Widescreen and Uncut for movie buffs everywhere, “Satan’s Cheerleaders” is a wonderful piece of crap that mixes all of the seventies hallmarks in a ninety two minute piece of junk food. There’s your disco soundtrack, your scantily clad cheerleaders (Kerry Sherman is a stonecold babe), and of course what would the decade be without Satanic cults and women in the buff praising an altar of some kind? “Satan’s Cheerleaders” is a delightfully campy bit of nonsense that felt like someone had a script for a horror movie and a teen sports movie and put them together for the sake of getting a movie funded.
Greydon Clark’s “Satan’s Cheerleaders” is a good source of inadvertent laughs, centering on a foursome of cheerleaders for a Christian school. As their team the Huskies prepares for the big football game, they delight in practicing, bouncing around in short shorts and clingy tank tops, and teasing the players for the football team. Unknowingly the school janitor, who watches them all day with lustful eyes, is angry at their constant mocking of him, and has put a curse on their clothing. No, really. On their way to the big game, the cheerleaders are stranded, and are picked up by the janitor who takes them hostage and delivers them to his Satanic idol.
Things don’t go as he planned though, as he’s betrayed and the girls have to figure out how to get out alive, all the while figuring out why the cult wants to sacrifice them. We’re subjected to some really awful performances. Every single person here performs as if this is the first role ever, or as if they were pulled off the street and fed the script from the back of the camera. There isn’t a single convincing performance, save for Yvonne De Carlo, who is full on vamp and delivers her Satanic chants in the finale like her life depends on it. It’s all so terrible, but damn it’s so much fun. I loved the Satanic cult all filled with horny middle aged men, I loved the Satanic star made up of masking tape, I adored the cross eyed Satan statue, and I loved that the guard dogs were named Satan and Lucifer.
I can only imagine they had a whole kennel of dogs named after various monikers for the devil. “Here’s Satan, Lucifer, Damien, Devil, that’s Mephistopheles, that’s Beelzebub—but we call him Bub. He’s a softy.” Greydon’s Clark is one big hunk of cult cheese, it’s a funny, silly, but oddly entertaining bit of seventies trash that you owe it to yourself to watch. If only to see how the Huskies end up winning the big game.
The new edition from VCI features a commentary track with Director Greydon Clark, and a commentary Track with film director David DeCoteau and film historian and journalist David Del Valle. There’s also a three minute Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery.