The second of three "Cheerleaders" movies in an ersatz trilogy from the 1970s, "The Swinging Cheerleaders" boasts direction by B-movie legend Jack Hill. His other efforts, notably "Switchblade Sisters" and various blaxploitation flicks, offer serious-minded, sometimes hard-edged looks at American life in the seventies. "The Swinging Cheerleaders" follows in a similar vein. For whatever reason, Hill wrote the script under the alias "Jane Witherspoon," which I suppose makes any perceivable objectification of women somehow forgivable. He and co-writer David Kidd (writing as "Betty Conkin"), however, went out of their way to make this film less like its predecessor in that the titular cheerleaders are given personalities resembling actual human beings. Kate (Jo Johnston) sets out write an expose of cheerleader life as a dissertation for a college class. She changes her mind when she realizes not only are the cheerleaders unexpectedly sweet, but the football players are all a real swell bunch as well! To add insult to injury, it turns out her former love interest, Ron (Ian Sander), is a real slimeball who calls his friends over for a group assault of cheerleader Andrea (the sublime Cheryl Smith). Gee, I guess the "campus radical" (there's only ONE?! Isn't this the 1970s?!) isn't such a peace-loving idealist after all! I guess Hill and Kidd really didn't like hippies for some reason. Anyway, I found this film to be too heavy on plot and WAY too light on humor. In fact, "The Swinging Cheerleaders" simply isn't much fun (at least not until the last five or ten minutes). That isn't to say it is a bad movie, but it just isn't what one would expect from one with this title. 5 out of 10 stars
Review of The Swinging Cheerleaders
