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.

Anybody else out there completely sick and tired of the mindless, that's not even a strong enough word, how about aggravating, sex flicks that Showtime and Cinemax pump out nowadays. Using the same 4 actresses, and the same un-interesting storyline? And I've actually come to hate the 3 effeminate actors who are in every one. It's like a non-ending, awful awful, soap opera with nudity. Soft-core cinema, has hit an all-time low. The production values are great, but the storylines and sex conjure one word - Boredom. Somehow, the modern filmmakers have managed to take the sexual appeal out of women with perfect bodies. I mean I never thought I would see the day, when a skin flick on TV late night would force an involuntary roll of the eyes and send me straight for TV Land reruns, but its really come to that. What's missing, one of the things I can nail down at least is Raunch. Yes, soft core is now politically correct if you can believe that. Almost like its women who are making these to draw in both male and female audiences, and folks it just don't work. Kudos to Showtime for digging up movies like this one. It's totally nasty and wrong, but without going hardcore, that's what's needed to push the buttons. I know there are a zillion more, because I remember them when I was a kid. I would hope they start getting some airtime. Retire the silicon sleep inducers already please, and let the producers go back to making man-hating dramas on Lifetime.

I've watched this film twice and I cannot think of how much more daring this film is compared to something like "American Pie". Incredibly stupid script with just horrendous attempts at acting. This film does deliver the goods. More nudity than some porn films! Could a film like this get made today? All the actress's in those late night Cinemax movies seem to have stipulations regarding their career's and I'm not sure they would do it. I tried to look up the actress's in this film and see if they went on to do anything else and a couple appeared in one or two other low budget films but none seem to make a career out of acting. I keep thinking some went into real porn under different names. Anyway, silly and fun flick really is a statement of some of the exploitation that was made in the 70's and the attitude towards nudity in film.