The absolute very first time I saw Grease The Movie was when it came out late in 1978. I’m sure it was a film not a movie in those days but, by the late 70s, American vernacular had even made it to my middle-England home town (although my mum would've withdrawn my teatime plate piled high with biscuits & sweets if I'd dared to call them cookies & candy - there are limits when you're practising responsible parenting, you know).
Going to the cinema was quite an endurance exercise in those days. The queue for tickets (no, you couldn’t bloody buy them on-line in advance) often snaked out of the doors and down the steep and narrow piss-drenched alleyway to the High St below. Some people find the smell of popcorn and hot dogs evocative of the classic cinema experience. I wish.
Abba The Movie (which apparently was an actual 'movie' even in 1978 – that’s the Swedes for you) had come out just a few short months before (click here for my earlier account) but it coincided with my move from primary to secondary school so might as well have been a lifetime ago. I had been too young to see Saturday Night Fever earlier in the year because it was X-rated (the equivalent of today’s '18' which is more accurate but less poetic). The producers had tried to persuade the BBFC (aka the cinema gestapo) to make it an AA (with its age threshold of fourteen) however at 12 years old I looked no more like a 14 year old than I do now....and I’m (well) over fifty....so doubt I'd have been able to blag my way in anyway. My brother had got in to see Jaws (X-rated) when he was 15 but he had a beard and looked 21 so it’s not a fair comparison.
Clearly, the same producers had improved their negotiation technique since SNF and had somehow managed to secure an “A" rating for Grease, meaning you were allowed to see it if you were over eight years old. I understand that kids this age nowadays are practically adults but, in the 1970s, this was definitely pre-pubescent. I have no idea what the old farts at the BBFC were on to make them decide it was suitable for 8 year olds but they honestly must have been off their tits at the time. Kenickie’s condom breaks (which, having not used one up to that point - even to impress my mates by blowing it up on my head - made me assume they were made of plastic), Zuko decides sloppy seconds ain’t his style and Rizzo skips her period – all interspersed with various references to pussy wagons, gangbangs and flogging your log.
I suspect they’d still have stuck with an 'A' rating even if Coach Calhoun and Principal McGee were shown in flagrante delicto (and possibly even recto) during the National Bandstand Finals. I have watched the film 40/45 times (if that reminds you of anything, click here) and can recite 75% of the dialogue off by heart and so can only conclude that it would’ve helped the BBFC reach a more appropriate judgement if they too had adopted a similar protocol.
When I first watched the film at the cinema, I missed every single sexual innuendo (just like the BBFC but, in my defence, I was twelve at the time) although I’m pretty sure I would’ve leered every so often at whoever I went with to make them believe I had picked them all up. Unfortunately, I think this might have been my mum. I also don’t think it occurred to me that the cast members were all a little too old still to be at school. John Travolta was the youngest at 24 and his girlfriend was born just after the war ended and so could’ve passed for his mother. If he'd have known that, two short years later, she would be inviting us to get physical whilst wearing her granny's woolly socks, he would've run a mile.
I read two theories about the film recently (and these are genuine): one is that Sandy really did nearly drown at the beach in the opening scene (hence “I saved her life…..”) and the whole film represents her comatose dream, ending with her life support machine being turned off as their car takes off towards heaven in the final scene. A bit like revealing the whole of Dallas Season 9 was Pam's dream of Bobby Ewing's death, except less likely and with better songs. I know it’s a bit rich for someone who’s watched the film 40/45 times to tell anyone to ‘get a life’ but I still think I have the moral high ground on this one.
The second theory is that there’s an Ancient Egyptian-style curse on the film and many of the cast and crew have met premature deaths or suffered tragic episodes in subsequent years. This is a quote, verbatim, from an article in the Daily Mirror in 2020. I will leave you to make up your own mind. “However, in the years after the film's 1978 release, whispers of a curse began circulating after so many of the cast, crew and production team were struck down by tragedy. The latest sad news to emerge is the death of actor Edd Byrnes, who played Vince Fontaine in the hit movie musical, who has died unexpectedly aged 87”. Cut off in his prime at 87? Spooky indeed.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME......THE SMITHS
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