If you arrived here after seeing the title thinking

but wait…Sgt Peppers came out in 67, not 78!

you would be correct. But why would I attempt a review for a ridiculously classic Beatles record. That’s ground that is well-covered, friends. Nay – this review is actually for the 1978 movie, starring Peter Frampton (yes – that Peter Frampton), and The BeeGees (yes, the BeeGees, as in the Night Fever-havin, Alive-Stayin, Jive-talkin BeeGees) as the titular band. Not familiar? Tuck in. It only gets weirder from here.

So until a few days ago, as of this writing, I probably hadn’t seen this film in at least 30 years. I kinda remember it coming out, and I seem to remember it being on like TBS a lot shortly thereafter. I can’t be entirely certain I had ever sat down and watched the entire thing in a single sitting. It came up because a friend had never seen it, and was unaware of its very existence – so since friend is a huge Beatles fan, and I am a huge fan of “weird moments in cinema history”, I suggested we give it a watch. We did and at some point during it, I mentioned I was gonna review it. I had just decided then and there.

So let’s get the burning question out of the way right at the beginning:

Should I watch this movie?

The short answer is: unless you have a thing for weird Hollywood ephemera, or possibly a nostalgic attachment to this movie and just haven’t seen it for a while – no. If you’re a REALLY big Beatles fan – then definitely no. As for the Long Answer:

The Setup

So Sgt. Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club band, hailed from Heartland, USA, and brought much happiness with their music. So much happiness in fact, they stopped soldiers in WW1 from fighting. This power was granted them by their magical instruments: Sarge’s own Cornet, a Tuba, a Sax and a Bass Drum. When he dies, he leaves the instruments to the town, and so long as they remain in Heartland, Heartland will live happily ever after. His musical legacy he willed to his grandson, who grows up and puts together a new Lonely Hearts Club Band with his friends – 3 brothers. They are so good that a big Hollywood Record Producer contacts them to become his next big stars. They travel to Hollywood, get doped and drugged up and act like rockstars with their label mates Lucy & The Diamonds (ugh). Then none other than Mean Mr. Mustard, acting on the orders of an unknown person or personage known only as ‘F.V.B’- steals the magic instruments, and begins delivering them around to each of the villains. Billy’s girlfriend, Strawberry Fields (oh just wait.), manages to get away from the rapidly deteriorating Heartland to tell Billy so they can get the instruments back. Annnnnnnnnnnd we’re off!

Why?

This is the question you will be asking yourself the entire time you watch this. Why? Just…why? Why does this exist? We may never know. So let’s start with what this is not: it’s not really a film. it’s more of a long-form music video with a narrator. Seriously. I doubt P. Framps and the Bros. G get 2 lines between them that aren’t lip-synced to a song. I joked at one point this must have been the easiest “acting” job ever. No dialog – probably weren’t even recording sound for most of it, since it’s all gonna be overdubbed with Beatles covers. I imagine it was like “okay look surprised! Cut! Great. Next scene…”

The “narrative”- to lightly abuse the term – is cobbled together seemingly by taking a look at the track lists for the title album and Abbey Road, and going “what kind of story can we make up here?” The end result feels like they spent at least 45 minutes polishing it up before making the movie. They make several attempts to incorporate the songs into the “story” with varying degrees of success, ranging from “you just thought you needed a character with this name” to “did you guys even listen to the lyrics on this one?” In fact – let’s talk about the songs!

The Music

It’s a musical, right? So the music has to be at least decent, right? Plus it’s all songs by The Beatles, right? No way they could fuck this up, right?

I feel you, dawg. I do. But regretfully I must inform you that, they could and did fuck it up.

First – it’s not all bad. I have been saying for decades that the Aerosmith cover of Come Together is better than the OG version, and I stand by that statement. It needed the spit, strut and swagger Aerosmith brings to it, and it’s better as a result. Billy Preston doing Get Back is also very solid. And even the FrampBeeGeatles get one with Nowhere Man also being pretty good. Everything else, well…

It’s important to remember here that this movie uses songs in lieu of dialog. That’s a pretty tough way to write a movie I have to say, and a lot of the time it just doesn’t work. A lot of the time the film isn’t even trying, as the “scene” for a particular song will just be the band set up playing it somewhere, while they cut in other scenes of “action” happening elsewhere.

The movie features several cameos, including a few bizarre ones. Steve Martin shows up as Dr. Maxwell Edison – one of the film’s 4 – count em – FOUR villains. He does a song and dance routine to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, only now instead of being a serial killer, his hammer makes people young again? So now old people pay him a lot of money to regain their youth, and that may or may not brainwash them into helping Dr. Maxwell recruit more Olds to give him money. All that being said – the musical number here is an unhinged Steve Martin at his Steviest and Martinest, and it was 1978, and it’s at least mildly amusing, so I’m gonna let it slide.

Strawberry Fields is somewhat bizarre when it shows up. It’s sung by the love interest of the Band’s lead singer – Billy Shears – played by P. Framps himself. As I mentioned before – Billy’s girlfriend’s name is Strawberry Fields. That makes this scene super weird. Without spoiling anything – things happen, and our intrepid Billy is knocked out, after receiving an electrical shock of 10,000 volts, and since only the power of true love can save him (narrator’s words), she decides to sing the song Strawberry Fields to him while he’s unconscious. Kind of a weird choice, because with the character being named that she’s basically singing “hey remember me? let me take you to ME. Let’s take a big old swim in Lake Me, population Me where we can talk about ME” as if that’s gonna save him. Clearly she knows something the rest of us don’t (or has read the script) because surprise- surprise – he wakes up. Whether it was the power of True Love or the power of raging Narcissism is left as an exercise to the reader.

The other bizarre song choice they definitely didn’t think through or read the lyrics to was Golden Slumbers. Well- not Golden Slumbers itself, but more the fact that it leads right into Carry That Weight. Why, you ask?

So I’m thinking they didn’t think that one through very clearly, and it changes the emotional tone of that scene a lot. But let’s face it- “convert seminal rock album into movie” has never been the most solid plan to begin with, and this is a particularly bad example.

“There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don’t exist as a band and never performed Sgt Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed.”

Robin Gibb

The other thing about the music here is something I didn’t even know myself until I did some googling in advance of writing this article. Apparently the musicians were so confident in the new versions of the songs, that Robin Gibb apparently said in a interview: “There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don’t exist as a band and never performed Sgt Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed.” Holy shit, dude. I can’t think of a bigger disconnect between quality in the musician’s mind and quality of the final product. Did you really think you were going to eclipse the fucking Beatles? Did you really think people were just gonna toss their copy of the record in favor of the soundtrack of this movie? Seriously? With Steve fucking Martin doing a comedy cover of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer? Don’t get me wrong, I like a little ego mixed into my rockstars, but eclipsing the Beatles with covers of the Beatles? Not merely eclipsing, but erasing the memory of their versions? Wow. Pretty sure even Axl Rose- perhaps the most egomanaical rockstar ever– would say “bruh.”

Side note about Robin Gibb: You know, I don’t know anything about The BeeGees as a band. I remember all the songs (as I am an Old), but I know none of the “lore” of the band. That being said – I’m thinking Robin might have been the one Gibb who didn’t really get laid on the road. He’s kind of an odd-looking dude (though that’s not much of a handicap when you’re a rockstar), but I also get the vibe that he’s too hopelessly nerdy to talk to girls much. Like he’d start talking to one and at first she’d be excited because OMG ONE OF THE BEEGEES and then 10 minutes into a long explanation of I don’t know- how a synthesizer works– she’s trying to hide her eye rolling and attempting to make as graceful an exit as possible. He has some scenes in the movie which seem to support this theory. However, I should point out that I am 100% talking out of my ass here – for all I know he could have been the most notorious cocksman in the BeeGees- and I’m not sure which scenario is funnier.

Casting

Honestly – we’ve talked about most of it. Musicians don’t necessarily make good actors (and vice versa). But again – it’s weird to talk about Casting in a movie that doesn’t have any spoken dialog outside of narration and song lip-syncing. I suppose even saying the musicians here are bad actors is a bit disingenuous, since this movie doesn’t call on them to “act”- at least not in the emotive sense. “Act” here just means: “move from A to B, hit your mark, and try to look uh…mad! Action!”

There is one bright spot to the cast: George Burns. I realize that Morgan Freeman is the internet collective’s go-to narrator, and that spot is very well-deserved, but if I can’t get Morgan Freeman? George Burns is next on the list. He’s not only the narrator of this movie – he appears onscreen as Mr. Kite, as in Being For The Benefit Of. He even gets a song – Fixing a Hole – a track apparently deep enough that I had either never heard it, or didn’t recall ever hearing it. An odd song made odder by the performer here. Thankfully he covers basically all of the spoken dialog, so at least there’s some legit acting cred in this film.

The only other bit of “casting” that was fun about this movie was: in an attempt to capture the same vibe as the original album cover, the makers of this film invited basically a who’s who of 70s media: TV, music, film, stage. We had a good time picking out people we recognized. Of course there’s a list online, but if you’re gonna go as far as looking that up – at least find a YouTube of that scene and give it a try yourself. They didn’t run everybody through costuming and makeup either. It really has a “just get in there wherever you can find a spot” kind of vibe to it.

Final Thoughts

My answer from the beginning remains the same here: should you watch this movie? nah. I would be honest and tell you if it was fun and ridiculous while being as bad as it is – but it’s not. It’s just a long series of kinda boring music videos, inter-cut with scenes of “evil” characters doing evil things because evil. I mean – when the lead villain is finally revealed (known heretofore only as F.V.B.), it turns out that it’s Aerosmith “Future Villain Band.” Future Villain Band?! I have so many questions. Aren’t they already the villain now? Does the name mean they can be the villain now but will also be a villain in the future? Was this the best name you could come up with? I’m sure there was some other tenuous Beatles reference which could have been made here, seeing as how the other villains were: Dr. Maxwell Edison, and Mean Mr. Mustard. Alice Cooper is here too playing a villain called Father Sun, which I assume is some sort of Beatles reference as well, but googling didn’t turn up anything obvious. What I’m getting at here is – it doesn’t get any better. I can’t think of a single decision made in this film that felt like it had more than 15 minutes of thought put into it, and even 15 minutes is me trying to be nice. 2 or 3 minutes seems more likely.

Apparently a review written upon release said:

The musical numbers are strung together so mindlessly that the movie has the feel of an interminable variety show

Janet Maslin, New York Times

…and I agree. You initially think “well – Frampton and the BeeGees – they have some actual musical cred – maybe this will be okay- at least it won’t be Captain & Tenille grinding you through sappy, watered down versions of Beatles songs,” but then you’re wrong about how bad it can be, and you have to watch these songs be slowly, and mercilessly butchered. It’s already uncomfortable to start with, and at one point my friend had the other half of an edible kick in and was like “that kicked in at the wrong time!” Which scene? Doesn’t matter – any scene would be the wrong time. So yeah. Don’t watch this. Seriously. I love “so bad it’s good” movies. This is very much not one of them.

But once again, if weird Hollywood ephemera is your thing – this is a heck of a piece of it. So many bizarre, presumably cocaine-fueled decisions.

PF9907 out.