Kansas City Bomber, which plays September 23 on Turner Classic Movies, is a hella entertaining, kickass 1970s tale of female self-discovery. Raquel Welch plays a single mom scraping by, who skates in the roller derby at night. She and her daughter (Jodie Foster in only her second feature film film) move to a new city, and she joins the local roller derby team. She becomes the team’s star, and the team owner (Kevin McCarthy) is eager to date her (she’s Raquel Welch!) and use her to leverage his next business expansion.
There is a significant power imbalance between the skater and the owner – for starters, she’s broke in a new town, and he’s her boss. He expects both to have her sexually and to cynically profit from her talent. Will she be exploited or not? Is she another of his pawns?
In 1972, Raquel Welch was thought of more as a novelty movie star than as an actress. She had become instantly recognizable for displaying her spectacular figure in a skintight spacesuit (Fantastic Voyage), a doe-skin bikini (One Billion Years B.C.), a star spangled bikini (Myra Breckenridge), and flimsy undergarments (100 Rifles). Although the poster of her cavewoman bikini had gone viral, she hadn’t gotten the chance to show that she could act.
The role of the hard scrabble single mom in Kansas City Bomber was perfect for Welch. Welch had two kids by the time she was 21 and was divorced at 24. While trying to make it in showbiz, she bounced between jobs as a department store model, cocktail waitress and TV “weathergirl”.
In her performance in Kansas City Bomber, Welch nails the character of a woman committed to raising her kid while facing one indignity and bad choice after another. She also was up to the physicality of a character who competes in a contact sport where fisticuffs are common. Raquel reportedly has that said that Kansas City Bomber was the first of her films that she actually liked. And, as in The Three Musketeers a few years after, she got to show her acting chops.
Trivia digression: Welch’s father was Bolivian, and her cousin was the first female president of Bolivia.
Kansas City Bomber is a genre film that works because, along with the subtext of feminist self discovery, the action is really good. Besides mixing it up on the track, Welch’s character beats up some male attackers, too.
Kansas City Bomber has real professional roller derby skaters and includes actual roller derby action and crowd reactions. The actors were roughed up during the shoot, and Raquel said “Skating is a batchy, sweaty, funky life.” Verisimilitude abounds. Kansas City Bomber is indisputably the best-ever roller derby movie. (My own favorite childhood team was the Bay Bombers with Joanie Weston and Charlie O’Connell.)
Helena Kallianiotes plays the rival roller derby star in the Big Race at the finale. Kallianiotes was unforgettable as the unbearably negative hitchhiker in Five Easy Pieces (her first credited role); this is one of only ten feature films in her career. Bill McKinney, one of the the infamous “Squeal Like a Pig” hillbillies in Deliverance, also appears.
Besides catching it on TCM this week, you can stream Kansas City Bomber from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
