Perhaps Tarantino has started the trend of justifying the legitimate place for trash-films in serious movie history. Jack Hill is definitely a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, an obvious maverick who managed to squeeze as many entertaining moments as he could out of his tight budgets (the fact that Roger Corman fired him more than once shows that Hill was a handful, but never seemed to let up). SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is a hoot, as is FOXY BROWN and THE BIG BIRD CAGE. This film, THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, while not as good as other Hill films, has some of the touches that made his previous films successful.
The cast is great. Hill was good at finding attractive women to embody his screen characters, and the knockouts here include Colleen Camp and Cheryl (Rainbeaux) Smith. The plot is some silliness about a female reporter infiltrating the cheerleadering squad at Mesa University to get the scoop. Her boyfriend turns out to be a real jerk, and the eventual outcome is a confrontation with the snooty Camp and some pretty ridiculous bad guys.
The film copies some of Corman's nurses movies (political conscious, making sure the token African-American character is there.)Yet, the film also seems to be parodying these more serious-minded New World pictures. SWINGING CHEERLEADERS is fun, and a reminder of what drive-in films were like (most exploitation films nowadays are not this fun).
Jack Hill---the man, the movies...
The cast is great. Hill was good at finding attractive women to embody his screen characters, and the knockouts here include Colleen Camp and Cheryl (Rainbeaux) Smith. The plot is some silliness about a female reporter infiltrating the cheerleadering squad at Mesa University to get the scoop. Her boyfriend turns out to be a real jerk, and the eventual outcome is a confrontation with the snooty Camp and some pretty ridiculous bad guys.
The film copies some of Corman's nurses movies (political conscious, making sure the token African-American character is there.)Yet, the film also seems to be parodying these more serious-minded New World pictures. SWINGING CHEERLEADERS is fun, and a reminder of what drive-in films were like (most exploitation films nowadays are not this fun).
Jack Hill---the man, the movies...