Chapter Two: My Origin Story
Grease 2 and Return from Witch Mountain
By Brett Beach
July 8, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Now that I have gotten settled in at BOP, I figured that the time was right for a closer look at some items from my formative years that, if they didn't quite shape me into the discerning critic I am today, definitely tilled large tracts of psychic space in my brain. In the grand tradition of comic book limited edition mini-series and movie franchise re-launchings, I present my origin story. Beware, there may be more tangents and spurts of too much information than normal this week!
It became quickly obvious to me after hitting upon the idea of a column about sequels that there were at least two significant reasons for my interest in the topic. The first, oddly enough, is that in many instances, I have seen the sequel to a film before seeing the original. That's been true of several of the films I have discussed already (Aliens and The Great Muppet Caper chief among them) and will no doubt remain a recurring theme during the foreseeable future. The second has to do with a pair of films that I watched incessantly on HBO in the early ‘80s, before moving from the comfortable plugged-in suburbs of northeastern New Jersey (approx. 36 channels of programming) to a tiny resort community tucked away in the woods of central Oregon (four channels of varying qualities of reception). Yes, as luck would have it, both films are part twos. One of them was until recently the second and final installment of a Disney series. The other is most certainly one of the most reviled sequels ever. Let's begin with the last part first.
Grease 2 (1982)
As I have noted in earlier columns, my parents were very encouraging in regards to my cinematic education throughout my childhood and adolescence. Basically, it was up to me to create my own pop culture celluloid universe with them as benevolent gatekeepers and chaperones. Some notable exceptions are worth discussing. Monty Python and The Holy Grail, despite its PG rating, did not make the grade (when I was six.) Having tried and failed on numerous occasions to get permission, I took to asking my parents early one Saturday morning when they were both still half asleep and susceptible to answering "Yes," no matter what the question may have been. I was able to get over an hour into the most quotable movie of all time before consciousness subsumed grogginess and mother came down and gave me what for.
There was another instance where an ad for The Shining came on and my older sister hurled me out of the rec room and into the downstairs bathroom keeping the door shut fast over my howls of protestation. With the intervening decades, I do appreciate more the sacrifice made on her part (i.e. dealing with my resultant extended tantrum) and her attempt to protect my delicate sensibility. I ended up seeing the film (albeit on broadcast television) not all that long afterwards and even with commercial breaks and judicious edits, I was fairly creeped out.
Balancing out these acts of "censorship" were those films that my parents felt were either harmless enough or had what the Supreme Court might have concurred were "redeeming social value" and these I was allowed to watch ad infinitum. This list is a heady brew of (mostly) HBO programming that by and large I have felt no qualms about remaining far, far away from in my adult years. To wit:
Camelot (1967), which I watched because it was long, I think, more than anything else. I was obsessed with running times, then (as I am now) and this actually had an intermission where a clock would appear on screen and count down the minutes until the break was over. I recall being enthralled.
Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (1981). Carol Burnett and Alan Arkin as mismatched strangers on the lam from somebody or other.
Honky Tonk Freeway (1981). Beverly D'Angelo and William Devane in a would-be satire on tourism and commerce that ends with a rhinoceros running around on the road.
Foolin' Around (1980). A romantic comedy with Gary Busey and Annette O'Toole. I remember thinking that Busey was very cool, particularly when he had to walk out on a construction girder to retrieve a wedding ring.
Victory (1981). Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Pele as WWII prisoners of war who play a soccer match against the Germans as a cover for a POW escape plan. And then they stay to finish the game!
But it was Grease 2 that apparently had some kind of hold on me. I honestly believe I must have watched that close to three dozen times in 1983. Until now, I had been afraid to revisit it, subjecting myself to repeated cycles of incredulity from acquaintances who could not believe that I had not seen Grease (which I finally did at a revival screening three years ago) and that I actually liked Grease 2. Having waited nearly three decades to take another glance at Grease 2, I wondered if any of it would seem familiar, if I would start humming along the words to songs that had been bubbling under the surface of my conscious mind, if I would understand what the appeal had been. The answers it seems are: kind of, emphatically "no" and yes, yes, yes.
Grease 2 opened in June of 1982 (the same weekend as E.T.) and grossed $15 million in about six weeks. That was okay, but weighed against the opportunity cost of an original that grossed more than ten times that and was already a beloved Broadway musical prior to its cinematic incarnation and said film featured two stars at the beginning of long runs of national popularity, well in that perspective, nothing short of Grease 2 curing a global disease was going to make it a hit or make anyone show it some love.
Obviously, there was no need for a sequel to Grease, but a sequel that didn't feature the biggest names and yet still claimed lineage (plotwise at least) to the original, fairly reeked of cynicism. In Grease 2, it is 1961 - two years later at Rydell High - and Sandy's cousin Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfield) is an exchange student from Britain in the states for his senior year. He locks eyes with Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer), leader of the Pink Ladies and finds he must transform from clean-cut to mysterious and "dangerous" in order to woo her. Frenchy (Didi Conn) returns for a few scenes - she has re-enrolled at Rydell after dropping out from beauty school - but the script quickly tires of her and she disappears before the end. In fact, the only real through line in the plot is the talent show which is announced on the first day of school at the beginning and closes the film out the night before graduation (in conjunction with a Tiki-themed luau).
As a musical, the songs are all over the map, ranging from 1950s style ballads ("A Girl for All Seasons") to retro '50s numbers that sound like what Jim Steinman was cooking up for Meat Loaf at the time ("Cool Rider" "We'll Be Together") to pop-rock numbers that sound like they are from the Beatles era ("Back to School Again"). None of them struck any bells but I was agog over the lyrics to the sex education class tune "Reproduction" which quickly abandons double entendres for lines even more obvious. As far as I recall, that didn't lead to any uncomfortable "stamens and pistils/birds and bees" chats with my parents.
It must be said that Caulfield is so impossibly cartoonishly handsome in a British, chiseled-face sort of way that he upstages Pfeiffer (with her fine features and piercing eyes) while coming across like a lost member of Haircut 100 or Glenn Scarparelli, the matinee idol from the old Archie comics. Even when Michael is being ingratiating, Caulfield's prettiness makes the character come across as slightly aloof. Coupled with the ice princess-ish nature of Pfeiffer's role, it's hard for the pair to generate sparks. You want to just keep handing them mirrors in which they can look.
So what was it that drew me in once upon a time? The motorcycles (replacing the T-Bird as vehicle of choice), the bright colors and the grand-scale dance numbers with hundreds of extras. Patricia Birch, the choreographer on the first, made her one and only step into the director's chair for Grease 2, as well as designing the dances here. And in widescreen, several of the productions come off as deserving of the framing, even if evidence of the film's troubled and hurried shoot can be glimpsed throughout. Birch, a five-time Tony nominee, continues to work as a choreographer, even if, unlike Adam Shankman, she wasn't able to parlay her day job into a second career.
It has been remarked that musicals were the special effects action blockbusters of their day and that once audiences opted for one form of spectacle over another, musicals lost a lot of their commercial appeal. Perhaps. Considering how much I liked Grease 2 as a child and that Jesus Christ Superstar was the first album I played in continuous rotation (my parents did not have an extensive music collection, to say the least) and fell in rapture with, musicals it seems will always have a special place in my heart and a hold on my imagination
Return from Witch Mountain (1978)
Several things became clear to me while recently watching Race to Witch Mountain.
1) The Rock is an affable personality able to make fun of himself without seeming ridiculous;
2)Carla Gugino, aside from being an actress of considerable range, is also becoming increasingly hotter as she gets older.
3)Ever since Walt Disney began partnering with Jerry Bruckheimer, their films are getting more violent and frenetic. Bruckheimer is in no way involved with RTWM but the amount of ‘splosions and gunplay and sheer kinetic motion in the film suggests a training bra of sorts for young viewers to work their way up to Bad Boys II. RTWM may have been rated PG, but there was more action in any three minutes than in most of Fast and Furious. This is mildly disconcerting.
Many reviews brought up Escape to and Return from Witch Mountain, the 1970s predecessors to Race, as having some kind of nostalgic hold on a generation that might now be bringing their children to theaters for a new installment. I vouch for Escape, with kindly old Eddie Albert playing the gruff widower in the large motor home protecting two orphans/aliens. The effects are as cheesy now as they were then, but it has a lot of heart, and a kind of creepy scene where a coat rack appears to come to life and attack a deputy. Return from Witch Mountain, in spite of my attachment to it as a child, is not only a pointless sequel but a boring and preachy one as well.
As the title suggests, telepathically gifted teens Tony (Ike Eisenmann) and Tia (Kim Richards) have returned to Earth for a vacation of some sorts, but the trip winds up like a cross between a lesser After School special and a galactic variation on rumspringa. Within ten minutes back on our planet, Tony has been kidnapped by an evil scientist (Christopher Lee) and his eccentric patron (Bette Davis) and forced to steal gold.. Tia falls in with a band of truants/would-be gang who wind up being her saviors. The finale hinges on the potential nuclear meltdown of Los Angeles. And everything is wrapped up with a sledge-hammer sentiment akin to "stay in school and be smart like the wonder twins." The film plays its plot out with a poker face (Lee and Davis don't attempt to add any levels of camp) which means that even a ten minute sequence where an incapacitated Tia psychically sends a goat off through the streets of L.A. to find her new friends and bring them back to rescue her, even this comes off as only slightly incredulous, instead of jaw-droppingly absurd.
What Return to Witch Mountain had that made this all bearable was Kim Richards. Or more specifically Kim Richards in that garishly red outfit she wears for the duration of the film. A color so vibrant and unnatural its half-life may not be measurable. I realized not so long ago that Richards qualifies as the first crush I ever had. Even when I was too young to understand what the hell that might mean, or to comprehend why looking at her made me feel all funny. I now attempt to balance this with the latter-day knowledge that she is Paris and Nicky Hilton's aunt, and to see her in the new film (she and Eisenmann have small parts) is to confirm that yes she does come from that gene pool. And how weird is it to even type those words?
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed that American lives have no second acts. Perhaps, but in one form or another, we have sequels and second chapters in endless abundance.