For starters, I want to say that this entry is for the sole purpose of endorsing my friend Jim's blogathon on "Grease 2," which was theatrically released on June 11, 1982, not the movie itself!
Jim, who lives in Springfield, Mass., has been running a very succesful blog which unlike this one only focues on movies. And, his blog has recieved the endorsement of the official "Grease 2" fans site!
Today, Jim is indeed blogging continously throughout the day about this sequel which starred Michelle Pfeiffer in her screen debut (oooops! It has happened again! According to a Leonard Maltin guide that distinction belongs to a 1980 film called "Falling in Love Again" with Elliott Gould. I made this same exact mistake in Sat.'s entry regarding Janet Leigh's film debut, which was not "The Naked Spur"....oh well).
The sequel which Maltin calls clumsy and pedestrian also starred Maxwell Caulfield, Adrian Zmed and Tab Hunter.
"Grease 2" was directed by Tony Award-winning Broadway choreographer Patricia Birch, who choreographed the original film with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Jim pointed out that June 11, 1982 was a busy time for moviegoers. I was 12 at the time, and later that summer our family would travel to Turkey where I saw my first European topless woman on a beach (correction, that was the summer of '85). Along with "Grease 2," screens were also showing (and this is all according to Jim!): "E.T.," "Firefox," "Blade Runner," "Road Warrior" "Rocky III," "Diner" and "Porky's," which lost out to "Gandhi" in the Oscar race for Best Picture:)
I recall that "Grease 2" was showing at the Salem Valley Cinema. According to Jim, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" also opened that very same weekend, and it did much better at the box office.
"Khan" showed at the Towers Theatre across town in Roanoke. It is a theatre which was sadly replaced by a shoe store. I went to Towers to see that film in the summer of '82.
My friend Jason Garnett brought "Khan" to the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke for a midnight screening in 2005 (there is an early blog entry about that).
To my knowledge, he has never made such efforts for "Grease 2." And, hopefully, the Grandin will NEVER be replaced by a shoe store.
I waited to see "Grease 2" on cable. I saw it once and that was enough for me. But, Jim says that he watched it countless times.
Even though the film has a 3.3 rating on the Internet Movies Database, apparently Jim is not alone. The "Grease 2" fan site (link below) has a staggering 294, 523 hits! The film is apparently shown on VH-1 fairly often. There was no "Grease 3!"
Useful links:
Jim's moviezzz blog:
http://talkingmoviezzz.blogspot.com
Grease 2 fan site:
Grandin Theatre site:
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