9/1/06: The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974)Let’s wrap up the week with one of the most baffling cheerleader stories ever told—and not just because of director Jack Hill’s trademark tendency to mix slapstick and drama within the same scene.
The Swinging Cheerleaders is also sexploitation that’s packed with genuine (and genuinely disturbing) moral messages.
Things are looking good for Mesa State as they launch their football season. (See, it’s college-age cheerleaders. We feel more moral already.) They’ve got a winning team, but the cheerleaders are in search of one more gal. Head cheerleader Mary Ann (Colleen Camp) has high standards, but she still has to be talked into adding the talented Kate (Jo Johnston) to the group.
Mary Ann doesn’t like how her quarterback boyfriend flirts with the new candidate. She should really be worried about how Kate is a campus feminist who’s infiltrating the squad so that she can expose the secrets behind “the most demeaning activity on campus.” Her hippie reporter boyfriend loves the idea, as they envision the big story: “I Was An Undercover Cheerleader For The Underground Press.”
Interestingly—especially for a script written by two ’70s ladies—it doesn’t take long before Kate learns that cheerleaders don’t meet her stereotypes. That quarterback makes a bad first impression, but even he turns out to be a decent guy. Kate isn’t so bad, either. She quickly convinces cheerleader Andrea (Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith) to go around without a bra.
Sadly, Andrea takes too much of Kate’s advice. The sweet virgin can’t get up the courage to sleep with her boyfriend. “You’re almost 20 years old,” admonishes Kate. “What are you saving it for?” Ultimately, Kate and fellow cheerleader Lisa (Roseanna Katon) convince Andrea that it’d be easier if she gave up her virginity to a stranger.
“I’ll just make it with the first far-out freak who hits on me,” declares Andrea—to her friends’ smiling approval. Too bad that freak turns out to be Kate’s old boyfriend, who’s embittered at being dumped for the fascistic jocks. Andrea’s first sexual encounter quickly goes bad after the creep calls over his Leftist pals for “a nihilistic happening.”
The director’s too classy to use the resulting gang-rape as an excuse for more nudity. In a particularly uncomfortable touch, though, we see Kate and Lisa laughing over Andrea’s beaten body. Her friends are simply too liberated to guess that anything bad has happened to their friend.
That was bold filmmaking back in 1974. Hill couldn’t even be sure that the drive-in crowd would enjoy the sight of a football player beating the hell out of an evil would-be revolutionary. Enough people did for
The Swinging Cheerleaders to become our kind of classic.
There’s a whole other plot involving the crooked coach, which gives Hill more opportunities to create jarring transitions in tone. In the end, a lot of people learn valuable lessons—and we have another great exploitation film from genre legends Camp and Katon. (Johnston never made another movie.)
We also get another endearingly spacy performance from the late Cheryl Smith, in a role that’s a lot less tawdry than in
Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Remember how she was pregnant in that one? Let’s close with a look at Cheryl in happier times, courtesy of
Teleport City:
Make it your own: You could sis-boom-buy
The Cheerleaders Collection, which gives you fine DVDs of both
The Swinging Cheerleaders and
Revenge of the Cheerleaders—along with 1973’s unsavory
The Cheerleaders. Or you can
get Swinging on DVD by itself. And, like
Revenge of the Cheerleaders,
The Swinging Cheerleaders has the honor of being deceptively packaged
on cheap VHS as part of a fake
H.O.T.S. trilogy.
