I’m watching Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), and MAN is it terrible. The story makes no sense, the musical performances are almost all lame - I mean, it stars the Bee Gees for crying out loud - and there’s next to zero dialogue.
What movie musicals can compare to this disaster?
There’s that one the Village People did. Can’t Stop the Music, I think.
Grease 2 is the worst for me.
Close to the bottom are Paint Your Wagon and Xanadu.
I can’t say I agree with you there- “Paint Your Wagon” is great, and “Grease 2” is, in my opinion, better than the first one (but I never liked the original, so that’s not saying much).
My pick? I’d say “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum” simply because I loved the stage version so much and I disliked the fact that they had to cut out just about all my favorite songs. “Brigadoon” was somewhat “meh” as well, but not awful.
cannibal,the musical
SHOCK TREATMENT, the ill-considered sequel to ROCKY HORROR, was pretty awful. I enjoyed the soundtrack, though.
JESUS CHRIST SUPERTAR (Norman Jewison version) was quite risible. I particularly disliked Josh Mostel as King Herod, snickering along to some inside joke as he did his song. Come to think of it, no Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has successfully transitioned to film, though they keep trying.
“Sgt. Pepper” was pretty lame, but at least the songs were all great, even if the performances weren’t.
The worst movie musical ever HAS to be the Burt Bacharach-Hal David version of “Lost Horizon.”
I’m guessing “The Pirate Movie” with Kristy MacNicol and Christopher Ames (I’m guessing, the guy from “Blue Lagoon”?) is awful although I haven’t seen it 20+ years. But I still want to see it again.
Not quite on target, but we once watched a bit of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN on a Sunday afternoon time slot. To make room for all the commercials, they had to cut out some of the movie, and they cut out the musical numbers. It was pretty much mind-bogglingly stupid thing to do, of course, and made the movie unwatchable.
Wow. I never knew there was a sequel to Rocky Horror. Considering that Rocky Horror was one of the most successful movies of all time, it makes one wonder about the list of least successful movie sequels. Anyone have a cite?
Picture it! Your local movie theater, 1975! The lights go down, the movie starts. It’s a musical! Starring Cybill Shepherd, Burt Reynolds and some unknown Italian guy who can’t even make a reasonable attempt at speaking comprehensible English, singing Cole Porter songs! I still have no idea what Bogdanovich was smoking when he thought this was a good idea…
Is “Tommy” considered a musical or an opera? 'Cause either way it was a self-indulgent piece of crap.
And you had the misfortune of seeing it? Did you have to stay for the entire performance?
This was a laughable movie. Not a comedy, though. I got up during the first of the musical “numbers” and walked out laughing out loud. I was followed by half a dozen others out of perhaps fifty in the audience. I do recall that the singing was actually worse than the acting, which required real effort on the part of the cast.
What a grotesque production.
You have my condolences.
“If a person feels he can’t communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it.” ~ Tom Lehrer
I was a kid when it came out, and I think it was playing at Radio City Music Hall when I saw it. I hated it then, but years later, I saw much of it again on TV. I just wanted to see if it was as bad as I remembered (I was just a kid, after all- maybe I just didn’t get it).
It was just as mind-blowingly bad years later.
Would the Elvis movies count? I only saw a few of them, but would hate to have to endure any of them again.
The rest of those tributes to the birth of rock’n’roll, which were the rage back in the 60’s and 70’s, featuring the likes of Bill Haley, Chubby Checker, Little Richard, and almost anybody who could wear funny clothes and glasses and hold onto a guitar or else dance around as if they were on American Bandstand, whether or not Jayne Mansfield was in them, were pathetic.
All I can remember of Hair I would like to forget.
More famously pre-dated by the Seoul theater owner who, in an attempt to capitalise on the popularity of The Sound of Music, tried to show it more often by cutting out all the musical numbers.
Blasphemy! CSTM is a camp classic adn will outlive us all.
I really want to like The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but almost everything about it is just wrong. Debbie Reynolds is insufferably spunky, irritating and awkward, and I don’t see what the male lead sees in her. A couple of the songs are okay, but that’s due to Meredith Wilson’s writing. Even lovely vistas of Colorado don’t save it.
We had the misfortune of coming across Bye Bye Birdie on TCM a few weeks ago. We got sucked in by the trainwreck effect – it was utterly horrifying, but we just couldn’t look away.
[sup][sheepishly]I was a little girl when it came out, but I loved the cheesefest musical version of Lost Horizon. I still know all the songs by heart. It’s one of my all-time favorite movies. Feh – I can’t believe I just admitted that in public. You can flog me now.[/sup]
There are some enjoyable things about Paint Your Wagon. But Clint Eastwood’s singing isn’t one of them.