The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974)

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The Swinging Cheerleaders is Jack Hill’s 1974 American exploitation film depicting a feminist journalism student who joins her university’s cheerleading squad to write an undercover expose and finds real friendship with the team while uncovering a gambling-fixing scheme involving the football program. Jo Johnston plays Kate. Cheryl Smith plays Andrea. Rosanne Katon plays Lisa. Colleen Camp plays Mary Ann. Ron Hajek plays Buck. Ian Sander plays Ron. Hill wrote the screenplay with David Kidd, under the pseudonyms Jane Witherspoon and Betty Conklin.

Centaur Releasing distributed the film in May 1974, and it later earned a reputation as one of the foundational entries in the cheerleader-cinema subgenre. Jack Hill is widely regarded as the master of 1970s exploitation cinema, with Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974) establishing his commercial credibility.

I liked Jack Hill’s film right away. He takes a drive-in cheerleader picture and fills it with women who are smarter than the men around them, and he still gives the audience what the poster promised. The drive-in packaging hasn’t aged as well as the characters have, and that’s my reservation, but I kept liking these women more as the film went on.

The Swinging Cheerleaders sits at an unusual intersection within 1970s exploitation cinema: marketed as exploitative cheerleader content but structured as feminist-friendship narrative with surprising thematic seriousness underneath the genre packaging. Hill’s screenplay treats the cheerleaders as intelligent young women with real professional ambitions instead of as objects for the audience’s gaze, and the film’s gambling-scandal plot works with heavy procedural craftsmanship.

The result is a film that gives the audience what its title promises and considerably more, the quality that’s earned Hill his reputation as the most thoughtful exploitation director of the decade.

Jack Hill’s Feminist Exploitation

Hill had built his career on exploitation productions that treated their female leads with considerably more respect than the genre’s broader output managed. Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974) had established Pam Grier as one of the strongest action-film leads of the 1970s, with both films operating as both real exploitation cinema and as real character studies. The Swinging Cheerleaders applies the same approach to the cheerleader subgenre.

Kate’s undercover journalism premise gives the screenplay an engine for examining the cheerleaders as actual people. Her gradual recognition that the women she planned to write a contemptuous expose about are intelligent professionals dealing with difficult institutional pressure gives the film its moral arc. I like watching a smug outsider get proved wrong, and Hill lets her learn it slowly enough that the change of heart feels earned.

The Gambling-Conspiracy Plot

The screenplay’s secondary plot involves a gambling fixing operation around the university football program, with several characters revealed across the running time as participants in point-shaving arrangements that depend on the cheerleaders’ romantic relationships with specific players. The structural choice gives the film its actual investigative-journalism dimension instead of only setting up the cheerleader content as backdrop.

Kate’s eventual exposure of the gambling operation is both a journalistic triumph and a moment of solidarity, with her cheerleader friends backing the investigation despite what it costs them personally. I think this is the smartest thing in the script.

The women get the agency and the win, and the romantic subplots end up serving the investigation. That choice is what separates the film from the other genre pictures of its period for me.

The Ensemble Performances

Jo Johnston’s Kate leads the film as both protagonist and audience identification figure. The character is intelligent, observant, and gradually willing to revise her initial contemptuous attitude toward the cheerleaders as her undercover work reveals their complexity. Johnston’s performance refuses every available exploitation-cinema shortcut.

Colleen Camp’s Mary Ann is the film’s strongest single supporting performance. The character would become Camp’s career-launching role and the actor’s distinct comic-warm energy carries significant portions of the cheerleader-team material. Camp went on to long-running supporting careers in studio productions, with her Swinging Cheerleaders work positioning her as one of the strongest 1970s exploitation discoveries. Camp is the performer I’d watch the film for. She’s warm and funny in material that could have made her a punchline, and the film feels livelier whenever Mary Ann is on screen.

Does The Swinging Cheerleaders still hold up?

A 7 from me. Hill’s respect for his women, a gambling plot with real bite, and Colleen Camp’s energy make this a lot better than a drive-in cheerleader picture has any right to be. The exploitation packaging is what holds it back from a higher number, because it has dated far worse than the characters have. If 1970s exploitation is your territory, this is required viewing, and even if it isn’t, it’s worth a look.

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