I’m guessing Unholy Rollers was made to exploit the success of that same year’s much bigger budgeted Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber -a film I had heard of, naturally, as it was a big release when I was a kid – and the women’s roller derby phenomena that had tapped the nation’s zeitgeist at the time, and while I still don’t have a clue as to how you play that game (Why do they keep hitting each other into the rails? Where do all those high scores keep coming from? I’m confused… ), it certainly made for some exciting viewing - and even some inspired, youthful experimentation (the kind all those excitable filmmakers in the Corman cabal excelled at) for instance, by having an early go at using ‘changed shutter-speed’ shots, taken from the point of view of a fast moving skater in the middle of a game on the rink (creating an almost immediate sense of urgency, dislocation and intimacy all at once, something it would take cinematic master Spielberg to propel into its greatest effect with that mind-bogglingly terrifying opening ‘storming the beach’ sequence in Saving Private Ryan and, alas, has since become boringly de rigueur, with every lazy modern filmmaker relying on it as a way at pretending inspiration). Just don’t know how I didn’t really know of the film before. In other words, with all of its messy construction and laissez faire attitude, I loved it. Considering it came directly from 70’s exploitation king Roger Corman’s stable – and even if filmmaker Zimmerman would never be celebrated on the level as so many of his fellow Corman-alumni auteurs (though, it should be mentioned, he would go on to write and direct the interesting little cult item Fade to Black in 1980) – as with so many of the best – and even most luridly exploitative – of the Corman films of that time, Unholy Rollers, in its sympathetic and knowing portrait of the struggling underbelly of America (or what would be known as the majority today), is infused with a deep social consciousness and a sense of reckless (yet healthy) rebellion, set against a tough, gritty, dive bar backdrop (an admirable evocation that everything from Hollywood films to the lowest drive-in horror fare seemed capable of capturing at that time), brought to us through an almost cinema verité lens (the Corman folks were nothing if not cinema literate). Fed up with the daily drudgery - as well as the sexual harassment - that comes with working at the local canning factory, defiant wild child Karen (Claudia Jennings) storms out (leaving some cat food smooshed on her supervisor’s face) and focuses her feisty competitive spirit on becoming a star skater in the increasingly popular world of roller derby, where her obstinate individualism incurs the wrath of both her jealous female team members and the team owner.

Unholy rollers