koosmal

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.