Les cheeries font des ravages

Aside from horror , 70's sexploitation is my second favorite genre and The Cheerleaders is a real winner in the "so bad it's good " category. This movie has it all , girls that seriously look real young instead of movies where the "highschool" girls are reaching mid 30's these girls look actually 18...hell Stephanie Fondue looks actually 16..it's scary. So we've got raunchy comedic sex , the sex in this movie is more on the bizzare comedic side rather than the hardcore explicit side..this is most notorious in the football orgy , and the memorable sex scene between the cheerleader coach and the blonde on the gym bike while bad classical music plays in the background. The film itself gets boring in some parts that just draaaaaaag...but it has enough sex to keep you interested. This is not for people seeking quality filmaking , or even for hardcore porn fanatics...it's just the perfect popcorn film for late night viewing..

Oh I also taped this off The Movie Channel late at night after learning it and Showtime air the complete uncut 84 minute version instead of the reportedly heavily edited video version..so if you want a copy of this until this comes on DVD unedited I suggest making yourself a copy...

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 ****.

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 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.