HEFILM The commercial success of this lead to Jack Hill getting to make the much more fun,though maybe even more poorly made and much worse acted, Switchblade Sisters right after this. So something good, or well, better came out of this film getting made.The budget for this films is just too low to even have the cheerleaders do any full routine. The credit sequence of them is all you get to see, though you get to see those same shots and same stock footage football footage over and over again. Very little T and A for a plot that is a set up for a porn movie that never takes place. Smith was pregnant when she made the film and one fan of hers told me the appeal is that her breasts are huge. Well they are and her armpits are unshaved. Can humor still be found in her being excited about being gang banged as a way to lose her virginity? That's up to you. Why bring this up? Well that's about all that's worth noting. This is an exploitation film without much exploitation and by the time this was made the stakes were pretty high on exploitation. This is almost like a 1950's B and W nudie movie only it's in color and made almost 20 years after that was the style for these things.The girls give decent performances, considering the crap material, most of the male cast members are awful and it just goes no where for a long time. Only real highlight is a confrontation scene with the wife of a teacher who confronts one of the cheerleaders and threaten's to "carve her name into one of the cheerleaders tits so when she flops them out for him he'll know she knows." Or words to that effect. What the movie needs is more outrageousness like this, the plot is too thin to be taken seriously but sort of is and really it just seems like the story is on life support until it can finally quietly die.Flatly made by the usually flat director Hill. He can't be blamed for the lack of money that is heavily in evidence, but shows no real imagination in getting around those problems the way other better directors of the era did.The film is dated but not enough so for it to be fun on that level either,though perhaps the way it depicts men is actually more dated than the way it depicts women. Look elsewhere for something entertainingly trashy not here.

Woodyanders Special credit must go to the ever-surprising and enterprising Jack Hill for making the single most wickedly subversive film in the popular 70's cheerleader sub-genre. Sure, it certainly delivers the prerequisite ample doses of silly slapstick humor and tasty sex and gratuitous nudity, but along with that sleazy stuff we also have a remarkably astute critique of gender roles and sexual stereotypes as well as a deliciously sly and playful sense of anarchic humor.Sassy Mesa University underground newspaper reporter Kate (winningly played by lovely brunette sprite Jo Johnston) decides to pose as a cheerleader in order to get the straight dope for an article on "female exploitation in contemporary society." Kate soon discovers that there's much more to being a cheerleader than just sexy short skirts and fluffy pom-poms. They're actually troubled individuals with serious issues: Sweet Rainbeaux Smith is a frustrated virgin who's eager to learn more about sex, Colleeen Camp is a snotty, stuck-up rich bitch who always gets what she wants, and Rosanne Katon ("Playboy" 's September '78 Playmate of the Month) is having an affair with a married college professor. The seemingly cocky and sexist star football player turns out to be a nice, sensitive guy and the allegedly radical hippie college newspaper editor ultimately gets exposed as a hypocritical misogynistic phony. Moreover, both the shady campus dean and the duplicitous football coach are involved in a numbers racket. Wow, talk about campus unrest! Besides the unusually sound plot and provocative political subtext (both very rare and welcome qualities in the often schlocky and strictly superficial cheerleader sub-genre), "The Swinging Cheerleaders" further boasts a wonderfully lush'n'plush look, uniformly solid acting, nifty policeman bits by crusty character actor John Quade and veteran Hollywood stuntman Bob Minor (who also popped up in "Coffy," "Foxy Brown" and "Switchblade Sistors" for Jack Hill), and a hilariously wild'n'wacky slapstick finale. Clips from this gem are featured in the acclaimed Errol Morris documentary "The Thin Blue Line."

Michael Pilkington A feminist reporter (Jo Johnston) who wants to write an exposé on how cheerleading degrades women decides to infiltrate the cheerleading squad. Once accepted, she realizes that the cheerleaders aren't bad and finds out that the football games are rigged. She also falls for the team's quarterback (Ron Hajek), and this does not sit well with his girlfriend - the head cheerleader (Colleen Camp).Semi follow-up to 1973's "The Cheerleaders" is a disappointment. Too many subplots, amateurish performances and writing ruin this loser. Directed by Jack Hill ("Coffy," "Foxy Brown"). My evaluation: * out of ****.

silentgmusic 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...