• Directed by Allan Arkush, “Henry Suso” (Nicholas Nicophor) and Roger Corman (uncredited)
• Written by “Henry Suso” and Donald Stewart
• Starring
  • David Carradine
  • Claudia Jennings
  • Richard Lynch
• Produced by Roger Corman

This older Corman flick was recently re-released as part of the “Roger Corman Classics” collection, which means that I got to see promos for other re-released “classics” — The Big Doll House, Candy Stripe Nurses, Eat My Dust!, Big Bad Mama 2, and Caged Heat. Also, Leonard Maltin interviewed Corman about the production of Deathsport as a “follow-up” to Death Race 2000, in the days before sequels were the norm. All of which was very entertaining — that is to say, much more entertaining than the main feature.

Here’s our opening voice-over:

“A thousand years from now, after the great neutron wars, the world consists of desert wastes and isolated city-states. A few machines remain as a reminder of the past, but only the city-dwelling statemen use them. Between the cities roam the dreaded cannibal mutants and the range guides. Guides are legendary warriors leading an independent, nomadic life, owing allegiance only to their bows.” [That last word doesn't seem right, but I listened to it twice, and that's what it sounded like.]

What’s wrong with the above? Well, as we see later on, just about the entire remaining population is statemen, so saying that only the statemen uses machines downplays their dominance. Also, remember that part about desert wastes? While this is being read, we’re treated to shots of a small, fertile valley with a stream running through it.

And trotting on horseback along the stream is Kaz Oshay (David Carradine), our protagonist range guide, dressed in a loincloth and a cape with a fur-lined hood. That’s right, an entire movie of Carradine in a loincloth. Hey, he’s reasonably fit and all, but he’s just not physically imposing.

Hiding in the cliffs is Ankar Moor (Richard Lynch), dressed in black (aha — bad guy!), with his silver-suited minions on their snazzy motorcycles (see below). They try to capture him, losing three of their number in the process. Carradine has one of their blasters, and let me tell you, it wins the prize for Worst Futuristic Gun Prop Ever; it looks like part of the manual air pump I use on my air mattress when I go camping, spray-painted black.

They finally knock him out and capture him (after blasting his horse — the bastards!) and truck him into a large matte painting of a futuristic city. This, for future reference, is Helix City.

Ankar Moor reports in to the leader of Helix City, Lord Zirpola, that they’ve now captured a total of four range guides. Here’s the reason for the captures: The Helixers have recently perfected the “Death Machine,” the snazzy motorcycle seen earlier, and plan to use them to conquer neighboring Tritan City, but first they need to convince the Helix populace that they can win, so they’re going to prove the Death Machines’ by arraying them against range guides in the gladiatorial combat of Deathsport. All clear? No, it doesn’t make much sense to me either. I mean, it’s a thousand years from now, and they’ve apparently got sufficient technology. Is a silver-painted bike with a crummy “futuristic” plywood panel on the front going to win a war? “We’ve reinvented the motorcross — let’s conquer Tritan!”

Meanwhile, another range guide, Deneer (the late Claudia Jennings, star of ‘Gator Bait), is leading a small convoy from Helix to Tritan, but runs into twin problems: statemen on Death Machines, and the cannibal mutants mentioned in the voiceover. She and her partner female range guide go after both, and the partner gets it; the partner’s young female companion, a little girl named Tara, starts after her on her pony and gets nabbed by the mutants. The statemen grab Deneer and shoo the convoy back to Helix.

Carradine wakes up in a holding cell and, enraged by his confinement, kicks at the door, shouting what we find out is a range guide mantra: “I am my only master!” This gains him only repeated electric shocks.

Nevertheless, he looks through the grill across the hallway to where Deneer is held. They share some brief psychic bond, and remember having met briefly before. And Deneer tells Kaz about the death of his mother, Oshay, apparently a legendary range guide. Kaz takes the news with zen-like calm. A large part of their conversation is, “Our union is limited,” which means, in range-guidese, that they need to cooperate for the time being before going their separate ways.

Elsewhere, Lord Zirpola is having debilitating headaches. His doctor warns him that he’s experiencing some kind of radiation-caused terminal illness which will eventually sap his reasoning powers, and pleads with him to resign the leadership of Helix City. But Zirpola’s paranoia is already well-developed; he orders the doctor sent to the Deathsport.

The doctor ends up in Kaz’s cell, and gives exposition that his son was on his way to Tritan. (Gee, could he be the guy in Deneer’s convoy who tried to insist on going to Tritan anyway when they were shooed back to Helix?) Apparently so, because he disguises himself as a guard and tried to help them break out. They only make it as far as the outer door of the prison, however, and before they can punch through a wall, gas is released to knock them out.

As punishment, Deneer is forced to “dance” naked for Zirpola in a dark room full of hanging, glowing beads. Kaz, meanwhile, is whipped. (I think Deneer got off easy.) We get some exposition from the conversation between Kaz and Ankar Moor; apparently, Ankar used to be a range guide, but got sucked into big-city living. (Ain’t it always the way.) And there’s something in there about Ankar knowing Kaz’s mother but not liking her, or something; it’s never really explained. Kaz challenges him to single combat, part of the range guide code; Ankar declines.

After, Kaz is thrown in the same cell as the doctor, his son Marcus, and Deneer. Exhibiting another nifty range guide trick, Deneer heals Kaz’s wounds. And she repeats the mantra, “I am my only master.”

After an unexplained and pointless session of strobe-light electric torture for Kaz and Deneer, they’re put in white jumpsuits and golden motorcycle helmets and placed out in the forcefielded area outside Helix, where everyone is waiting to watch the Deathsport.

Although obviously having an “attack,” Zirpola introduces the game. Kaz and Deneer get to stand there with their geeky transparent “crystalline” swords (called “whistlers,” because they make an annoying whiny whistle as they move) as hordes of Death Machines come over the rise, looking for all the world like tryouts for Megaforce. Even though the Death Machines apparently have blasters built right in, they still keep getting close enough for the range guides to slice the riders open.

The doctor and his son are among those forced to ride the Death Machines, but intelligently they decide to hang back.

After carving up two waves of Death Machines, Kaz and Deneer grab a couple of Death Machines and start riding them themselves. Zirpola, in a psychotic fit, starts punching buttons that cause explosions to go off all around (but never quite under) the range guides. After a dozen explosions or so, the combined force accidentally knocks down the forcefield holding them in, and Kaz and Deneer head for the hills, with the doctor and Marcus following behind.

Zirpola tries to blame Ankar for their escape, but Ankar forces him to his knees for using derogatory language toward him. Nevertheless, Ankar goes after them, because he wanted to anyway.

Zirpola tries to “unwind” by having another girl dance naked for him and then shocking her, but in the middle of the performance he keels over dead.

Ankar, out on the trail, gets the news on the radio, but refuses to give up the trail, even though his men want to go back to Helix. After shooting one of them to make his point, he guides them into a shortcut which will cut the fugitives off from Tritan.

So then we get more deadly motorcross, as Kaz and Deneer easily pick off their silver-suited pursuers. But they’re not just heading for Tritan — they’ve got the little girl to rescue from the mutants, remember? So leading their twenty-or-so statemen pursuers across the grassland, they stop and hide out in… an old munitions factory?

Let me make it clear: NOTHING IS DONE WITH THIS. They find no munitions or other weapons. They just stop, the doctor identifies it as a munitions factory, they look around a bit and find some rats, and Kaz and Deneer make the beast with two backs.

The doctor also explains to his son this whole “our union is limited,” “our union is strong” thing, which is good, because it had me guessing up till then. But I’ve already explained it to you, so I won’t do it again.

In the morning, Ankar sets up an ambush, into which Kaz and Deneer purposely ride, looking for a fight. They manage to decimate Ankar’s forces, though the doctor buys the farm. From this point on, Marcus becomes even whinier and more useless. I mean, at least the doctor could give exposition about munitions factories; all Marcus does from here on out is tag along and say things like, “You’re going to do what? You’re crazy!”

Also, where’d all these fertile grasslands come from? What happened to desert wastes? Seems pretty unwasted to me.

Anyway, Ankar and his remaining minions follow them toward the Sand Cliffs, where the mutants are, even though there’s a flash wind coming. A what? Apparently some futuristic bad thing, which it was mentioned earlier that the range guides could predict. Not that it becomes an issue, because they get to the caves, and Ankar and friends wait outside. They go inside, find the girl, fight their way out (Marcus gets bitten and has to be carried out, naturally), and hey, there’s no wind! Apparently the whole thing passed over while they were in the cave; at least, no one mentions it again. I repeat, NOTHING IS DONE WITH THIS.

Deneer loads Marcus and the girl onto her Death Machine to take them to Tritan; Kaz stays behind to lead their pursuers away. Right to the fuel base. That’s right, there’s a concrete complex out here in the middle of nowehere, randomly dotted with red-and-white striped barrels that explode when you, say, lose control of your Death Machine and slam into them. I mean, the are randomly distributed through the place, as if the storage scheme were designed by a video game designer. There are also a lot of ramps, which are apparently useful at a fuel base.

By the time Kaz leaves, he’s caused the entire place to go up in a fireball.

The other three make it to the big matte painting of Tritan. From the dress, it’s apparently some kind of neo-Grecian paradise.

It’s now down to Kaz versus Ankar and one minion. Ankar, realizing that defeat is inevitable, sends the survivor back to Helix. He makes a speech that sounds like a poor early draft of Shakespeare’s “Out, out brief candle” soliloquiy from Macbeth, then he and Kaz leave their Death Machines and fight one on one with whistlers. And after a lot of whistling, Ankar’s head bounces off through the grass.

Deneer comes out to meet him, riding a horse, with an extra horse for Kaz and the girl on her own pony. She says she wants to go with him; “Our union is complete.” They ride off into the sunset.

Some concluding thoughts:

In the pre-show interview, Corman expressed some disappointment that Deathsport hadn’t done nearly as well as Death Race 2000. As he mentioned, this was before the days that sequels were a given in Hollywood; instead, Corman would follow up a successful movie with a similar title and maybe some returning cast members. Thus, in the examples he gave, the WIP flick The Big Doll House was followed by The Big Bird Cage; Young Student Nurses was followed by Young Student Teachers; and the Ron Howard hotrod flick Eat My Dust! was followed by the Ron Howard hotrod flick Grand Theft Auto.

In Corman’s assessment, Deathsport didn’t go over because somehow futuristic motorcycles are less cool than futuristic cars. I’ve got a different theory; aside from the fact that the script is haphazard and sloppy, and that the titular Deathsport accounted for five minutes in the middle of the movie, the main difference is that Deathsport has no humor. None. You’ve got the dead serious zen-like range guides, and the dead serious Richard Lynch pursuing them. Compare that to Death Race 2000, which is one long beautifully tasteless joke from start to finish. It’s that humorous conceit of running people down for points that has entered American pop culture and kept the movie alive; even my wife, who’s never heard of Death Race 2000, knows “Old lady in the crosswalk — twenty points!”

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 47
• breasts: 4
• explosions: 26
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
  • Richard Lynch, of course, played “Baran” in the TNG two-parter “Gambit”
  • William Smithers (the doctor) was “Merrick” in the classic “Bread and Circuses”
  • Chris Howell (“sergeant”) did stunts in Star Trek: Insurrection