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Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - MVD Visual Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (3rd January 2025). |
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The Film
 The annual California high school cheerleading contest is being held in Sacramento and bus seventeen is transporting cheerleading teams from three rival Los Angeles-area schools: the good girls of Pierce High lead by level-headed Debbie (Meatballs' Kristine DeBell), the bad girls of Polk High lead by soul sister Sally (Mean Mother's Marilyn Joi), and the rich girls of Darwell lead by snobby Lisa (Up in Smoke's Ann Wharton), and chaperoned by icy coach Frankie McDougall (Courtney Sands). As night falls, they come across a roadblock and the Highway Patrol steers them to a detour leading to a remote cabin where it is revealed that the cops are their abductors: professional football players Wayne Mathews (Vampire at Midnight's Jason Williams) ousted after an injury to his throwing arm, George Henderson (Anthony Lewis) struck off for his temper, and Big John Hunsucker (John Albert) who is too much of a brute on and off the field. With the help of Frankie and Wayne's soft-spoken younger brother Billy (The Hills Have Eyes' Robert Houston), the hope to hold the girls hostage and collect a two million dollars ransom in the next twenty-four hours, communicating through the broadcasts of popular Los Angeles deejay Joyful Jerome (Penitentiary's Leon Isaac Kennedy), calls to whom are being traced by hard-boiled Detective Fuller (Alton Fields) and dim-witted Sergeant Burns (Billy McVay). The state is not willing to pay the two million dollars, however, stage representative Franklin Franklin (Andrew J. Kuehn whose company Kaleidoscope Pictures was one of the leading trailer cutters) says the government is introducing legislation to allow the parents of the missing girls to borrow their share of the ransom at a low interest rate (provided they meet the registration requirements). After several unsuccessful escape attempts, the girls realize that they must stop fighting each other – given the socio-economic and racial divides of the three schools, the abductors only somewhat jokingly refer to the cat-fighting as "class warfare" – and work together using their bodies and their brains. Meanwhile, Wayne and Billy collect the ransom in an intricate and funny sequence that deserves a film all to itself. While the basic plot suggests something darker, even the release title Cheerleaders Wild Weekend and the original title "The Great American Girl Robbery" are a bit misleading due to the film's schizophrenic tone, alternately terrorizing and humiliating the girls and satirizing the public response – even the abductors identifying themselves to authorities as the "National American Army of Freedom" is just a cover rather than a radicalized group – but it is best taken as a comedy with nudity rather than a sex comedy. Both the cheerleaders' method of turning the tables on their captors and the kidnappers collection of the ransom are stand-out sequences (the cheerleaders come up with an original escape-by-panty solution while Wayne dodges the cops on foot and by car like a football player with the money bag as the game ball). The radical shifts in tone never put the viewer off. There is an "A Chorus Line" striptease beauty pageant scene which seems odd given that they are being held captive, but it does emphasize the competitive nature of the girls. A would-be rape scene is followed by a scene of lesbian Frankie comforting the victim with a bath that is spied upon by Billy who is seen elsewhere forming a bond with cheerleader Pam (Joan Wolff), and one of the escaped cheerleaders also wields a chainsaw against her pursuer like a reversal of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a well-shot day-for-night woodland chase. Several of the cast and crew went on to lucrative movie careers: Houston supervised the editing of the first three Lone Wolf and Cub films into the grindhouse favorite Shogun Assassin and was later nominated for and won several awards for his documentaries including an Oscar. Producer Chuck Russell went gone on to be a director with genre favorites like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors and The Blob. Sound editor Stephen Flick is an award-winning sound designer Robocop and Speed. Assistant director Tom Jacobson went onto to be a producer with films like Thief of Hearts and Uncle Buck. The film was produced by Bill Osco who had previously worked with Williams on Flesh Gordon and DeBell in Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Fantsy. 
Video
Cheerleaders Wild Weekend first played four-walled by Osco under its original title "The Great American Girl Robbery" before it was picked up by Dimension Pictures – the Lawrence Woolner company, not the Miramax company – who released it under the better-known moniker followed by a Vestron Video VHS release. In 2009, Scorpion Releasing put the film out on a stacked DVD followed by a thousand-copy limited edition Blu-ray from Code Red. MVD Visual's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from the same master with a few alternations. While the Scorpion Releasing DVD featured the original "The Great American Girl Robbery" title card on the feature presentation and the Dimension Pictures replacement title card on a VHS-sourced extra, MVD has taken the more generic "Cheerleaders Wild Weekend" card from the theatrical trailer and inserted it into their version. The older master holds up well in the daylight and well-lit interior scenes as well as some darker scenes that are meant to look moody. Night-for-night scenes vary by shot but are sometimes impenetrable. There is damage here and there, particularly at the reel changes, but the resolution compliments the bare flesh and greatly aides the illusion of the railway sequence in which the viewer gawks at what seems like an ambitious miniature for the budget and a single scene. 
Audio
The LPCM 2.0 16-bit mono audio is in good condition. There is a layer of underlying hiss but production dialogue and added voiceovers are always clean, the effects track is not that ambitious, and it does draw attention to the scoring which may or may not be library tracks as effective as they are. It is too bad there was no single of the theme song. Optional English SDH subtitles have been added with a couple transcription errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by two audio commentaries. The first is an audio commentary by director Jeff Werner, editor Greg McClatchy, and actress Marilyn Joi, moderated by Marc Edward Heuck – Jason Williams provides some brief comments but is the audio level on his mic is low – and it is an informative and entertaining track but Joi would have benefited from a separate track since Heuck spends much of the first half of the track asking Werner and McClatchy about the logistics and technical aspects of the shoot so Joi can only chime in with cracks at onscreen action, memories on the set, and supportive laughter but she does have more input later; that said, the more production-oriented discussion is interesting as is learning about the identities of several of the minor cast who never worked again (and those who did in other mediums like Wharton who became a stand-up comedian). While Joi in the first commentary looks back on her work fondly without embarrassment, on the audio commentary by actress Kristine DeBell, moderated by Code Red's Bill Olsen and ? – produced for the Scorpion DVD but left off the Code Red Blu-ray – DeBell either does not remember a lot about the film or unwilling due to her embarrassment stemming from the release of Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Fantasy, initially with a self-imposed X-rating and an eventual R-rating without cuts followed by an XXX-rated cut with body doubles. She is most responsive discussing her training and her other films and television work, and seems interested in hearing about the careers of other cast and crew, but we do learn from the moderators that they did attempt to interview a busy Houston.  Also ported over are a quartet of interviews starting with star Kristine DeBell (10:55) who talks about her other work – supported by posters and title cards – but does not speak about the film at all despite the use of presence of contextual clips during the interview as if she were. Not included with the Scorpion DVD but possibly produced around the same time as his Cop Killers interview is one with star Jason Williams (8:43) who discusses his football career, his early credits – including being up for one of the leads in Two-Lane Blacktop and M*A*S*H but not finding more work for eight months before answering an add looking for a Buster Crabbe lookalike for Flesh Gordon and the films that resulted from that including a brief mention of the feature presentation before going on a rant about Hollywood. In his interview, co-star Leon Issac Kennedy (27:22) discusses his early credits, noting that he was not the lead of Vengeance is Mine but got bumped up to first billing on the advertising for the reissue "Fighting Mad" after the success of Penitentiary and his reasons for doing the film when the blaxploitation genre was waning and the production was threadbare. He also discusses the Penitentiary sequels, his friendships with Muhammad Ali and Mr. T as well as his passion project Body and Soul, fighting against the use of the title given critical responses to remakes, and then doing some rewriting and research when the producers paid Paramount to use the title for the prestige. There is also an interview with co-star Marilyn Joi (14:39) who reveals that she did not have to chase and hustle for work upon arriving in Los Angeles, having no inhibitions about doing nudity, and briefly discussing the film along with her other work, particularly projects for Al Adamson. The disc also includes the Cheerleaders Wild Weekend theatrical trailer(1:48) – which appears to be a different one from the one on the earlier editions that ran 2:17 – as well as the alternate Cheerleaders Wild Weekend title card (3:49) is the same VHS-sourced sequence from the DVD extras, so "The Great American Girl Robbery" title card is included nowhere on the disc. The remainder of the extras are a photo gallery(2:55) and six trailers for other MVD releases including the recenlty-reviewed Osco/Williams film Cop Killers.
Packaging
The first pressing includes a slipcover and foldout poster. 
Overall
Cheerleaders Wild Weekend takes some questionable story material and makes it impossible to take seriously in this odd mismatch of seventies hostage thriller and sex comedy.
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