Grease.

[Dr Rock]

The play wasn't for kids, so you had the pregnancy storyline, and swearing and loads of stuff that gets cut out when they show it in the afternoon. Even on cinema release they didn't realise it would be such a phenomena with little kids, so much of it is not really aimed at them.

Travolta became such a kiddie heart-throb it created problems when they re-released Saturday Night Fever, a much more adult film, and the little kiddy-winks cried because they couldn't go see it. They bowdlerised it as much as possible so the desperate young Travolta fans could see a movie that wasn't aimed at them at all, and probably left them bored and confused.

[Dropshadow]

Funny the way small girls used to watch a musical over and over and over in the eighties....

One of my sisters had a video of the execrable "Dirty Dancing" in the late 80's and a little neighbour girl who was about 7 or 8 borrowed it from her every week for about a year and a half. My sister ended up giving her the rotten thing when she lost interest. I heard the girl was still constantly watching it for years afterward.

As for Grease I watched it once and hated it with a passion. Liked some of the songs, of course, but they were better without the visuals. I even preferred the infamous, contemporaneous turkey that was "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" over it.

[Noodle Lizard]

The play wasn't for kids, so you had the pregnancy storyline, and swearing and loads of stuff that gets cut out when they show it in the afternoon. Even on cinema release they didn't realise it would be such a phenomena with little kids, so much of it is not really aimed at them.

Travolta became such a kiddie heart-throb it created problems when they re-released Saturday Night Fever, a much more adult film, and the little kiddy-winks cried because they couldn't go see it. They bowdlerised it as much as possible so the desperate young Travolta fans could see a movie that wasn't aimed at them at all, and probably left them bored and confused.

The PG version of Saturday Night Fever is truly something to behold.  It makes absolutely no sense.  They may as well have just cut together all the disco scenes and had done.

SNF is an astonishingly bleak movie which doesn't really get the credit it deserves in that regard.  People always talk about the dancing and music, they forget about the gang rape in the back of a car followed by Travolta telling the victim "Now you're a cunt".

[Gulftastic]

She says she feels like a defective typewriter i.e. she skipped a period.

Far more graphic is her telling the three junior T Birds that they weren't welcome to join her and Kenicke as it wasn't a gangbang

[Twed]

For an upbeat movie Grease really depresses me. I always find coming of age stuff a bit transactional and grim.

[Glebe]

I remember that getting played on the sitting room record player as a kid... plenty of dancing around and singing 'You're the One That I Want'.

[The Duck Man]

A couple of summers ago my Mum was invited to my old secondary school to watch their summer production of Grease. As I happened to be visiting my parents, I took up the spare ticket as I did drama GCSE there and knew the teacher.

Anyway, terrible decision on a number of levels. Firstly, the acting in school plays is inevitably going to be terrible and so it proved.[nb]Through no fault of their own, I hasten to add - they are, after all, children.[/nb] Secondly, attending one when you don't have a relative in the cast is a bit Yewtree and especially so when they're doing pervert's wet dream, Grease. It did really bring home how perverse it is that schools often stage it. It's quite chilling watching about 20 pubescent boys - because of course they have to make up a load of roles to fit everyone in - in ill-fitting leather jackets awkwardly do a dance where the principal move is a pelvic thrust (this also being the "the chicks'll cream!" song). And of course one of the running gags in the show is what a big old whore Jan is, so perhaps to get round some parent watching their daughter get slut-shamed for two hours the teacher cast her own child in the role.

I mean, none of this was a surprise, I've seen Grease loads of times and still have affection for it. But the end doesn't make sense either morally or in the literal flying-car sense. But at least it's better than Guys and Dolls, which does a reverse-Sandy and turns Sky Masterson in a lame Salvation Army dweeb for its finale.

[Mr_Simnock]

would be better called 'shallow self centred cunts the musical', would at least give you an idea of what happens before watching, hours of my life I won't get back.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Travolta became such a kiddie heart-throb it created problems when they re-released Saturday Night Fever, a much more adult film, and the little kiddy-winks cried because they couldn't go see it. They bowdlerised it as much as possible so the desperate young Travolta fans could see a movie that wasn't aimed at them at all, and probably left them bored and confused.

Imagine them trying to do that with Carrie, where Travolta bashes a pig's head in, then tips its blood all over a girl.

[kittens]

I read a theory about this, which was something along the lines of Sandy and Danny were teenage lovers who were enjoying one last day at the beach before big school.  Then Sandy got into trouble with an undercurrent and drowned.  Danny was trying to save her, but he also got hit by a big wave and got his head smashed on the rocks, then he died too. 

So they both died on the beach, and the majority of the film is them both imagining what their high school days would have been like had they not died tragically.

Then, at the end, they fly off to heaven in the car having realised that their love would have been true whatever happened at high school.

every single fan theory for every single film is that the characters died at the start and the film is their journey to heaven

[yesitsme]

Perhaps Grease is a kiddie fiddler's 'Get out of Yewtree card'?

If the rozzers and Newscorp burst in and you're watching Bugsy Malone you're bang guilty - sit watching Greaze with your pants round your ankles you can point out that the characters while playing school kids are all in the 30s, with bad backs, mortgages and kids of their own.

My daughter is 9 and I pray to god that nearly all of this movie goes over her head.  I think she likes the 'Brush-a, Brush-a, Brusha-a' bit.

[FredNurke]

For some reason, every year the top class at my primary school did a leavers' concert at the end of the summer term. For an even more obscure reason, the teachers decided we were all going to perform Grease songs. I decided otherwise, because even at that tender age, I absolutely fucking despised Grease, so I refused to participate. A quarter of a century has not dimmed my loathing for it in any way.

[Noodle Lizard]

I loved Grease when I was a kid, must've seen it more than 20 times.  I watched it back again maybe two or three years ago and ... I dunno.  It's stupid (and I spent a good amount of the runtime just laughing at John Travolta's performance) but also pretty much exactly what I'd want that kind of film to be.  I think Hopelessly Devoted To You is a properly good song too.

I also loved the Alan Parker Bugsy Malone when I was a little'un, but I haven't watched that back in ages.  It'd probably seem really fucking odd to me now.  But I loved the character Knuckles (one of Fat Sam's henchmen, who barely did anything but crack his knuckles) enough to ask my parents if I could convert to Judaism, as the character briefly mentions he's Jewish at some point.  I was a pretty strange kid.

[Replies From View]

Just watch a film from the 1950s if that's what you want to watch.  I don't get this hipster trend of needing to get to the 1950s via the 1970s.

[Noodle Lizard]

Just watch a film from the 1950s if that's what you want to watch.  I don't get this hipster trend of needing to get to the 1950s via the 1970s.

I'd agree (though I don't know if Grease is popular amongst hipsters), but is there actually a 50s film which is much like Grease?  It wasn't trying to emulate 50s cinema or anything, it's just set in the 50s and using that style of music.

[Replies From View]

is there actually a 50s film which is much like Grease?

I dunno, I haven't sought out that many shit things but are the Cliff Richard films from the 1950s?  I assume they're comparably horrible.

[Noodle Lizard]

I dunno, I haven't sought out that many shit things but are the Cliff Richard films from the 1950s?  I assume they're comparably horrible.

Surely he'd only have been a teenager in the 50s, so I doubt it.  But nah, Grease is just a musical set in a certain time period, written only about 10 years after its setting.  It's hardly Stranger Things.

[Replies From View]

Surely he'd only have been a teenager in the 50s, so I doubt it.  But nah, Grease is just a musical set in a certain time period, written only about 10 years after its setting.  It's hardly Stranger Things.

Alright then instead of seeking out an alternative film from the 1950s, people should just not watch Grease.

[Noodle Lizard]

Alright then instead of seeking out an alternative film from the 1950s, people should just not watch Grease.

Ah they should.  I'd sooner have them watch that than something as patronising as Glee or as embarrassing as High School Musical.

Christ, just watched back my favourite song from Bugsy Malone:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSsWpqVJlI

It looks like it was choreographed, rehearsed and shot within the space of a few days!  The voices don't match the actors at all as well.  Very strange.

[Replies From View]

How about they shouldn't watch any shit things.  I don't think we should impose an arbitrary limit on how many shit things they shouldn't see.

[Thomas]

I saw a short film recently, part of a collection being shown at the cinema, comprised of this bit looped over and over again -

I got chills, they're multiplying
And I'm losing control
'Cause the power, you're supplying
It's electrifying

Perhaps two minutes in, text begins appearing onscreen, deconstructing the sequence and the film and eventually discussing wider themes, whilst the loop continues. Very funny.

It would have been a strange showing to eavesdrop on. Twenty minutes of that loop, occasionally punctured by sudden laughter from the audience.

[Billy]

I've only ever seen Grease once - probably 18 years ago now (around the time there was some kind of 'revival' for some reason - 20th anniversary ala Star Wars?) on video at primary school, but the teacher had to keep fast-forwarding whole chunks of the film for inappropriateness, leaving basically about five lines of dialogue and a ton of songs. To this day I still only think of the film as solely consisting of people singing on and around cars for about 45 minutes long.

[yesitsme]

I've posted about Bugsy Malone filum in the PC Gone Mad thread but when Tulullah is singing her song during the instrumental bit we sing 'My head started wobbling and then it fell off.'  This is made better by the pre-pubescent flappers doing a dance that looks like their heads are wobbling and then fall off.

You'd love to be in our house wouldn't you?  Eeeehh, we don't half do some laughing.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

would be better called 'shallow self centred cunts the musical', would at least give you an idea of what happens before watching, hours of my life I won't get back.

Well, the characters are teenagers.

[Shit Good Nose]

Well, the characters are teenagers.

It's got to be one of the last films where teenagers were played by really old[nb]not that old[/nb] actors.

The Blob being the other one, of course.

[Twed]

Wet Hot American Summer

[Natnar]

The extras make the film. Everyone of them seems to be silently screaming 'LOOK AT ME! LOOKATMEEEEE!' as they ham it up during any dance scene.

Even on the album cover, they can't stop.



That little cow near the front to the left. We fucking hated her.

Did anyone ever play side 3 of that album?

[Replies From View]

Did anyone ever play side 3 of that album?

Ask them yourself.

[buzby]

Christ, just watched back my favourite song from Bugsy Malone:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSsWpqVJlI

It looks like it was choreographed, rehearsed and shot within the space of a few days!  The voices don't match the actors at all as well.  Very strange.

The kids were lipsyncing to finished audio tracks sung by adults. Alan Parker had told the songwriter (Paul Williams) that he didn't want squeaky kids voices, so Williams and home of his friends sang them instead. Neither he or Parker were happy with the results, but they were already in pre-shoot rehearsals at that point so they had no time to try rerecording them with the kids singing.

When I was in junior school every Christmas we used to have a man come in with a projector and screen and show Bugsy Malone[nb]except one year when we got the Cook & Moore Hound Of The Baskervilles instead[/nb] in the canteen, so it was ingrained in my brain from an early age. I also got taken to the cinema to see Grease with my older sisters when I was 5, which was right on the lower edge of the A certificate. I've hated it ever since. When we got a video recorder, the younger of my 2 sisters recorded it, so during school holidays we got a constant cycle of Grease, Dirty Dancing and Sweet Dreams: The Patsy Cline Story. I credit this with what got me into cycling.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Did anyone ever play side 3 of that album?

Yeah, I did.