Kansas City Bomber: From the files of Dr. Strangefilm Case #006

Additional articles from Dr. Strangefilm can be found here at MovieFanfare.com

Many, many years ago–before yours truly was even in pre-med–my father took my brother and me to St. Mark’s High School in suburban Wilmington, Delaware, for a roller derby match between the Eastern (or, as we all knew them, Philadelphia) Warriors and their arch-rivals, the Texas Outlaws. What a thrill, after years of watching them on TV, to see Warriors stars Vinnie Gandolfo, Little Richard Brown, Otis Williams, Ruberta Mitchell, and team captain Judy Arnold live, battling a nasty Texas squad led by such banked track black hats as manager Lester Quarles and the distaff duo of Baby Rocco and Patti “Moo Moo” Calvin. Sure, all the fighting, feuding and punches seemed a little theatrical, even to my 13-year-old eyes, but I didn’t care. After all, people also called professional wrestling phony, and there was no way the bad blood between Bruno Sammartino and Ivan Koloff was fake.

Well, much like pro grappling, the derby’s experienced many ups and downs over the years, with a heyday in the early TV era of the 1940s and ’50s and a rock-and-roll revamping in the ’80s (wrestling’s renaissance, of course, was  more successful on a national scale).  It also shares with its pseudo-sport sibling a sparse and rather spotty record on the silver screen. It’s too early to tell if last weekend’s new release Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut with cute-as-a-button Ellen Page as a teenage track sensation, will do for the rink what Mickey Rourke and The Wrestler did for the squared circle, but it seems an appropriate time to examine the most legendary cinematic look at life in the fast lane–one whose star was, if not as acclaimed as  Page, certainly a little more…well-rounded.

That’s right, we’re talking MGM’s 1972 eight-wheeled opus Kansas City Bomber, with the 0ne-and-only Raquel Welch, the focus of such upcoming case files as One Million Years B.C. and Myra Breckinridge, skating her way into your heart in the title role of K.C. (get it?) Carr,  lightning-quick, trash-talking star jammer for the Kansas City Ramblers roller games team (Back in the ’70s, see, roller derby and roller games were two separate entities staging similar make-believe confrontations…much like the Democrats and Republicans today). Oh, if you’re not sure what a “ jammer” is, don’t worry; an on-screen announcer helpfully goes over the scoring and other rules of the sport in the opening sequence.

No sooner does K.C.’s mouth get her into a fight with teammate Big Bertha Bogliani (the aforementioned “Moo Moo” Calvin) than the two square off in a “loser-leaves-town” match that Welch, in spite of her apparent fan favorite status, loses. And that points out where this film diverges from, say, The Wrestler; the gimmicks and storylines that we’ve known since adolescence–well, most of us–were staged are treated seriously here. So, by the end of the first reel, Raquel bids goodbye to Kansas City and hello to Portland, Oregon (let’s face it, the title “Portland Bomber” didn’t have the right ring to it), where manipulative team owner Kevin McCarthy signs her up and has big plans for her…both on and off the track.

The curvaceous Welch’s arrival doesn’t sit too well with veteran Portland star Helena Kallianiotes, who never misses a chance to sip from a brown-bagged bottle or shove an elbow in her new teammate’s direction. Welch’s only Oregon allies are pig-tailed Mary Kay Pass, who shares her houseboat home with Raquel until a seemingly jealous McCarthy trades her to Denver, and the simple-minded Norman Alden, who is eventually driven by an angry audience yelling “Soooeey!” at him–trust me, it makes sense in the context of the scene–into a showstopping and bloody mid-match breakdown (It’s strange that, in a film obviously made to appeal to roller derby’s remaining audience around the country, the fans in the arenas are constantly depicted as boorish, trash-throwing and mostly toothless yahoos). Once Welch realizes she wants no part of McCarthy’s scheme to set her up as the centerpiece of his new Chicago-based franchise, she makes her play for self-determination during the film’s final sequence of another “loser-leaves-town” showdown, this time between her and Kallianiotes.

That is the basic plot of Kansas City Bomber, and that is its basic problem, because so many subplots remain—and this is particularly ironic for a vehicle starring Raquel Welch–underdeveloped. I didn’t mention the two scenes of Welch stopping in Fresno to see her two kids (one a pre-teen Jodie Foster) and her disapproving mother who’s looking after them, because nothing really comes of it. The idea that the skaters are sacrificing family lives is sort of depicted in a couple of bar and bus ride scenes, but was more effectively portrayed in such later films as Slap Shot (which shares Bomber’s ’70s milieu of bad hairstyles, synthetic fibers, and wood paneling everywhere).  And any sort of drug or sexual subtexts were avoided for a PG rating. Maybe there was more to writer Barry Sandler’s original story, but, considering he also penned 1984’s turgid erotic thriller Crimes of Passion, I shudder to think what might have been there.

To her credit, Welch’s performance is not that bad, she did a lot of her own skating in the film (the close-ups, anyway), and was said to have broken her wrist in one scene, leading to a great continuity game where you can watch her wrist cast appear and disappear throughout the movie. There are also several notable rink stars in minor roles (including Warriors Brown and, as Welch’s brown-wigged skating double, Arnold). Kansas City Bomber is not a particularly strange film in and of itself , but stands as a polyester set piece of “sports entertainment” action trapped between the Ages of Aquarius and Disco. And if you think Raquel Welch as a roller derby star is a test of believability, remind me to tell you someday about Mickey Rooney and a little ditty called The Fireball.

The complete article and pictures can be found at MovieFanfare.com

Article Tags: Kansas City, Roller Derby

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR