Directed by: Greydon Clark
Starring: Kerry Sherman, Hillary Horan, Alisa Powell, Sherry Marks, John Ireland
"One, two, three, four. We're the fastest; we're the toughest. We're the hardest; we're the roughest. We're the team that's on the rise. With a bit of the devil in our eyes!"
Given enough time, the occult inevitably finds its way into every genre of exploitation film. (Need proof? Look no further than 1967's odious Werewolves on Wheels, the self-proclaimed "first ever motorcycle horror film.") Chances are, however, that Lucifer would want little affiliation with Greydon Clark's Satan's Cheerleaders.
Considering the sheer absurdity of the film's script - "We're on our way to the game. The car crashed. ... Billy died. The sheriff's going to kill us, or something" - the results could have been far worse. Benedict High's midfield maidens are kidnapped by the school's peeping tom janitor, who when he's not ogling the pep squad spends his time worshipping the Devil and obsessively fondling the pentacle on his groovy Satanic necklace.
But Benedict's janitor isn't the only one seeking to score some pom pom poontang in Lucifer's name; it turns out that local sheriff and Satanic High Priest B.L. Bubb (Yes, really!) also intends to sacrifice an "unsoiled maiden" to the Prince of Darkness. Of course, Bubb (one-time Italian film star John Ireland) and the rest of his pack of wanna-be devil worshippers soon discover that finding a virgin among a squad of booby-baring high school cheerleaders isn't as easy as it used to be. ("I'm no maiden; I've been a cheerleader for three years," one of them proudly explains.)
Naturally, tables are turned, the High Priest is defrocked, and the cheerleaders celebrate by adding some odes to Satan to their booty-shaking post-game performance. Add to this silliness some LSD-induced special effects, a thoroughly sappy soundtrack courtesy of 70s "muzak" outfit Sonoma, an inexplicable cameo appearance by John Carradine as "bum," and perhaps most surprising of all, one genuinely clever plot twist, and you have a film so genuinely outrageous that it just might make the Horned One himself crack an occasional smile.
Want to learn more about the long lost cheerleader movies of the 1970s? Then check out the "Revenge of the Cheerleaders: A Definitive Look at the Forgotten Cheerleader Films of the 1970s," now available in the current volume of Creeping Flesh, or online at: http://www.headpress.com.
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