Girls Nite Out, The Bear vs. Cheerleaders

In 1977, Marquette, a heavy underdog to Dean Smith's North Carolina Tar Heels, stunned the sports world.  Coached by Al McGuire, the Warriors upset the heavily favored UNC.  In poetic fashion, the final television shot of the game was a tearful, but victorious Coach McGuire. Shortly after this championship game, knowing he could not top this feat, McGuire retired.  He and Billy Packer would then be a staple on NCAA basketball telecasts for years to come.  Today we take a peek at 1982's "Girls Nite Out," in which beautiful cheerleaders are sliced up by a puritanical bear...starring Al McGuire.

In a nail-biter, little DeWitt College, coached by Al McGuire, advances to the championship game.  McGuire is ecstatic and so are his players.  Enjoy the victory, then get ready for the championship is McGuire's charge to his players.  Enjoying, to the players, apparently means pre-marital sex with cheerleaders.  Lots of this occurs, as does a really awkward sorority party.  As the party ends, the cheerleaders, representing their respective sororities, engage in a scavenger hunt.  Oh yes, something weird just happened at a lunatic asylum and a maniac might be on the loose.  As the hunt begins, the team mascot is pureed by a fiend who absconds with the bear costume.

Lynn (Julia Montgomery) is the cheerleader we are pulling for.  A bit more clean-cut than her cohorts, and too tolerant of a cheating boyfriend, she seems to have virtue on her side.  As the other cheerleaders find objects for the scavenger hunt, the maniacal bear is there to end their nights.  Jane (Laura Summer) is first to be cut up, and Kathy (Carrick Glenn) is next.  Poor Kathy, she was butchered in "The Burning" the previous year.  As the cheerleader death-count mounts, Lynn and her rival, the vixen Dawn (Suzanne Barnes) are apparently next on the bear's radar.  But wait!  College security cop Mac (Hal Holbrook) may have a connection to the killer.  What in Mac's past and the recent goings on at the local asylum have to do with the demise of the DeWitt cheerleaders?

Can Al McGuire pull another miracle out of the jaws of mayhem? Is a bear shredding cheerleaders a mere metaphor for the misogyny faced by young ladies on America's college campuses? Gratuitous and weird, "Girls Nite Out" is a quirky slasher film. Cheerleaders plus sororities plus a slasher is a can't miss formula for a great American film, and our feature today follows that sure fire recipe.