Deathsport directed by Allan Arkush and Henry Suso (1978)
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, this movie features lots of motorcycle chases and loud explosions. David Carradine is as lame as ever when it comes to martial arts, but he is paired up with former Playmate Claudia Jennings, so the film isn’t entirely worthless. This is kinda a follow up to Death Race 2000 and was allegedly the work of three directors – Allan Arkush and Nicholas Niciphor (credited as Henry Suso), and producer Roger Corman who isn’t credited for his directorial contributions. Deathsport is like super generic ultra low budget sci-fi schlock but if you like Rollerball, Mad Max, Year of the Sex Olympics and Lucio Fulci’s The New Gladiators, or want to see a naked Claudia Jennings being tortured with electric rods, then you’ll love it! Jennings died in a car crash the year after this came out, and she’s not as groovy as Lana Clarkson in The Barbarian Queen, or the topless female warriors who star alongside Carradine in The Warrior and the Sorceress, but she can act and she looks good to me (the scenes of Jennings being tortured are considerably more attention grabbing than those in which Carradine is roughed up). Carradine and Jennnings are freedom loving warrior guides. They are kidnapped from the wastes by a despotic regime which wants to prove it is all powerful by having them loose a gladiatorial match to its dirt bike riding thugs who are armed with laser disintegrators. Although Carradine and Jennings begin their televised combat without motorcycles and with swords as their only arms, they win at ‘deathsport’ and escape. The insane tyrant with a radiation poisoning induced brain tumour dies, the forces of evil are defeated, and Carradine and Jennings get to ride off into the sunset with a little girl they’ve rescued from cannibal mutants. So while this ain’t classic celluloid or even half as good as Corman’s beatnik spoof Bucket of Blood, if you want an hour and a half of badly acted brain rot it does the trick nicely!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by The Digital Linda Nochlin on 2009-01-20 10:23:29 +0000
Why have there no great male Playmates like Claudia Jennings? The problem lies not so much with some masculinists’ concept of what cheesecake is, but rather with their misconception-shared with the public at large-of what a sex bomb is: with the naive idea that the pin-up transmits a direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms and body form. Cheesecake is almost never that, great cheesecake never is. The making of a successful pin-up involves a self-consistent language of form, more or less dependent upon, or free from, given temporally defined conventions, schemata, which have to be learned or worked out, either through teaching, apprenticeship, or a long period of individual experimentation. The language of cheesecake is, more materially, embodied in ink or paper, in celluloid or digital film; it is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper. Men may have learnt to do this behind the camera but they lack the balls to do it before the lens, which is why even gay men lag so far behind women in attaining the status of a ‘sex bomb’.
Comment by Bender & Schmaltz on 2009-01-20 11:27:45 +0000
Never trust an art critic, especially a tenured critic like Linda Nochlin!
Comment by Working Class Hero on 2009-01-20 13:57:28 +0000
OK so I’m in the wrong blog to point out that if Art is a tool of the bourgeoisie in consolidating Power and Capital, then halls full of fools talking about art-criticism must be the ultimate in promotional-spots. Cack, cack, cack and then some more cack on top. I’d rather jack
Comment by John Sinclair on 2009-01-20 14:12:49 +0000
We brought these people here as slaves, and that was their music, they had it, they brought it with them. They clung to their music. They tried to beat it out of them. They tried in every way to suppress them, but they weren’t successful. Then they developed the modern way of doing it, which was just expropriating it, and ripping them off. Then giving the rewards to people who did that, rather than the ones who created it. That’s my outlook anyway.
Comment by The Real Bruce Li on 2009-01-20 23:28:22 +0000
I hate David Carradine movies, his martial arts moves simply don’t cut it!
Comment by Inqalab on 2009-01-20 23:52:04 +0000
FUCK OBAMA
FUCK IMPERIALISM
FUCK WHITE SUPREMACY WITH A BLACK FACE
BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY BRINGS DEATH TO THE MASSES
WE DEMAND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY
POWER TO THE POWERLESS
ONWARDS TO THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE MASSES
LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
W€$T €$$€X INQ@£@B
Comment by The Radically Inauthentic Hugh Hefner on 2009-01-21 00:17:23 +0000
Pornography degrades women. Ban Playmates, boycot this film!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-21 00:22:44 +0000
Hugh r u high on drugzzzz????
Comment by John Lennon on 2009-01-21 00:32:50 +0000
More than just the words on the walls, Hard Rock International has remained true to its motto – “LOVE ALL, SERVE ALL” – since the company’s founding in 1971 by continuing its pledge to serving others. Hard Rock is proud to announce the launch of its 2008 global “Imagine There’s No Hunger” campaign to benefit WHY, a nonprofit organization that strives to fight against hunger and poverty in America and around the world.
Comment by Dick Miller on 2009-01-21 00:32:50 +0000
Hey trends come and go but Roger knows the right way to ride ’em all. It’s only show biz kids!
Comment by The Ghost of Claudia Jennings on 2009-01-21 00:46:36 +0000
I’m really proud of this movie, it shows me on top form as an actress.
Comment by The Godfather of Gore on 2009-01-21 00:50:31 +0000
This movie is okay but a couple of eye gouging scenes and an army of zombies would have really improved it!
Comment by John Sinclair on 2009-01-21 00:58:22 +0000
The content is not simply art, since we are also taken on detours through popular film and music.
Comment by Barack Obama on 2009-01-21 01:01:57 +0000
Michael Kearney was very active within the politics of his trade guild. In 1720, within three years of joining, he was elected house warden. In 1724, he was openly critical of the master and warden of his guild, and led a petition against them. Although he was suspended at that time, clearly he had the support of his fellow guild members. In 1726 Michael Kearney was elected master of the Guild of Barber Surgeons. We even found the number of votes for each candidate in the records in Trinity College. The voting was Michael Kearney 44 votes; Mr. Cauliff 5 votes; Mr. Wetherall 2 votes.
Comment by Barack Obama on 2009-01-21 01:03:18 +0000
The Guild Minute Books also alerted us to a pamphlet written against Michael Kearney in 1726, shortly after his election as Master of his Guild. We found a copy of this pamphlet in Special Collections in the Trinity College Library. The 1726 pamphlet “Hue and Cry” is written in fairly typical 18th century political invective, it was written or commissioned by Kearney’s defeated political rival(s). The pamphlet is scurrilous, scabrous and slanderous, and it should not be taken literally, this was the age of Swift when political satirists tried to out-do each other in wild exaggeration .
Comment by Cynical Hack on 2009-01-21 09:36:12 +0000
There’s a gang of white hooligan thugs racketeers and extortionists in the area — Cynical old amoral hacks, they’ve run every scam and trick into the ground, and, after all, everything is sleight of hand and appearance when they are working out new ways to sell scams to people. They notice there’s a smart black guy on the block, new to the scammers game, but hey, he looks smart enough. But these old hoods, some of whom have their roots in prejudice and racism think twice — he’s a black guy after all, but hey, they relent in the end. They think “Oh, let the black guy play our scam huckster games, why not? It’s a new circus , we can dress up old tricks in a new guise after all, and get people to believe in the tawdry old show, all over again. Damn, I see some people are even bleary eyed and crying about the whole thing! ”
And all the burlesque bling hip hop and carnival showmen and TV media black men and women came out to celebrate a black man in the white house, wiping away a tear and raising a black power clenched fist — Why? Because — Hey , a black brother gets to play the hoodlum bully boy gangster amoral thug, just like the white man!
That’s progress!
That’s progress — let’s dance and sing in the streets,and shed a tear, like it’s a new dawn — a righteous black man gets to have a go at the master’s bully boy game too!
Hallelujah!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-21 14:54:44 +0000
Did anybody else notice that the first black president of America got his speeches mixed up yesterday and that he was actually reading something the CIA swipped from the secret vaults of the INS who’d written it in advance for their 20th anniversary reunion???? Plagiarism rocks!
Comment by Klaus on 2009-01-22 02:36:13 +0000
If you have questions about these nifty features or about any feature on your 2009 New Beetle, just visit your dealership for your free Courtesy Vehicle Check. As part of Volkswagen’s new Carefree Maintenance Program, your Courtesy Vehicle Check is free during the first 90 days or 6,000 miles of your ownership. Use this visit to answer any questions about your Volkswagen and keep it running at peak efficiency!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-22 12:29:38 +0000
Do I get a free Ringo doll too????
Comment by Alex Trocchi on 2009-01-23 00:58:51 +0000
In the early 1970s Michael X became Michael Abdul Malik and he and his wife and family retreated to Trinidad to begin his last grand project, a commune, which became the setting for violent tragedy when the bodies of Michael’s cousin, Joe Skerritt, and the daughter of a British Tory MP, Gail Ann Benson, were found on the property. Michael never stood trial for Gail’s murder but he did stand trial for his cousin’s, was convicted of murder and hanged, despite protests from his famous friends (among them myself, Alexander Trocchi, Eric Clapton, William Burroughs, John Lennon and Yoko Ono).
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-23 12:29:07 +0000
John and Yoko were also instrumental in the campaign to free John Sinclair too, and that one worked out!