Deathsport (1978)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) Maybe you, like me, have heard about Deathsport and made associations with Deathrace or Rollerball as a Science Fiction sports movie of the 1970s. But let me break that link right now because Deathsport is nowhere as good as those two other movies, even if you don’t happen to think too highly of those. What it does have in common with them is a loose (that is to say: bad) understanding of SF plot devices as filtered through a limited budget, except that Deathsport happens to have a much, much lower threshold than the others. Set in a future post-apocalyptic dystopia that sometimes looks like a crystal-infused utopia, Deathsport can’t be bothered to set any rules for itself, nor stick to them. The titular deathsport unexplainably has circa-1970s motorcycles and death rays that instantly vaporize their targets, except when the riders go head-to-head fighting with crystal swords. It’s boring and ridiculous. Those two qualities don’t necessarily always go together, but Deathsport feels like every single bad trend of 1970s Science Fiction blended into one movie, with all of the energy sucked out of it. It feels like an over-the-top film, except that there’s nothing to send over the top. The result is just to be avoided—even as an illustration of 1970s SF movies, I can think of much, much better examples.