disgusting, overrated, pointless

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

You've gotta love Seventies soft-core. Before Internet or home video, you had to make actual movies to get this stuff out. Not great production value, but shot on film instead of videotape. No shortage of nudity or simulated sex. And the girls... Stephanie Fondue and a couple of others were cute but not gorgeous. Denise Dillaway and Jovita Bush were beautiful. Nowadays women in this sort of film would all have triple-D mounds of silicon, toned muscular limbs, and washboard abs. These gals look so much better with natural boobies, large or not, round hineys and soft bellies. Women as God made them. You can tell this was made some time ago, due to the non-PC scenarios of these teen-age high school students constantly having sex with adult men, including coaches at their school, and friends' fathers. A huge no-no nowadays. Anyway, worth checking out if you know what you're in for; silly campy dialog, marginal acting, and ridiculous situations calling for seriously slutty cheerleaders.

this movie get a '3' out of 10, or roughly 1/3, because there are 6 cheerleaders in this movie but only 2 are worth looking at, and that's 1/3. the two better chicks are the cheerleaders captain (denise dillaway), an attractive brunette with healthy natural breasts; and the dark girl (jovita bush), who has a rockin' body highlighted by magnificent nipples. but better still isn't great. none of these chicks would even qualify for the H.O.T.S. squad.two scenes stand out - the young virgin cheerleader (stephanie fondue, a plain Jane with a nice ass) has to go through initiation by showering in the boys' room and is caught. she has her towel ripped away from her naked, and is fondled at length. later, the cheerleader captain gets it from behind from the coach while his old game highlights play on tape in the background as if play by play of his conquest.but since the story is stupid, the sex situations clichéd, and the acting abysmal, the women at least need to be sexy and good looking and they're mostly not. if the cheerleader captain and the dark girl are a 6 on the 1-10 scale, to be generous there's a 5, two 4's and a 3 leftover. not a good ratio, even for exploitation fare.

I found "The Cheerleaders" to be the best of the sexploitation films, much more entertaining than 'Flesh Gordan', 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls', 'Fritz the Cat' The crowds really loved the picture, the laughter tended to drown out some of the following lines. Everyone left with a smile on their face. We played it to a packed house nightly. The print that we has was x-rated, though soft core. I do not believe it was a self imposed x, as the beginning of the had the MPAA X rating with the blue background preceeding the title and credits. I was operating the Star Theater in Coshocton, Ohio. We opened the film the first week of January 1974. The prosecuter saw our advance advertising and threatened to arrest us if we showed the film. I had a partner, and we first decided to 'pull' the film and got 'Lady Sings the Blues' as a backup-even changed the marquee to 'Lady Sings the Blues'. We reconsidered and called the prosecuter's bluff, showed 'The Cheerleaders', we did not get arrested. The Coshocton Tribune's lead story on 01/04/74 was 'Theater Told to Pull X Rated Feature'. We sold out in 15 minutes of opening, the film held the house record until beaten by 'The Exorcist'. We brought it back a few months later with equally good ticket sales. Why? word of mouth, it was a crowd pleaser, this was before videos, DVD's, cable was basic, the raunchy language and nudity still had shock value-especially in a small town.

The only reason I like this film is that part of it (outside shots) were done at my alma mater, Monta Vista High. In fact, when the film came out, I was too young to see it.Our School District, anxious for the money paid for use of the school during the summer months as a setting, thought that the film was about life in high school (it was tentatively titled High School Daze) and didn't bother to read the script.Of course, they changed the name of the school for the film, so for the Yearbook in 1973 we snuck in all sorts of references to the film that managed to slip by the faculty. I still have a copy of an ad for the film in my old yearbook.Sometimes, it's fun to see how easily bureaucrats can be fooled.