By Nia Edwards-Behi
I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the cheerleader subgenre (can we even call it that?) of exploitation filmmaking, but to say that The Swinging Cheerleaders lives up to my expectations of what a cheerleader film would be like is almost right. Luckily, it’s got those little Jack Hill flourishes that make it a bit more interesting than just the cat-fights, dumb jocks and leering coaches.
Mesa U undergrad Kate (Jo Johnston) successfully tries out for the cheerleading squad, which she intends to profile for the radical student paper as a symbol of female oppression. However, she soon finds herself developing friendships and sympathies for the squad and the football team, including Lisa (Rosanne Katon), Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith), and not least of all team star Buck (Ron Hajek), boyfriend of stuck up cheer squad leader Mary Ann (Colleen Camp). Although she opts to drop her article in favour of friendship, much to the disdain of her hippy boyfriend Ron (Ian Sander), Kate does uncover match-rigging amongst the teaching staff, and it’s up to her and her new friends to save the reputation of the Mesa U team.
What essentially makes The Swinging Cheerleaders a cut-above what you’d expect from any other all-American college movie is the interesting sub-plots afforded to its secondary characters. Jo Johnston is great as the central role of Kate, and her rather forced radical-feminism isn’t completely ridiculed nor pushed aside as she becomes more and more part of the squad culture. But, more interesting is, for example, Rainbeaux Smith’s Andrea, whose subplot about losing her virginity (or not) could have been a film of its own. Smith is, as you’d expect, really excellent in the role and it’s a subplot that isn’t played out with quite as much titillation as you’d expect (though that’s not to say it isn’t somewhat exploitative, obviously). Likewise, Rosanne Katon’s Lisa is given some meat to chew too – she’s a student having an affair with her professor, and there’s a wonderful scene in which she’s confronted by his rightly pissed off wife, which adds a bit of very unexpected social commentary. That the black professor is also the only ‘adult’ who finally stands up to the match fixing he’s a part of is very welcome too.
The film is naturally a low-budget affair, particularly evident from what appears to be the use of stock footage for the football games themselves (although at least the costume department does a good job of matching up the uniforms). Still, it’s an impressively made film, moreso considering it was shot in just 12 days. Perhaps what’s most striking about the film is how tame its sexploitation aspects are – Hill himself describes the film as a “Disney sex comedy” in one of the special features on this release, and that’s quite accurate. All the sex-scenes fade to black, and there only seems to be an almost quota-like handful of topless scenes early on in the film. I don’t think it detracts from the film at all, although it does make for slightly imbalanced viewing once the softsploitation stuff is out of the way.
That the film ends rather abruptly is presumably evidence of its low-budget and short shoot, but at least it manages to reconcile Kate with apparent arch-girl nemesis Mary Ann in its final seconds. Okay, they might be putting aside their differences for the good of the team, but it’s something. This release of the film includes some wonderful special features, including a brand new interview with Jack Hill, as well as a recording of a Q&A with Hill, Colleen Camp and Rosanne Katon from a screening of the film. Particularly enjoyable, to me, is an archive interview with the film’s DoP Alfred Taylor, who, it turns out is, Welsh! But moreso than that, his interview provides an interesting counter-point to Hill’s – while the American is in that Corman-esque mode of well-spoken and thoughtful, Taylor’s interview is a much more industrial and mechanical insight into the filmmaking process, and the added insights into his own career are just as fascinating. It’s great to have the chance to listen to professionals talk about films like this with both approaches, and so it’s credit to have them both included here.
All in all it’s hard to exactly recommend The Swinging Cheerleaders as a ‘genre’ film, per se, other than it having cheerleaders occasionally taking their tops off in it, but if you enjoy films about young people in the 70s, then there is a lot to recommend it (not least of all the enjoyment of look at what they’re all wearing). It’s not quite got the badassery of some of Jack Hill’s other films, but even so it’s an entertaining watch that’s worth spending 90 minutes with.
The Swinging Cheerleaders is available now on dual format DVD and Blu-ray, from Arrow Video.