Cinema Revisited: Kansas City Bomber (1972)

In 1972, Roller Derby enjoyed about the same popularity as pro wrestling. And while wrestling has transformed into a global phenomenon that generates millions per year, Roller Derby remains a very niche thing, even less significant to the current culture as it was in the early 70s when Kansas City Bomber was released.

Streamlined and aggressive like a B movie, Kansas City Bomber reminds one of the B movies that dealt with wrestling, including Bodyhold, Alias The Champ, and the 1973 film The Wrestler (not to be confused with the much later Aronofsky production).

Raquel Welch was a major star in 1972 and her interest in the script got the movie made for her own independent company with financial help from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

For those of us who remember before such things were admitted to be Sports Entertainment, the way Roller Derby is depicted in Kansas City Bomber is as if it were a legit series of team and single challenges and not something that is carefully choreographed. There are no sequences where the skaters who play rivals on the rink are shown as friends who work out their ideas together, which is likely how things were actually done in the days of Charlie O’Connell and Joanie Weston. This perspective is especially interesting when screening the film during a more enlightened era. There is a truly heartbreaking scene where a slow witted, beastly looking male skater is tired of being a “heel” and wants to “turn face” – e.g. play a good guy instead of a bad guy. The audience won’t accept it and continue to boo and chide him while he protests on the rink to the point of weeping.

Kansas City Bomber is an enjoyable visceral experience, with especially good camerawork and editing during the skate sequences, where the action becomes it s own story. Welch turns in one of her career-best performance, and is bolstered by Kevin McCarthy as the sleazy team owner, and Golden Globe nominee Helena Kallianiotes as a rival skater. For authenticity, actual trackside commentator Dick Lane appears as himself. In an early screen appearance, nine year old Jodie Foster plays Welch’s daughter.

Reviews at the time were uniformly good, and the film was a box office hit. It tapped into the sub-culture of Roller Derby fans that were in much better number back in 1972 than when Roller Derby was revisited in the unsuccessful 2009 film Whip It. Years later, in retrospect, Raquel Welch recalled Kansas City Bomber and The Three Musketeers as the only films of the 70s that she remained proud of having done. Kansas City Bomber is available for streaming and on DVD.