The Swinging Cheerleaders

1970s exploitation yielded a few distasteful film series involving nurses, teachers, and cheerleaders.  Distasteful, but with more social conscience than you would expect.  1974's THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS was naturally marketed as another typical drive-in sex romp, but is actually a plot heavy drama with fairly interesting elements that sadly never get proper development.  I imagine most viewers (or the studios that made these things) back in the day wouldn't have cared about that.  They were likely impatient during all that dialogue, waiting for the next nude scene.

This time, fewer than expected.  Director Jack Hill, a hero to cult film junkies, steers the series away from softcore to focus on a story a journalism student named Kate (Jo Johnston) who tries out for the squad with the intent of exposing sexism and objectivism.  She finds some, and is surprised to learn there is also serious corruption involving the football coach and even the college dean.   Along the way, Kate learns that her activist boyfriend is a real scumbag, and maybe she misjudged the other pom pom girls, who include Mary Ann (Colleen Camp, underused), who dates the quarterback, Lisa (Roseanne Katon), who's having an affair with her statistics prof., and Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith), who is still a virgin.

There are surprisingly thoughtful examinations of social politics, sexual and otherwise.  But it never goes beyond a juvenile level, and the movie frequently resorts to dum dum humor to keep the peanut gallery amused.  One character is gang raped (offscreen), and the other characters who encouraged her to have her first time with "someone she doesn't give a shit about", are not really shown reacting to this ugliness, this highly unfortunate outcome.  That's dishonest to me.  We only get her boyfriend beating the crap out of the guy who masterminded it.  Another character, who we're supposed to begin liking, dismisses his friend who just informed him that a drunk girl is on a bed upstairs - "She gives lousy head anyway."

Watch out for Mae Mercer's scene, the jealous wife with the switchblade.  Those two minutes have an energy and urgency the rest of the film lacks.

As is typical with films of this type, there is some embarrassing acting and unintentional laughs.  Gotta love that stock football footage.  Ron Hajek, who plays Buck the quarterback, certainly deserved a Razzie for his work.  THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, apparently less lascivious than the films in this franchise before and after it, is also fairly dull at times.  It ends up failing as a T & A epic and the more serious drama it seeks to be.   In short, a mess.  A film that almost feels like an Afterschool Special with the occasional lewd moment.  The final scene is one of the most abrupt I've witnessed.