I confess. I love to watch a a few million dollars, hard work and ernest(but horribly misguided) dedication collapse like a house of cards. I guess it started back in the 70’s. I took a few friends out to the drive-in for a double feature. THe first movie was the new horror film Halloween, which scare the living crap out of everyone. But it was the second film that gave me nightmares for a week-Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I still can’t get the image of George Burns singing and dancing to Fixing A Hole out of my head, and the mere thought that the song Srawberry Fields could refer to a person with that name and not a piece of real estate boggles my mind.
Other big budget musical messes I’ve seen are:
Can’t Stop The Music-Did you know that the Village People was a group of clean-cut straight boys that just needed the help of Valerie Perrine and Bruce Jenner(!?!) to reach stardom?
Grease II-Same school, older “kids”, and a cast that includes not one person with musical abilities. At least the first movie had Olivia Newton John.
The Pirate Movie-A bunch of studio execs thought to themselves,“That other studio is filming The Pirates Of Penzance with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline. Why don’t we do a “hip” version with Kristy McNicol and Christopher Atkins. and update the music just slightly?” The result was a ghodawful summer forget-me-now that tried to add such hits as “Puffin’ and Blowin’” to the musical opera scene.
Xanadu-You’ve just gotta love a roller-disco movie with elements of mythology, WWII history, and jazz. Add a touch of Electric Light Orchestra and the fancy footwork of Gene Kelly, and you’ve got a movie that will stand alone for a thousand years. Damn, I love this flick!
Anything with ONJ gets my vote. I played my Xanadu tape till it died.
Sure Grease 2 was ridiculous but I have fond memories of Michelle Pfeiffer astride that motorcycle and Maxwell Caulfied looking dreamy instead of soap-opera sleazy for once.
My gf hates musicals but somehow I managed to coerce her into watching Love’s Labour’s Lost. “It’s Shakespeare! Directed by Kenneth Branagh!” I said. Sadly, it turned out to be a bit of a long-drawn mess and the sight of Alicia Silverstone doing the two-step was way too much to handle.
Not only have I seen the Ross Hunter Lost Horizon, I have it and have shown it at my Bad Film Festival this year. It is truly bad.
I haven’t been able to watch much of At Long Last Love at once, so I can’t erify that it’s bad, but by all accounts it’s worse than Lost Horizon.
As I’ve remarked before, Mn of la Mancha is horribly miscast. Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren are great actors. But they can’t sing. And James Coco sings too well.
You thought Clint Eastwood singing was bad in Paint my Wagon? Sean Connery sings as James Bond in the first Bond film, Dr. No! But it’s not a musical, so it doesn’t count.
As for the OP, I may get in trouble, but I’m going to add Rocky Horror Picture Show to the list. I love watching it and yelling lines and throwing toast, etc, but as a film on its own without all the fun cult-stuff, I really don’t think it’s that good of a movie (love the music though).
Does Fame count? This is a movie that has aged very oddly. Some parts are so goofy, your eyeballs melt while watching. Some parts still seem, dare I say, edgy, after all these years.
I completely agree. I have seen all three (when will I learn) and I can verify that [B}At Long Last Love** is truly that bad. It is one of those embarrassingly bad movies. At least Lost Horizon could be campy in places and Man of La Mancha had a good supporting cast. Love had neither saving grace.
I recently bought Xanadu on DVD. If you skip past the filler material and just watch the musical bits, it’s not bad. Then again, I’m a big ELO & ONJ fan. She was just getting big when I was in the sixth grade and all the guys in my class had the hots for her. She still looks damned good at 53.
Older??!! Older than the (apparently) 60 year old Stockyard Channing (or however it’s spelled) as Rizzo?
**
I could have forgiven them “Puffin’ And Blowin’” if there hadn’t been so many snotty references by Kristy McNicol to the effect of “I can’t believe how lame this music is”. I kept thinking “Kristy, you’ve been around for, what? 15 minutes? and you’re alread a has-been. This music’s been around for 100 years and people are still enjoying it. Let’s talk lame, shall we?”
**
But you’ve got what’shisname…the lead: The single worst male actor in existance. Plus you’ve got the scene where Olivia (who worked as a muse!) and what’shisname try to convince Kelly that his classic '40’s suit wasn’t “Glitz” so they make him play dress-up. Judging from the outfits they force him into, apparently “Glitz” means “pimp-like”. Despite that, I’ll admit to a certain fondness for this one. (Plus the opening scene as the muses come out of the painting is Just Plain Cool.)
“Paint Your Wagon”. A) They tossed out the original plot. Completely. Nothing remains at all. The original plot deals with a young girl, brought up in a mining camp by her prospector father. She falls in love with a young Mexican prospector. The father hits it big and sends the kid away to school. Will she love the young Mexican when she gets back? Of course she will. (I never said it was a GOOD plot, but if you’re gonna throw out the whole story, shouldn’t you replace it with an improved story?) B) They tried to get all smirky (“Gosh! A WOMAN! With TWO HUSBANDS! Aren’t we naughty?!”) It coulda been done funny, as it was, it was just…smirky. Plus, I kept having images of Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and the chick naked together. Brrrrr. C) They let Lee Marvin sing. Lee Marvin’s voice is a crime against nature, per the U.N.
I have to agree with RealityChuck and TV Time though: The worst film musical is “At Long Last Love”. Cyball Shepherd and Bruce Renyolds. And an idiot “artiste” director(I think…someone involved with this mess, anyway) who though he could “improve” on the sublime Cole Porter lyrics. Feh. I wish MST3K coulda gotten their hands on this one. I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I’ve got the album (double bagged so the stench doesn’t contaminate my other records) and I’ve seen excerpts. It’s BAD. It’s one saving grace is Madyline Kahn: comic genius and actress extrodinare.
