The Swinging Cheerleaders

Perhaps Tarantino has started the trend of justifying the legitimate place for trash-films in serious movie history. Jack Hill is definitely a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, an obvious maverick who managed to squeeze as many entertaining moments as he could out of his tight budgets (the fact that Roger Corman fired him more than once shows that Hill was a handful, but never seemed to let up). SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is a hoot, as is FOXY BROWN and THE BIG BIRD CAGE. This film, THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, while not as good as other Hill films, has some of the touches that made his previous films successful.

The cast is great. Hill was good at finding attractive women to embody his screen characters, and the knockouts here include Colleen Camp and Cheryl (Rainbeaux) Smith. The plot is some silliness about a female reporter infiltrating the cheerleadering squad at Mesa University to get the scoop. Her boyfriend turns out to be a real jerk, and the eventual outcome is a confrontation with the snooty Camp and some pretty ridiculous bad guys.

The film copies some of Corman's nurses movies (political conscious, making sure the token African-American character is there.)Yet, the film also seems to be parodying these more serious-minded New World pictures. SWINGING CHEERLEADERS is fun, and a reminder of what drive-in films were like (most exploitation films nowadays are not this fun).

Jack Hill---the man, the movies...

Needing another member for the cheerleading squad at Mesa State College the cheerleaders open tryouts for anyone who might be interested. As it so happens a student by the name of "Kate Corie" (Jo Johnston) auditions and is accepted even though the head cheerleader "Mary Ann Putnam" (Colleen Camp) is jealous of her for flirting with her boyfriend "Buck Larsen" (Ron Hajak) who happens to be the star quarterback. What nobody knows however is that Kate only wants to join the squad to dig up some dirt for her journalism term paper. And in the course of her work she discovers a lot more than people fully realize. Anyway, rather than divulge any more of the plot and risk spoiling the movie for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this particular film had a reputation for being somewhat sleazy when it first came out. However, while it certainly had some nudity and scenes of a sexual nature, it wasn't nearly as graphic as I had initially thought back then. Likewise, although it was definitely a low-budget drive-in type of movie that one would find back in the mid-70's, it had a fairly interesting plot which managed to keep my attention for the most part. At any rate, while it certainly wasn't a blockbuster film by any means it wasn't that terribly bad either. Accordingly, I give it an average rating.

So I sat down to watch this expecting a waste of 90 minutes of my life. Surprisingly I found myself actually enjoying this seedy little mid seventies sexsploitation piece.

The plot is nothing to speak of - journalism major decides to do a piece on swinging cheerleaders and their jock boyfriends.

Where the film surprises is in it's scripting - surprisingly liberated considering this was 1974 and somewhat witty with a bevy of interesting performances from a game cast, this turned out to be far more entertaining than expected.

Fun seventies drive-in fair and somewhat more layered than you may think. A solid six out of ten.

In order to get an expose, an aspiring reporter (Jo Johnston), joins the cheerleading squad only to learn not to pre-judge people. Of the 3 movies in Anchor Bay's Cheerleader set (the Cheerleaders, Revenge of the Cheerleaders, & the swinging Cheerleaders), this one feels most like a movie. Yea, nearly all the cheerleaders shed their clothes at one point or another, but there's a little helping of social commentary to go with the exploitation. It's a bit easy to see that this is a Jack Hill directed picture and it's better because of it.

My Grade: B-

DVD Extras: Commentary; 2 TV spots, Jack Hill Bio

In order to write an expose on how cheer-leading demeans women, a reporter for a college newspaper (Jo Johnston in her only role) infiltrates the cheer-leading squad.

By 1974, Jack Hill was looking to escape being typecast as a "blaxploitation director" after making "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown" for AIP. They were pleased by the success and gave him a script called "Rape Squad", which he turned down. This film was given to him with financing attached, although he was only given a title and had to develop the script from scratch (with help from David Kidd, who ironically also re-wrote "Rape Squad").

According to co-writer / director Hill, the film had a 12-day shoot, which meant every inch of film shot ended up in the final product. They started work on the script at the end of January 1974 and the movie was in theaters by May (at other times he says February and June, but the idea remains the same). The original title of the script was "Stand Up and Holler" so actresses would not think the film was about cheerleaders.

I do love Jack Hill, and the fact he is called an "exploitation auteur" really sums him up. But this has to be one of his few misfires. The primary plot of the undercover cheerleader is not very interesting, though the booking subplot makes up for it to a point. You might expect this to be nothing more than an excuse for cheerleaders to get naked, but even in that department it is arguably tame compared to many 80s comedies. This more or less amounts to a cheesy made-for-TV movie that probably was never shown on TV.

Arrow Video offers up a deluxe 2k restored blu-ray of the film. While the movie itself is not great (sorry), the Arrow Video version is worth picking up simply for all the extras, because it's always good when we have Jack Hill doing new interviews and providing new commentary. If he hasn't already, he really ought to write a memoir, because he is full of stories about Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola and many others. (The disc also has a 2006 archive interview with DP Alfred Taylor, archive interview with Johnny Legend, and a Q&A with Hill, Colleen Camp and Rosanne Katon recorded at the New Beverly Cinema in 2012.)