2 days Ago By Eric Volmers
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Filmmaker Kate Kroll does not make many appearances in her documentary Lunatic: The Luna Vachon Story.
Occasionally, the viewer will hear her voice asking questions. Early in the film, she is talking to Luna Vachon’s father Paul “The Butcher” Vachon, who adopted Luna at a young age. In what would be his last interview, Paul Vachon talks about trying to keep his daughter out of the family business.
The retired professional wrestler – who died in 2024 and had a 30-year career as a wrestling villain – is frail during the interview and his voice is wrecked by cancer. But he tells Kroll that he doesn’t think women belong in the ring. When she asks why, he offers a less-than-enlightened opinion that pro-wrestling turns women into lesbians and that their bodies are not meant to be body-slammed.
At that point, we can hear Kroll point out that she gets body-slammed. The Butcher asks her how her father feels about that. It’s the only time Kroll references her own career as a professional wrestler in the film.
Now retired from the ring, the Edson, Alta.-born filmmaker wrestled in various promotions in Canada, the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom under the moniker Calamity Kate. She continues to run a Vancouver professional wrestling promotion called Wrestle Core with her husband.
It was when poring over the history of women wrestlers after she began performing in 2015 that Kroll came across the heartbreaking story of Luna Vachon, a woman who dedicated her life to the ring and lost everything in return. “I started looking at all the women wrestlers, watching their matches and trying to get some inspiration,” Kroll says. “Everyone who is in wrestling knows and loves Luna.
I came across Luna and always looked up to her. I decided I wanted to make a documentary about my heroes and about the women who paved the way for us, for our generation. When I tried to figure out who I should do a film about, it was pretty easy: Luna.
Not only does she have Canadian connections having grown up in Montreal and being from a Quebecois wrestling dynasty, there are a lot of layers to her. Through her story, we get to look at a timeline of the evolution of women’s wrestling.” Luna’s story is specifically sad, but the broader story about how women were mistreated in the business is also disturbing.
While women seem to have earned more clout in the wrestling world these past few years, they were often considered little more than a novelty when Luna began. They were underpaid, treated poorly, victims of cruel “ribs” by male wrestlers and – in the case of Luna and others – sexually abused while underage. They were also often poorly trained.
Like many female wrestlers, Luna was initially trained – and mistreated – by veteran Fabulous Moolah. But, unlike many, she was very skilled in the ring. With her wild hairdo and cartoonishly hoarse voice, Luna was a natural as an unhinged villain, something she seemed to inherit from both The Butcher and his brother Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon.
She eventually found success in Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation – now World Wrestling Entertainment – in the 1990s during the so-called “attitude era.” Luna “The Lunatic” Vachon certainly made her wild presence known. But the film makes the argument that she was not particularly well-treated by McMahon’s company either, often overlooked for wrestlers with less ability.
.
