Duane Thomas | Through the Shattered Lens

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1979’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders! And then, if you were still having trouble getting to sleep, you could have followed it up with 1980’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders II! And then if you were somehow still not able to get any rest …. well, sorry. There’s only two of them. I guess you could watch that Making the Team show. I don’t know.

Anyway, back to the movies!

The first Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders stars Jane Seymour as a serious journalist who at first scoffs at the idea of going undercover as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. But her ex-boyfriend and editor (Bert Convy) insists that she take the assignment. Jane goes undercover and even makes the squad! (It’s never mentioned whether she has any sort of dance or cheerleading experience so I find it a bit odd that she actually made it onto a professional cheerleading squad but whatever….) Seymour gets to know the other members of the Squad, including the Love Boat’s Lauren Tewes. She comes to realize that she doesn’t want to write up a tabloid story about the cheerleaders. These are “good, down home girls,” she tells Convy. Convy doesn’t care. He wants scandal!

He’s not going to get it, though. The main message of this film is that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are basically saints with pom poms. Sure, one of them has a loser ex-boyfriend. And another one of them struggles a bit with the routines. It’s not an easy job but, in the end, everyone does their bit to support the team!

It’s all pretty silly but I’m from Dallas and I’m surrounded by Cowboy fans who have been complaining nonstop about the team for as long as I can remember so I enjoyed watching a movie that portrayed the Cowboys organization as being the greatest group of people on the planet. (No drug or gun problems here!) It’s very much a film of the 70s, made for television and straddling the line between being exploitive and being wholesome. Yes, the costumes are skimpy but no one smokes, drinks, or curses. The film features soapy drama, actual Dallas locations, 70s fashion, a great disco soundtrack, and dorky Bert Convy as a womanizer. Plus, like me, Jane Seymour has mismatched eyes. How can you not love this film!?

As for the sequel, it ditches almost everyone from the first film. Only Laraine Stephens, as the squad’s no-nonsense coach, returns. She’s got a whole new squad to deal with and only a limited amount of time to perfect the cheer that will win the Cowboys the Super….sorry, I mean to say the playoff game. Whenever anyone in the film says, “playoff game,” their lips read “Super Bowl,” so I guess there was some last-minute tinkering after shooting was completed. The squad also has to get ready to tour with the USO and to perform at a children’s hospital. (Ray Wise appears as a doctor at the children’s hospital.) The Cheerleaders are not only going to bring peace to the world but they’re also going to give those children the inspiration they need to get better. Yay!

This one isn’t as much fun, largely because Laraine Stephens’s character isn’t that much fun. The first film featured the very British Jane Seymour in Texas, somehow becoming a member of an all-American football team’s cheerleading squad and it was impossible not to enjoy the implausibility of it all. The second film is just Laraine Stephens getting mad at people for not having the routine down to perfection. No thanks, movie, I’m done with dealing with demanding choreographers. There’s a reason why I turned down all of those offers to join the cheer squad in high school. (For the record, my sister was the greatest cheerleader our high school ever had or ever will have! Erin watched the first movie with me a few weeks ago. She said it was okay but she didn’t think Jane Seymour was a convincing cheerleader.)

According to what I’ve read online, the first Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders film was a huge rating success. The second film was less so, which I guess is why there was never a third.