit harder about our social problems and make bigger demands of our government. Maybe... The rebels make occasionally crafty attempts to plant bombs and try to misdirect the racers with lethal road traps. Their varying successes generate both humor and suspense.
Some additional suspense is milked when we discover that Frankenstein's navigator is actually an infiltrator from the rebel faction. How they deal with each other is... interesting.
Death Race 2000 aims at our car culture, our sports culture, our need for entertainment, the puffed-up overimportance of our leaders, and the self-righteousness of self-proclaimed rebels. And it hits them as squarely as Frankenstein hits his intended pedestrian targets, with a low-budget, high energy spirit that few movies can muster up these days.