Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story

This was a tv movie for ABC and while it is far inferior to the rival adaptation HBO made with Holly Hunter and Swoozie Kurtz, it is a 'guilty pleasure' film with excellent lead performances.

Lesley Ann Warren and Tess Harper play suburban Texas mothers whose over- involvement in their daughters' cheerleading auditions leads to havoc. Lesley Ann Warren is fascinatingly eerie as a struggling mother living vicariously through her not-as-talented daughter. Watching her go from manic and nervous to seductive and enraged is a lot of fun and she's good. Tess Harper plays the Perfect Texan Cheerleading Mom to a 't' . Her naive perfectionism and indignant shock at what develops over cheerleading -tryouts- gone -wrong is also a lot of fun. The actresses miscast as the daughters are one-note and uninteresting but one suspects that this was done to highlight the lead actresses work.

Based on an actual event, WILLING TO KILL: THE TEXAS CHEERLEADER STORY stars the talented and beautiful Lesley Ann Warren as an overly devoted mother who resorts to murder to get her beloved daughter a place on the high school cheerleading squad. Another version of the same story, THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER-MURDERING MOM, took a more comical approach to telling the story and received considerable acclaim, but Ms. Warren's powerhouse performance makes this sadly overlooked telefilm just as rewarding and entertaining. Fortunately, Lifetime Television shows the film sometimes.

I had heard about this story many years ago, because it took place during thee exact time I was in high school, I will not give anything away, but it is important that parents watch something like this with their children, especially those in cheerleading, those who are involved with prom king and queen and such nonsense like this, yes though it is fun for others, but as a teenager who was unpopular and one who was often made fun of by such kids as these that are involved in a story like this, I am glad I was not involved with things like this. It pretty muchy angered me the entire time I was watching this movie about a parent who go to such lengths to help her daughter get to the top of a cheerleading squad and would take any road she could to do so.

If you question about this being a true story, to answer that, it is, but there is a twist that is in the film that is based on the real events of this story that I won't reveal.

This film is horribly acted but it is worth taking the time to sit down with your children, because of the ridiculous nature of the story, it should have been considered a documentary vs being a movie, but at any rate, I gave it a 7 for the fact that the story is important but the acting, I have seen better in a high school play!

(Some Spoilers) True story of Texas "Pom Pom Mom" Wanda Holloway, Lesley Ann Warren, who went as far as having her ex-con brother-in-law Terry Harper, William Forsythe, through his prison connections get a hit man to murder her 13 year-old daughters Shanna, Olivia Brunette, rival Ambers, Lauren Woodland, mom Verna Heath, Tess Harper. Wanda did this in order to get Amber so upset and thus lose the upcoming high-school cheerleader contest to Shanna.

Schocking because the reason, if there's any reason at all to have someone hit or taken out by mobsters or anyone else, is so out and out ridicules. Wanda and Verna were at first the best of friends as were their daughters but the obsession of Wanda wanting Shanna to become a cheer leader for the high school football team drove her almost to commit murder and risk life behind bars or even the death penalty. Amber being far more talented then Shanna was well on her way to get one of the two opening on the cheerleader team and Wanda in her disturbed mind felt that Amber's mom Verna was pulling strings to get her daughter one of the opening spots.

Getting in touch with Terry Wanda slyly attempts him to first get at Amber hit then when Terry told her that those who do this kind of job are very much against killing children, it's bad for business, she decides to have her mom murdered which Terry agrees to forward to his mobster friends. Terry even though he has a criminal record, for drug use and petty crimes, still has a conscience and is really a decent person goes to the police instead and has Wanda set up, by having a wire on him,that in the end has her arrested for the crime of soliciting for capital murder.

Wanda was obviously a mental case not realizing how far she was going to get her daughter Shanna a spot on the cheer-leader team. But she was shrewed enough not to leave any fingerprints and was setting Terry up to take the rap, if her plan fell apart, by doing all the work to have the hit done. The only bright spot in this whole sordid affair was that the two girls, Shanna and Amber, remained friends throughout not realizing how crazy Shanna's mom Wanda was.

Verna was more then helpful to Wanda's young daughter Shanna in getting her on the cheer-leader team, even at the expense of her daughter Amber, and didn't look at Amber being on the team as a life and death issue like Wanda did. Wanda ended up being convicted but the conviction was thrown out, due to one of the jurors not revealing a drug conviction. Wanda was later re-tried where she did received a fifteen year sentence which she served only ten months doing community service and the rest of the sentence 14 1/2 years, which she's still serving, on probation.

Murder is the most serious of all crimes but in cases like this,the attempted cheer leader murder, it shows that those who commit or attempt it aren't the best and the brightest of all criminals.