KANSAS CITY BUMMER

KANSAS CITY BOMBER (1972)
dir: Jerrold Freedman

KANSAS CITY BUMMER
Cracked #108, May 1973
a: Dick Wright

Having just watched this and again fast-forwarded through parts, I still haven't figured out how the game of rollerderby is supposed to be played. I know the goal is to reach a finish line and I guess it's like pro-wrestling but on rollerskates. It's a regional phenomenon but there seem to be leagues that trade players. But among the many questions I have are: Is the game in the movie the same as how it's played in real life? Are the rules different now than they were fifty years ago? The men don't seem to be as vicious, are the rules for the mens' team different? There are referees but it seems acceptable for players to beat each other up or go through any lengths to get to the finish line, and nobody seems to care. The joke in Slap Shot was that the new hockey players were violent, but in this it seems to be the norm.

Well, it's my problem to figure it out. This is a site about parodies of movies, not my questions about how things work.

This centers on the life of player and single mother Diane “K. C.” Carr (Raquel Welch), a star player in Kansas City, who's just been beaten by rival Big Bertha. The stakes are that the loser has to leave town, and she's saved by scouting agent and team owner Burt Henry (Kevin McCarthy), Who's just recruited her for the Portland Loggers.

K.C. Is immediately unliked by the rest of the team. Their star player Jackie (Helena Kallianiotes) is jealous of her and becomes an alcoholic, feeling she is being replaced. Horrible Hank (Norman Alden) is the star player on the mens' team.

K.C. And Burt become romantically involved with and he tells her he's moving to a bigger franchise in Chicago and promises to bring her with him. She's living with Lovie, another player, who's uprooted overnight, and the rest of the team figures she has something to do with it. When K.C. takes a break, she visits her mother who's been taking care of her kids while she's gone. Her mother begs her to quit the roller derby and settle down.

Burt keeps taking back promises like saying she can bring the kids with her, and she tells him she feels she's being used. He tells her in this game everyone's used. That evening Horrible Hank is fired and he loses it, going into the hillbilly persona the audience has forced on him. K.C. is instructed by Burt to throw her next match to make it look like she's leaving in disgrace but instead she disobeys him and breaks out on her own. The women used for this ending are Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Bella Abzug. I'm not sure who “Mean Martha” is, and couldn't find her in any references to second-wave feminism.