The Cheerleaders

After joining a local high school's cheerleading squad, a teenage girl (Stephanie Fondue) vows to lose her virginity to the right guy, but all her good-hearted attempts backfire. Meanwhile, her fellow cheerleaders come up with a plan to help their high school's football team to victory: sleep with the opposing team on the night before their most important game so that the opposition will be too worn out to play.

Suffering from heavy-handed script and incredibly amateurish performances, this silly teen sexploitation romp is good for a few laughs and dishes plenty of T&A to satisfy any jaded fan. My evaluation: ** out of ****.

The only reason I like this film is that part of it (outside shots) were done at my alma mater, Monta Vista High. In fact, when the film came out, I was too young to see it.

Our School District, anxious for the money paid for use of the school during the summer months as a setting, thought that the film was about life in high school (it was tentatively titled High School Daze) and didn't bother to read the script.

Of course, they changed the name of the school for the film, so for the Yearbook in 1973 we snuck in all sorts of references to the film that managed to slip by the faculty. I still have a copy of an ad for the film in my old yearbook.

Sometimes, it's fun to see how easily bureaucrats can be fooled.

Comments like the one above from the movie should give you an idea of the campy, 1970's-specific fun you'll find here.

One thing not mentioned by the previous reviewers is how much certain scenes in this movie remind one of the sexploitation-comedy master, Russ Meyer. The cheerleading coach and one of her students riding naked on a stationary bike together. The football coach in his office in nothing but jockstrap and cap, continually blowing his whistle at one of the female students who's wearing nothing but shoulder pads. A friend and I kept noting during the viewing how much some of these scenes could've come straight out of Russ's classic, "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens".

All Russ Meyer fans owe it to themselves to find a copy of this one, and anyone looking for a good 70's sex comedy should check it out.

I found "The Cheerleaders" to be the best of the sexploitation films, much more entertaining than 'Flesh Gordan', 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls', 'Fritz the Cat' The crowds really loved the picture, the laughter tended to drown out some of the following lines. Everyone left with a smile on their face. We played it to a packed house nightly. The print that we has was x-rated, though soft core. I do not believe it was a self imposed x, as the beginning of the had the MPAA X rating with the blue background preceeding the title and credits. I was operating the Star Theater in Coshocton, Ohio. We opened the film the first week of January 1974. The prosecuter saw our advance advertising and threatened to arrest us if we showed the film. I had a partner, and we first decided to 'pull' the film and got 'Lady Sings the Blues' as a backup-even changed the marquee to 'Lady Sings the Blues'. We reconsidered and called the prosecuter's bluff, showed 'The Cheerleaders', we did not get arrested. The Coshocton Tribune's lead story on 01/04/74 was 'Theater Told to Pull X Rated Feature'. We sold out in 15 minutes of opening, the film held the house record until beaten by 'The Exorcist'. We brought it back a few months later with equally good ticket sales. Why? word of mouth, it was a crowd pleaser, this was before videos, DVD's, cable was basic, the raunchy language and nudity still had shock value-especially in a small town.

"The Cheerleaders" is a prime example of a great sexploitation film.

It has fun, does not take itself seriously and never goes too long without the promised "action".

Despite the frequent sex, the movie is overall light and innocent. A lot of the comedy arises from the sex scenes which is sort of unique. Usually in these films the sex scenes are played straight and/or romantic and the sthick is in the rest of the film. Here, sex is part of the sthick and because of that it mixes into the movie a whole lot better.

It's also unusual to have female nudity played for laughs. The rule of thumb in these movies is that male nudity is funny (like in Porkys or Private Resort)and female nudity is sexy. In this movie, female nudity is played for laughs at least a couple times.

Slapstick, sexual slapstick, goofy premise, total reality disconnect, pre PC freedom, impossibly short cheerleader skirts, this movie has it all.

What it also has is a leading lady who's cute with a capital CUTE. Willowy Stephanie Fondue plays Jeannie, a girl who is desperate to lose her virginity but whenever she tries, something goes wrong. That's where the suspension of disbelief begins and you'll have to keep it all through the film. Especially when the cheerleaders come up with thier grand plan of helping thier team win by tiring out the opposing team in a... er... special way.

This is a classic for the Joe Bob Briggs set, of which I am a part(Yes, I love the real classics, I love the high minded films but I love these type of movies too... so shoot me).

It's also full of ephemeral details like see through water beds, shag walls and pictures of teen stars in the lockers I can't recognize. It's a trip!

The girls playing the cheerleaders did not have Oscars looming over thier heads but they were appealing and often showed decent comic timing.

You are most likely to find this film on video edited to an R(the earliest video release was not edited. I've seen both). The original version, while not pornographic, would no doubt get an NC-17 today. I don't know if it was originally released as an X rating, unrated or if it did indeed squeak by with an "R" rating because of the MPAA's looser latitude on sex in films back then.

So, for those of you that liked "American Pie" and all those other recent so called sexploitation movies, rent this movie and see how much more fun these type of movies were when they were less self conscious to getting a particular MPAA rating or to treading (but not crossing) "the line" and much more "Hey! This is going to be wild! Let's have fun with this!".