NOT Available on DVD: UNHOLY ROLLERS

Roller Derby, a sport that peeked in popularity in the early 70′s, is based on formation roller skating around an oval track, with points scored as certain (mostly female) players lap members of the opposing team. Judging by last week’s poor box-office performance of WHIP IT, it appears that Roller Derby is not a fad currently in vogue, but Drew Barrymore’s new film gives me an excuse to revisit the greatest movie of all about the rough, tough world of this trashy sports phenomenon. That would be 1974′s UNHOLY ROLLERS, starring the late Claudia Jennings, a grimy, low-brow slice of 70′s exploitation that perfectly captures the grimy, low-brow sport that is roller derby. From its then-trendy premise, to its goofy use of humor, to its energetic but clumsy execution, UNHOLY ROLLERS is truly one hell of an entertaining R-rated 70′s time capsule but one that is NOT available on DVD.

In UNHOLY ROLLERS Claudia Jennings plays Karen, a hotheaded cat-food factory worker so fed up with her lecherous foreman that she hurls cans of cat-food at him and storms out, heading straight for roller derby auditions with local team, the L.A. Avengers. Karen’s showy style impresses Avengers owner Mr. Stern (Louis Quinn) so he signs her up. When Karen rebuffs the lesbian advances of the Avenger’s star skater Mickey (Betty Anne Rees), Mickey and other team members pin Karen down on a nearby pool table and rip her clothes off. Karen is rescued from further humiliation by Nick (Jay Warela) with whom she develops a romance. Karen gets revenge on Mickey by upstaging her as the Avengers’ star player and quickly becomes the audience favorite, habitually brawling on the track with members of the Avengers’ arch enemies, the San Diego Demons and generally grabbing all the attention. But the fame and glory go to Karen’s head. She refuses to be a team player and is soon headed for a fall. When Stern starts sending Karen to endorse products in bad TV commercials the rest of her team gets so jealous they beat, stomp, and whip her with a car antenna. Karen gets increasingly batty, leading up to a riotous finale where she finally goes off the deep end.

UNHOLY ROLLERS is a 70′s drive-in schlock masterpiece, filled with interesting detail, both visually and in the dialog, and it has a dynamic sense of action and fun. Vernon Zimmerman’s (who would later helm the cult item FADE TO BLACK in 1981) crisp direction from a dense but crude script by screenwriter Howard Cohen (who would go on to write the DEATHSTALKER and BARBARIAN QUEEN movies) keeps things charging along at a breezy pace, with location filming capturing the working class surroundings in colorful detail while not holding back on the requisite nudity and violence. The roller derby sequences themselves especially deliver with realistically brutal kicks, punches, and brawls that seem authentic. Some of the hand-held shots, edited by a young Martin Scorsese, using roller-skating cameramen are especially impressive. Loud and unsubtle, UNHOLY ROLLERS is full of stereotypical bad-taste characters; horny male chauvinist pigs, horny dim-witted blondes, horny lesbians, etc. and the actors often shout their lines annoyingly and are constantly bickering with each other.

UNHOLY ROLLERS was hastily produced by B-movie maven Roger Corman in an attempt to not only cash in on the Roller Derby craze, but to beat a major studio film on the subject into theatres. KANSAS CITY BOMBER starring Raquel Welch as K.C. Carr� and Jodie Foster as her daughter (?) was produced by MGM the same year and was expected to be a huge moneymaker. I’m not sure if Corman got his film out first or not but neither film was a hit so perhaps the fad had already run its course (Roller Derby was also the subject of the 1971 documentary DERBY and 1974′s ROLLERBALL was basically an berserk futuristic version of the game). UNHOLY ROLLERS has aged much better than KANSAS CITY BOMBER, which has good action sequences and a wonderful turn by Helen Kallianiotas as Welch’s nemesis, but the PG-rated off-track stuff was dull TV-level drama.

UNHOLY ROLLERS has achieved cult status thanks to the presence of its sexy star Claudia Jennings. Born in 1949, Ms Jennings took a job as a receptionist at the offices of Playboy magazine in 1968, was discovered there and became Playboy’s Miss November 1969. Less busty than most 60’s Playboy models, Jennings had a healthy, all-American cheerleader type of good looks and was crowned 1970’s Playmate of the Year. After her Playboy stint, Jennings became a low-budget movie star and reigned as “queen of the Drive-In”� for a brief period in the mid-70′s. UNHOLY ROLLERS was her first starring role followed by GROUP MARRIAGE (1973), THE SINGLE GIRLS, TRUCK STOP WOMEN, GATOR BAIT (all1974), and (among others) THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE (1977). She was strongly considered as Kate Jackson’s replacement on the Charlies Angels� TV series but reportedly Aaron Spelling worried about tarnishing his show with her Playboy connection. In October 1979 Claudia Jenning’s car was hit by a truck after she fell asleep behind the wheel and she was gone at age 29. Her final film role was in David Cronenberg’s FAST COMPANY (1979). Jennings is so good in UNHOLY ROLLERS with her go-go boots and Avengers tattoo playing a very tough, complex, and at times vicious woman that it’s a shame her career was tragically cut so short. UNHOLY ROLLERS, along with the tough drama TRUCK STOP WOMEN and the bayou revenge opus GATOR BAIT are the three films that best showcase the many talents of Claudia Jennings. All three were released on VHS in the mid-80′s and are all now MIA on DVD. These films, and the glory that was Claudia Jennings, deserve to be rediscovered.