Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend Blu-ray Review

MVD Visual

Blu-ray Release: December 17th, 2024

Video: 1.78:1/1080p/Color

Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English SDH

Run Time: 86:05

Director: Jeff Werner

After their football careers are cut short, Wayne (Jason Williams), George (Anthony Lewis) and Big John (John Albert) decide to turn to a life of crime to pay the bills. Along with the assistance of Wayne's little brother Billy (Robert Houston) and a turncoat coach Frankie (Courtney Sands), they conspire to hijack a bus containing three separate schools' cheerleading squads en route to a national competition and hold them for ransom. Now it's up to the cops -- with the help of a soulful local DJ named Joyful Jerome (Leon Isaac Kennedy) -- to rescue the girls...if they don't free themselves first!

Looking at the credits of Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend (also known as The Great American Girl Robbery), the name Chuck Russell jumps out. Russell would go onto direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (with Shawshank director Frank Darabont working with him and Craven on the script) and the Jim Carrey vehicle The Mask. While I wouldn't say this feels like a sign Russell was destined for greatness (especially since Russell didn't write or direct), it does feel like films such as Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend were an essential section of the ladder for up-and-coming filmmakers like him. It feels obvious that beyond delivering on the expected amount of gratuitous T&A that will sell tickets, the financiers weren't interested in what the filmmakers wanted to do beyond turning it in on time and without going over budget, leaving 75 minutes of this 85-minute movie to be kinda weird and experimental. It's not like the film is a hidden gem, but it's more memorable than I had expected.

Director Jeff Werner's unusual approach starts at the very beginning, and is one of those solutions that feels borne out of necessity but nonetheless creates something interesting: there's a sequence introducing the three groups of girls on the bus through a combination of a voice-over, ostensibly being delivered over PA to some sort of crowd, while photos and brief clips of the girls appear on screen. A few minutes later, on the bus, the girls put on a show in the rear window for a driver behind them with his cock out -- a cartoon-like farmer and his literal chicken. In the movie's longest and most indulgent boob sequence, the girls decide to put on a sexy competition for their captors, and Werner marks the segue from reality into fantasy with the audio of one of the characters going from natural to emcee-style with a bit of microphone reverb.

Of course, one of the double-edged swords of creative freedom is that sometimes one will fall flat on their face, and Werner's all over the place in terms of tone. In one moment, there are literally cartoon sound effects as characters get conked on the head, and then in another moment it kind of seems like there might be a rape scene (IMDb says one was shot and cut out, which was the right choice). In some moments, Werner winks at the viewer, such as when the camera follows a set of blinds being pulled down only to pause admiring Frankie's breasts. When the pan resumes back up to her face, she's grinning directly into the lens. Meanwhile, the script, by lead actor Williams and D.W. Gilbert, even slips in a little bit of social commentary, with some sort of stooge from the mayor's office saying they can't establish a track record of negotiation with kidnappers, so instead of paying the ransom, they'll allow the parents to borrow it from the city with a great interest rate, as long as they submit to a credit check.

Plot-wise, the film is at its weakest, with the film not so much telling a complete story as much as setting one up and then running through little vignettes without much momentum until it arbitrarily decides to be over. After a handful of sexy scenes to start the film, the focus shifts to the bad guys trying to get the money. Their plan is kind of funny, but it definitely feels like a five minute idea padded out into fifteen, and more than anything, I'm skeptical that the audience would ever care that much about what happens to any of them. Of course, another issue is that the audience doesn't get to know the cheerleaders as well as they ought to. Kristine DeBell, Lenka Novak, and Ann Wharton make an impression, but that's about it.

Video

Those who love film to look like film above all else will probably be very pleased by the 1.78:1 1080p transfer offered on this disc. Print damage is ostensibly a flaw, but in the case of a film like Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend, I admit that the lines and flecks that peppered the screen throughout (which fluctuate in intensity) combined with the sometimes wonky colors (heavy black levels and blown-out whites, and the occasional sense that certain shots or sequences might be a tad skewed toward blue/green or red) and heavy grain to make me feel like I was watching the film on the big screen at an old-fashioned drive-in. Aside from the print damage, those thick shadows can make dark scenes a little hard to follow, and sometimes the colors seem so distorted as to border on surreal, but the base of the presentation is solid for a film that one might not expect to have been preserved with great care.

Audio

One would probably hope that any deficiencies in the LPCM 2.0 Mono track would go along with the picture as adding to the aesthetic, but there were definitely times when this canned and fuzzy-sounding track was just plain hard to understand. Thankfully, there's an optional English subtitle track to help the viewer understand the movie's sterling dialogue.

Extras

Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend was previously issued on DVD by Scorpion Releasing back in 2009. The entire list of supplemental content listed below is ported from that release:

• Audio commentary by director Jeff Werner, editor Greg McClatchy, and actor Marilyn Joi

• Audio commentary by actor Kristine DeBell

• Interview with actor Kristine DeBell (10:55)

• Interview with actor Leon Isaac Kennedy (27:22)

• Interview with actor Marilyn Joy (14:39)

• Alternate Title Card (3:49)

• Original Theatrical Trailer (3:05)

One additional interview is included. I can't tell where it's from, but given it's also in SD, I assume it is archival like the other extras:

• Interview with actor Jason Williams (8:43)

In addition to the above, there are also bonus trailers for Cop Killers, Joysticks, 1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever, Hail Caesar, Ski Patrol, and L.A. Wars.

Conclusion

I can't say Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend is especially good, but it is interesting as a time capsule of a type of film that simply doesn't exist anymore. Now, this kind of low-budget movie that is catered directly to an easy-to-please demographic is successful when it achieves a bland, anonymous competence. It's much more fun to watch this older variant, where the filmmakers were basically getting a free on-the-job training session to see what they could pull off using the company's dime.

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.