Inspired by this post, what is your nomination for the worst movie musical of all time?
Mine would be Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band(1978). This star-studded monstrosity was filled with “acting” that wouldn’t have passed on The Electric Company, and the storyline was Frankensteinian.
Sgt. Pepper’s is very, very bad. The Apple and Rhinestone aren’t exactly classics either. I don’t know which of them is less worse. Rhinestone does have Dolly Parton, a real country singer, but then again it has Sly Stallone as a cab driver who becomes a country musician and he sings a song called “Drunkenstein.”
No, I’m still gonna go with You Can’t Stop The Music, not just for the terrible, terrible acting, but because it depicts the Village People in their biography movie as being straight. Though Sgt. Pepper is an egregious pile of cinematic pestilence.
Actually, Can’t Stop the Music was right up (down?) there, too. Also Xanadu.
For that matter, the late 70’s/early 80’s was pretty much the nadir of the movie musical, except for Grease.
What about The Pirate Movie(aka The Rape Of Gilbert And Sullivan As Performed By Mrs. Poole’s 4th Grade Class Of 1982)?
I, myself, am a slave to the duty of NEVER WATCHING THAT TURGID TURD OF TRIPE again. (Now, where’s my DVD with Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt? Ah, that’s better.)
The Burt Bacharach-Hal David version of Lost Horizon was a big budget horrendous mess of a movie that put me off reading the book for years.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, the Kenneth Branagh version that turned Shakespeare’s play into a musical featuring classic songs from the 1930s. A noble experiment, but the transitions just didn’t work at all. It was painfully awkward and awkwardly painful.
On the other hand, yeah, Sgt. Pepper. I saw that in the theater as an eleven year-old huge Beatles fan, and came out thinking, WTF was that?
Cats!
I don’t think recordings of stage musicals count.
If you had to sit through it, it should. 
No musical could be worse than Can_Heironymus_Merkin_Ever_Forget_Mercy_Humppe_and_Find_True_Happiness.
Just trust me on this one.
I forgot that thing was a musical. Damn you!
Most of the original lineup were straight, if I remember my pointless trivia correctly.
From der Wiki:
Village People is an American disco group that formed in the United States in 1977, well known for their on-stage costumes depicting American cultural stereotypes, as well as their catchy tunes and suggestive lyrics. Originally created to target disco’s gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy personas, the band’s popularity quickly brought them into the mainstream.
Whether or not the original members were straight, portraying them as such in this ultra-cheesy bad film was a slap in their fans’ faces that helped drop 'em off the Top 40 charts.
Fair enough, I’m not familiar with the film. Your description of it as a “biography film” is what made me think it was relevant.
…I liked Xanadu…
<Infovore slinks off in shame>
Worst musical of all time? Mame or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. See Howard Keel bellow! See Lucille Ball in disturbingly soft focus! There were some good songs in either of these, but overall they are really bad.
I haven’t actually seen it, but I’ve heard that Paint Your Wagon is pretty bad. Clint Eastwood…singing. <shudder>
I saw the musical version of Lost Horizon, and thought it was good. Then, about a year later, I had to read the book for English class, and realized that the musical movie wasn’t that good. And some time after that, the original 1937 non-musical movie with Ronald Colman aired on late-night TV, and I realized just how abysmal the musical version really was.