Death of a Cheerleader: Mother, May I Cheer with Danger?

Hold onto your pom-poms because strange worlds are colliding in this one. We’ve got Tori Spelling, who we just watched in Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? We have Valerie Harper, who we’ve seen in Night Terror and Strange Voices. And we’ve got ’em in Death of a Cheerleader, a 1994 TV movie that could best be described as Mean Girls meets The Craft meets Election meets The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. Excited yet? Alas, I suggest tempering your enthusiasm.

Without further ado, Kellie Martin (who knows her way around a TV movie herself) is Angela Delvecchio, a bright and seemingly normal kid who is a little too captivated by her high school’s pep rally. Its inspirational theme: Be the Best. “I’m going to be,” Angela vows to her BFF Jill (Margaret Langrick, bedecked in the type of unfortunate headwear favored by Mayim Bialik and Jenna von Oÿ’s Blossom characters). “I am going to edit the yearbook, and I’m going to be a cheerleader.” And she’s gonna get all As in murder!

The more level-headed Jill urges realism: “Come on, Angela. You’re the best writer in the school but editor of the yearbook is nothing but a popularity contest. And cheerleading, not a chance. That’s reserved for the ‘It’s great to be me’ crowd.” Angela’s ambitions don’t end there. She also wants to join the Meadowlarks, a sorority of sorts that attracts all the most popular girls in school, including Stacy Lockwood (Tori Spelling).

“Jill, you don’t understand,” she reveals. “I’ve got this feeling inside me, like, I don’t know. I’m gonna do things. I’m gonna be someone. I want what Mr. Saxe says. To be the best.” Angela, so eager to be embraced by the wealthiest, snobbiest girls in school, is the youngest of five kids raised in modest circumstances by older parents (played by Valerie Harper and Andy Romano; Harper is simply credited as Mrs. Delvecchio). Her devoutly Catholic mother astutely confides in her husband, “Sometimes I think that maybe she’s ashamed. She never brings anyone home.”

With assistance from Jamie (Marley Shelton), a friend from her old parochial school, Angela makes good on her promise to infiltrate the in-crowd. Despite failing to secure spots on the cheerleading squad or yearbook staff, she uneasily insinuates herself into the Meadowlarks. But, to her vexation, she can’t win Stacy’s coveted approval. Few can — especially Monica (Kathryn Morris), a goth kid who repeatedly threatens Stacy’s life in response to her bullying. Missing from Dan Bronson’s screenplay (which is partially based on a true story) is a convincing explanation of why Angela considers it a worthy pursuit even after getting a taste of her idol’s rancid personality.

As her social frustrations mount, meek Angela reaches a breaking point. Fearful of public ridicule following an awkward encounter with the cheerleader, Angela stabs her to death. An underdeveloped plot element that features heavily in the murder isn’t just her myriad personal resentments but her fear of being called weird at school — or perhaps even smeared as gay, though her bizarre fixation is not of a lesbian variety. Martin does her best with this material but her thinly drawn character’s interior life and motivations are never quite accessible to us.

Much as viewers aren’t sad to see Spelling go (in one of Death‘s unintentionally funniest scenes, she’s called on to demonstrate proper cheering technique and receives kudos despite performing atrociously), not everyone at school misses Stacy. Jamie later admits to Angela, who becomes popular in the dead girl’s absence: “Stacy mocked her so I mocked her. Stacy said jump so I jumped. You know, Angie, I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. And I’m ashamed to admit it, but I never really liked her. I was just afraid of her. And I’ve been thinking about her killer too. Maybe it was, I don’t know, someone like me.”

It takes months for the net to close in around Angela (with a little help from Uncle Phil and Lt. Mike Tao, for you couch potatoes), during which time she acquires an athlete boyfriend, whose letterman jacket she wears. She also becomes Queen of the Meadowlarks, volunteers as a candy striper, and works as a peer counselor at school, interacting with students who are resentful of her newly elevated social status. It’s all she ever dreamed of when she asked her older sister (Christa Miller), “Terry, did you ever wish you were someone else?” But her inner turmoil remains and Catholic guilt eventually prompts her to confess.

Her two most thoughtful friends, Jill and Jamie (played by two of the better ‘teen’ actors, Langrick and Shelton), commiserate in a courthouse exchange that sums up this misguided movie. They’re upset the murder is being rehashed for a judge when Angela’s already confessed. Viewing their homicidal friend as a victim of sorts, they’re still at odds with the in-crowd members who, perfectly coiffed, sit behind Stacy’s parents in the gallery in a show of support.

“It’s like what Mr. Derning was telling us about New England,” Jill remarks. “The Puritans would put people in pillories so the townspeople could come by and spit on them.” Jamie replies, “Yeah, well, I wonder if the Puritans got all dressed up for their spitting,” a reference to her former friends. Scant thought is given to the dead girl, who yelled “I can’t feel my legs! I can’t breathe!” as she called for help in her final moments. Why would we care about her loss when we could instead feel bad for Angela, who will serve a drastically reduced sentence due to her age? I found the ending to be morally unpersuasive, no matter how shitty it was of Stacy to insult Angela’s ski duds.

Streaming and DVD availability

The Death of a Cheerleader (originally titled A Friend to Die For) currently streams free (with ads) on YouTube, at Amazon and on Tubi. It’s also available on DVD. Like Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? it was later remade for Lifetime, this time with Martin in the James Avery investigator role.

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… But wait, there’s more!

The opening credits tout a “special guest appearance by Valerie Harper as Mrs. Delvecchio,” and what an appearance it is! Harper, who wears minimal makeup and is dowdily attired, the better to suggest poverty and piety, lacks opportunity to do much besides clutch her rosary. But when she’s allowed to stop praying for two seconds — as in the scene where she reads her daughter’s confessional letter and sets out to find her — she brings considerably more depth to the proceedings than the unimaginative gaggle of teenagers who otherwise dominate the film.