Kansas City Bomber
As we've discussed before, I love roller derby. I've also recently, through another project I'm working on, developed an interest in films from the 1970s. Imagine my joy, then, when Netflix turned up a suggestion for Kansas City Bomber, a 1972 film starring Raquel Welch as a roller derby queen.
This excitement, however, only got me through the first 30 minutes of this terrible, terrible movie. The other 60 minutes were powered solely by my dedication to Heroine Content readers.
The film follows Welch's character, K.C. Carr, as she moves from a roller derby team in Kansas City to one in Portland, and chronicles the problems she faces on her new team. The major obstacles include an alcoholic fading star with whom she competes (Helena Kallianiotes, who was actually nominated for a Golden Globe for this drivel), a sleazy team owner with whom she stupidly becomes involved (Kevin McCarthy), and pressure to find a grown-up job and be a mother to her two children (one of whom is played by a ten year-old pre-Taxi Driver Jodie Foster).
The movie is comprised of roughly equal parts roller derby action sequences and poorly acted dialogue sequences. The non-skating parts are too stupid to get much into--there doesn't seem to be anyone who can actually act in the film, and it is painful to watch them try. The derby scenes are a bit better, featuring a few actual professional skaters and Raquel Welch doing a bang-up job with her own stunts.
A couple of things struck me right away as being different between the roller derby featured in this early 70s movie and the one I am familiar with now. For one thing, the 70s roller derby, at least the type shown in the film, was co-ed. The teams were made up of a women's and a men's squad, and while they didn't skate together, they contributed points towards the same goal. Given the dearth of co-ed sports (at least entertainment type sports), I thought that was really interesting. Also, the male and female skaters dress very similarly, in tights, shorts, and long-sleeved jerseys. Roller derby today is dependent in part on how much flesh the skaters flash, and that doesn't seem to have been true in the 70s.
Another thing that surprised me about the film was the inclusion of Black cast members. There were no non-white speaking characters (not totally surprising for a movie from the early 70s), but both the Portland and Kansas City audiences and skating squads featured African-American skaters and fans. A look at the web page for the current Portland roller derby league, Rose City Rollers, confirms my suspicion that there aren't currently any Black women on the derby teams. In Kansas City, I see a few, but not many. I am not sure what to make of the diversity in a movie set 35 years ago, compared to today, but honestly, it can't say anything positive about today's derby.
The bottom line is that this is a horrible movie, and it doesn't have a strong heroine. Aside from one short scene early on in which K.C. and her skater friend Lovey fight off two male fans who are attempting to sexually assault them, there are no real "girl power" moments. Even though she's not showing as much skin as current derby girls do, K.C. ends up looking like less of a heroine, given how rarely she seems to think about what she is doing or be willing or able to make her own decisions about her life. The derby world featured in this movie is nothing like the grassroots skater-owned derbies of today--it is just another franchise through which men exploit women. Nothing feminist about that.
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I would apologize for you having to watch this movie, but I know how much you love to hate stuff and rant about it, so I won't! ;)