The Great American Girl Robbery (1979) User Reviews

Mixed Poisons

[lazarillo · 23 October 2004]

This movie seems to combine the 70's drive-in fascination with the Patty Hearst kidnapping with its fascination for sexy cheerleaders. Three squads of cheerleaders are on their way to a competition and for some reason are sharing a single school bus (even though one is a tough, inner-city squad and another is from an elite private school) when they are all kidnapped and held for ransom by a group of ex-jocks who call themselves the National American Liberation Army. There's the usual sexploitation filler--the captors and the cheerleaders kill time by having a topless beauty contest, lead Kristine DeBell has (offscreen) sex with the good guy kidnapper,and the lone female kidnapper (who is of course a lesbian) seduces one of the other girls in a bathtub. Finally, the three teams ban together to fight back, which mainly involves a long, gratuitous scene where they all strip off their underwear and fashion it into a rope which they use to trip one of the kidnappers. (Someone could have just stuck her foot out, but where's the fun in that?)

This movie is surprisingly politically incorrect. The black kidnapper is the bad guy while the handsome white kidnapper turns out to be a sympathetic good guy. Still it's refreshing to actually see a black villain for a change and he's the best actor in the movie next to Kristine DeBell. DeBell, of course, was the talented and appealing actress whose career was ruined when it was found out that she had earlier appeared in a porno movie (strangely, a similar thing happened to untalented boob-job Michelle Bauer, but that didn't stop her from going on to appear in 500 low-budget movies that were even worse than her early porno efforts--go figure). This is neither the best of the cheerleader movies (try "The Swinging Cheerleaders", "The Pom-Pom Girls", or "Satan's Cheerleaders")nor the best of the Patty Hearst/kidnapping movies (try "The Candy Snatchers", "Sweet Sugar" or "Abduction"), but if you like mixing your poisons, by all means, check it out.

One of the worst ever

[john-852 · 2/10 · 8 April 2005]

Outside of some gratuitous nudity, there is precious little to recommend this. This was made by some of the people involved with FLESH GORDON and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, the two mid 70's porno films. Both were released in a hard version and then re-cut and played for years in toned down R versions. CHEERLEADERS features Kristine Debell ( who played Alice ) and Jason Williams ( who played Flesh, and who co-wrote this disaster ), the only other cast member of note is Marilyn Joi. The movie veers wildly between dumb T & A and a ridiculous kidnapping plot, never finding any stable tone or providing any laughs or thrills. In fact, the plot is so ridiculous it's not even worth touching on. The acting is poor all around and the direction is laughable to non existent. Kristine should be the sole reason to watch this but the film fails miserably on this level as well. While top billed, she's barely in this, has very little to say or do, and never gets naked. A huge let down as Kristine was so beautiful back then. She was involved with producer Osco for several years following ALICE and perhaps that relationship allowed her to participate in a T & A film without showing any skin. She would go from this to MEATBALLS and onto bigger things, but her career never caught fire.

a really wild weekend!

[jimbo97-1 · 7/10 · 7 March 2010]

The highlight of CHEERLEADERS' WILD WEEKEND for me was the hot MILF lesbian school nurse played by buxom blonde Courtney Sands (who is not listed as making any other movies :-( ). Her attempted seduction of one of the rich girls by giving her a bath is HOT. The poor girl is afraid and doesn't want to play... even after the villainess exposes her own monumental rib flaps to her! The interruption by one of the male kidnappers is maddening! One wonders if the older dyke would have been successful.

The clincher comes when the cheerleaders revolt and the kidnappers are tied up with the girls' underwear. The lesbian kidnapper has her mouth stuffed with her 'target''s panties (!!) and the girl tells her "that's as close as you'll ever get". (Cheers from the audience!)

I am so embarrassed to admit that I LIKED this one!

[sain2002 · 9/10 · 9 March 2006]

There are a LOT of really awful sexploitation films out there, and normally I would admit that this is one of them. Except that there was ONE SCENE in this film that I found to be REALLY EROTIC, and because of that one scene I'm upping my rating from a "1" to a "9" (my credibility would be completely shot if I went any higher!) One of the other reviewers (lazarillo) mentions a topless beauty contest in which the kidnapped cheerleaders entertain themselves by dancing almost naked. It is during that scene when one of the bad guys grabs one of the girls (a very pretty blonde) whom he has already declared to be his favorite. But the female kidnapper stops him (threatening to shoot him), and then she takes the frightened girl into the bathroom with her, offering to give the girl a bath. The ensuing scene is very tender and soft as she bathes and comforts the girl. As a lesbian seduction scene it was cut short by the appearance by one of the stupid guys, but it was INCREDIBLY EROTIC until that point! I've never seen another sexploitation film come close to matching it. In fact, it was hotter than most XXX films, not that that's saying much.

Soft-core cheerleaders as good as it gets!

[DeepAndWide · 10/10 · 23 November 2012]

Evidently, different people are looking for different things in a soft core comedy. Me, I just want to be playfully titillated, and this movie does it very well. How many times have we been disappointed when the cover artwork looked very juicy but the movie didn't deliver? This is one of the gems that makes me say, "Now that's what I'm talking' about!"

You have a bevy of cute, vibrant, teenage girls in colorful cheerleader uniforms, and one somewhat more mature woman who enriches the mix a bit. The acting is good; the girls are very animated with personality and attitude. The game of nudie peek-a-boo is well played, with teasing, finesse, and suspense around how much we are going to see and when. And then when the nudity comes, the girls are perky, succulent, and natural, with "a wiggle in the walk and a giggle in the talk" (as Big Bopper put it in "Chantilly Lace").

There is enough of an unpredictable story line to hold interest and clear the palette between nude scenes, and enough yada yada yada so you don't lose track if you get distracted by girl watching. To wit: A busload of cheerleaders from three different high schools is hijacked en route to a state competition and held for ransom. The girls are taunted sexually, and six of the cuties are goaded into a musical striptease contest. The other highlight is a tender, soapy bath administered to one of the girls by the more mature school nurse--Ooh!

Technically, the camera work is well done, with good composition and close-ups, and the dialog is clearly audible. It's easy to take these things for granted until you come across a poor movie with cluttered pictures, nudity only in fuzzy long shots, and muffled dialog. The music is fresh and lively (not bump-and-grind techno).

Also, I'm a big fan of Marilyn Joi. I've seen 9 of her movies, and this is definitely the best display her feminine charms, along with the other 14 cuties who make up the cast of cheerleaders. Have I sufficiently explained why this is one of my favorite soft-core collectables?

A pleasingly sleazy 70's cheerleader romp

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 19 March 2007]

The 70's cheerleader teen sexploitation sub-genre receives an appropriately sleazy send-off with this satisfyingly tacky effort. The plot is slight, but serviceable enough: three bitter disgruntled former high school football star athletes along with one jock's dippy younger brother and a ruthless lesbian school nurse abduct a bus full of beautiful bimbo cheerleaders. Okay, the story ain't much and the film itself plays out as more of a tense, straightforward suspense thriller rather than the expected goofy innocuous comic romp, but the flick's exemplary trash picture credentials alone make it a worthy addition to this nifty sub-genre.

Producer William Osco previously cranked out numerous porno features and later made the enjoyably atrocious toxic waste monster clinker "The Being." Jason Williams, the star of the immortal X-rated sci-fi outing "Flesh Gordon," portrays the hunky head kidnapper. "The Hills Have Eyes" survivor Robert Houston plays another one of the kidnappers. "Penitentiary" series star Leon Isaac Kennedy appears acting under the alias Lee Curtis as a disc jockey (in real life Kennedy worked as a disc jockey prior to embarking on an acting career!). The cheerleaders are played by such scrumptious, often undraped seasoned junk flick veterans as Kristine DeBell (star of the hard-core fairytale offering "Alice in Wonderland"), Elizabeth Halsey (the dirty soft-core musical version of "Cinderella"), Wally Anne Wharton ("Up in Smoke"), Lenka Novak ("Coach," "Vampire Hookers"), Tracy Ann King (a.k.a. Marilyn Joi, "Hammer," "The Kentucky Fried Movie"), and Janie Squire (the skinny-dipper who gets munched at the start of "Piranha"). Jeff Werner's capable direction doesn't skimp on the good stuff: there's more gratuitous nudity than you can shake a pom-pom at, lots of gleefully gross lowbrow humor (the cheerleaders tie all their panties together so they can trip one of their abductors!), a splendidly stinky pseudo-disco score, a tasty lengthy topless beauty contest, pot smoking, hideously bad soft-rock songs, garish cinematography, and an absolute dearth of taste, subtlety and artistic refinement. In short, it's a solid piece of blithely low-grade and hence quite entertaining schlock.

A tour de force

[jayfurr · 10/10 · 3 May 2000]

The classification of this movie into "Horror" isn't really appropriate. It's basically a goofy flick with lots of bared flesh and a plot involving the kidnap of a busload of cheerleaders on their way to a competition. There's never any danger and it all has a happy ending. The reason to see it is simple: you like watching goofy mindless 1980's-era teenage exploitation flicks, and they don't come any more to the point than this. The ultimate mid-1980's tour de force!

More than just T&A exploitation

[udar55 · 8/10 · 22 January 2007]

Jason (FLESH GORDON himself) Williams stars as one of three disgraced, former football players (!) who decide to kidnap a bus load of high school cheerleaders to hold for ransom for $2 million bucks from the girls collective parents. Of course, the girls are resourceful and give the kidnappers a F...I...G...H...T! Hidden behind a title and cover promising cheap T&A thrills, this is a pretty entertaining kidnapping crime flick. Of course, the filmmakers do deliver the T&A thrills but they ain't cheap dammit! It works within the story as one of the kidnappers demands the cheerleaders strip and perform an impromptu beauty contest. Okay, it's cheap. There are also odd moments of comedy (the Governor refusing to pay the ransom but offering the family loans with low interest rates) and romance (Williams ends up hooking up with main cheerleader Kristine DeBell, who lets him get away in the end). The film also features one of cinema's most convenient fruit & vegetable stands for an opening truck crash.

Not your father's Oldsmobile

[Clive-5 · 6 May 1999]

We all know how titty-flicks are supposed to be right? Well, Cheerleader's Wild Weekend ignores all predetermined conventions. The girls are ugly. They are kidnapped, yet none are raped. Their are no pillow fights or happy moments of jumping. I'm not sure why they tried so hard on the plot, either.