Road Rage steps up a beat in DeathRace 3000
01/08/1999 . Source: Jessica Martin 

Making a come-back from his appearance in Stanley Kubrick's truly appalling last film, Eyes Wide Shut, perhaps so-named for the number of members of the audience who go to sleep during the movie - Tom Cruise is rumoured to be headlining in the Death Race 3000 movie now being produced by Paramount.

This is of course a remake of Roger Corman's classic Death Race 2000, the film from whose loins the deeply criticised pedestrian slaying games like Carnage and Carmageddon sprung from.

The film caused massive outrage in 1975 when David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone replayed Wacky Races as crossed with Mad Max, playing futuristic drivers in a Grand Prix where prizes are awarded for killing pedestrians - the sicker the kill, the higher the score.

You know the kind of thing, dead nun: 50 points, dead pregnant nun 90 points etc.

The Director, Paul Anderson (Event Horizon etc), has remained tight-lipped about the plot, but has suggested that there will be few concessions to political correctness or the US Road Safety lobby.

Given the trouble we had getting JG Ballard's movie Crash released in the UK, you can expect the normal cries of outrage from the Mary Whitehouse crowd when this baby goes live.

The http://www.deathrace3000.com/ URL has already been registered (we presume by the studio), but there's nothing there yet - just an 'under construction' sign.