Make My Stamen Go Berserk

I posted this to YouTube a couple of months ago but never mentioned it here, but since I see that the songwriter went and died the other day, I guess now's the time. The songwriter is Dennis Linde, who died Friday at the age of 63. The song his obituaries mention up front is "Burning Love", for Elvis Presley in 1972, but Linde's career extends through the Dixie Chicks' 1999 "Goodbye Earl". In addition, Linde wrote many songs for other country stars, but it turns out he also wrote the only song I like from the film Grease 2, "Reproduction".

Who we've got here: On staff, we have Tab Hunter as the biology teacher, Connie Stevens (briefly) as the art teacher whom the script halfheartedly tries to link up with Hunter, and Eve Arden (even more briefly) as the school principal. As students: the Mark II T-Birds, who were Adrian Zmed, Peter Frechette, Christopher MacDonald, and some other guy; the Mark II Pink Ladies, notably Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's other daughter, who's the one coming on to Hunter in the third verse; and a girl whose only line is probably dubbed by Mae Questal ("put your pollen tube to work"). Also, Tom Villard, later of famous sitcom embarrassment We've Got It Made, has a line, and according to the credits an entire song elsewhere on the soundtrack.

Featured more as design element than as characters, here and throughout the film, are Jean and Liz Sagal, twins who peaked professionally with their sitcom Double Trouble in the 1980s. Their older sister is Katey Sagal, of Married with Children and Futurama. Just to confuse things, there's also the actress Pamela Segall (note spelling, which varies from credit to credit -- and sometimes she's Pamela Adlon) , who's also in this film (but not in this scene), and whose resume, like Katey Sagal's, includes voice-over work -- she voices Bobby Hill in King of the Hill. But she's not related to any of the Sagals. Got it?

Seen but not heard: leads Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfieffer.

(And I like the flaccid phallus behind Hunter towards the beginning.)

(OK, the opening song, with vocals by the Four Tops, doesn't suck either.)


- posted by Don Porges @ 12/25/2006 02:55:00 PM |