
Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend
directed by Jeff Werner
starring Kristine DeBell, Jason Williams, Lee Curtis (Leon Isaac Kennedy)
MVD Rewind Collection
Throughout the 1970s movies about cheerleaders filled out double, triple, even 4 or 5 film “dusk ‘til dawn” screenings at drive-in theaters across the county. Films with such interchangeable titles as The Pom-Pom Girls, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Cheering Section provided some laughs and even more importantly some skin on weekends without horror or kung fu movies. Cheerleader’s Wild Weekend aka The Great American Girl Robbery entered the fray in 1979 with its odd mashup of hostage drama, comedic crime caper, and good old fashioned T & A hijinks.
As a voiceover slideshow during the credits informs us, three cheerleading squads from rival high schools have been selected to compete in the California state cheerleading championship in Sacramento. The rival schools are naturally a poor, urban school, a middle-class school, and an elite wealthy school. These 15 girls board a school bus together with their uptight chaperone and leering bus driver. During the trip, insults fly around the bus when the girls aren’t trying to get drivers to run off the road by flashing them. As night falls, the bus is hijacked by a group of washed-out pro football players who intend to ransom the girls for two million dollars. During their captivity, the girls are subject to various (ostensibly humorous) humiliations, mostly as a pretext to getting them out of their clothes, including an insane impromptu “topless beauty pageant.” Eventually the cheer squads realize that they have to band together if they are going to escape. Meanwhile, the ringleader of the gang and his brother attempt to run a switcheroo on the cops with the ransom money that falls apart when one of the dim-witted detectives relates the plot of a TV show he watched recently, where the kidnappers pulled a stunt eerily similar to to the wild goose chase they found themselves in. In the end everything works out as it should for everyone but the state of California, which is left without 2 million dollars and without a cheerleading champion.

Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend delivers all the goods for a humid summer night at the drive-in with copious amounts of nudity, minimal plot, a few intentional and unintentional laughs, and even a well-staged action scene at the climax, but overall it lacks a certain crackle that sets the really memorable sleaze apart. It doesn’t help matters that the film boasts stars from the X-rated films Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams) and Alice in Wonderland (Kristine DeBell) and has no sex scenes with them and a contracted no-nudity clause from Kristine DeBell. The tonal mashup of the film, while not uncommon for the era, feels off-putting and needed to lean harder into farce or drama. While not a classic, Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend is still a sexy and goofy bit of low-brow cinematic entertainment.

Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend transitioned from the drive-in to cable TV, with late night showings on premium channels and with edits on basic cable, most notably on USA Network’s long running Up All Night with Rhonda Sheer (or Gilbert Gottfried). The film is now available on Blu-ray as part of the MVD Rewind Collection that updates classic VHS trash to loaded hi-def releases that celebrate the nostalgia of the Friday night video store run. This disc features two audio commentaries, one with star Kristine DeBell and another featuring Director Jeff Werner, Actress Marilyn Joi, and Editor Gregory McClatchy.