Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (1979)

One thing I truly love about watching forgotten exploitation films are coming across moments where the filmmakers manage to transcend their obvious limitations (be it budget, talent or a combination of both) and create a sequence that truly stands out as something far more memorable than it has any right to be.

For the majority of its running time, Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (aka The Great American Girl Robbery) is little more than a blatant excuse to connive scenarios in which its titular characters are compelled to expose their breasts, but hidden at the end is a genuinely engaging heist sequence as breathlessly enjoyable as anything you could expect to see in a major studio film of the era.

So what I’m saying is that to get to the good part of this movie, you’ll have to sit through a lot of nudity featuring a bunch of attractive young women dressed in short skirts and very tight T-shirts. There are clearly worse ways to spend your time.

As the kidnapper/mastermind/former pro football player, co-writer Jason Williams (of Flesh Gordon fame) manages to walk the hero/villain line surprisingly well — at least enough to earn the final moment of connection he shares with the film’s nominal heroine (Kristine DeBell, a Playboy cover girl who went hardcore in the X-rated Alice in Wonderland before moving on to mainstream fare like Meatballs and The Big Brawl).

The rest of the performances are mostly abysmal, but in that amusingly porno way, that actually adds charm to a production rather than detracts from it. —Allan Mott

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