The obscure, yet horribly bad, musical thread

Cafe Society
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The obscure, yet horrible musical thread. There’s a bunch of obscure musicals that, had fate rolled the dice differently coulda been major hits: they had everything going for them, but somehow just couldn’t make it.

Blondel: brilliant, witty, filled with funny, witty lyrics and musical jokes (the opening number has four Gregorian monks singing, in perfect barbershop “Buh-buh-buh, buh-benedictus” (think of the opening of “Barbara Anne” by the Beach Boys)

The Baker’s Wife is heartbreakingly beautiful and I’m convinced that someday someone’ll revive it and it’ll be another She Loves Me-type gem…

Weird Romance coulda been another Little Shop of Horrors.

and Eating Raoul was Rocky Horror level good.

This thread isn’t about them.

I want to devote this thread to all the musicals that you’ve picked up because you were charmed (or horrified) by the concept and they turned out to be dreadful. I got to thinking about it because Octavia Smythe-Bunion wrote:

Hey, Aaron Slick from Punkin’ Creek (which, I might add, is < cough > ‘charmingly’ pronounced “Crik”) is a masterpiece of badness. It’s loathsome. It stars Dinah Shore (Rat Pack bimbo), Robert Merrill (of the Metropolitan Opera…and briefly fired from that august institiution as a result of being in this movie) and Alan Young (of Mr. Ed, IIRC).

And it has songs like “Marshmallow Moon” and “Purt Nigh But Not Plumb”!

AND the lyrics to the theme song involve rhyming ALL of the following words with each other: “treat” and “sick” and “slick” and “neat” and “trick” and "wick and “creek” and “creek”*. If you think that only two of the three could possibly rhyme…heh…then you’re doin’ better than the composer.

AND the plot is about an evil guy who’s trying to scam an impoverished widow (why? A rich widow, sure. But impoverished!!?)

I hunted that one down because it sounded so bad. And it was.

And so was Carmilla: A Vampire’s Tale

To this day, I’ve never made it through side one of the album. Racoons in heat produce better music. I have no idea how anyone was convinced to record it. Or lived through the recording process.

Or Isabel’s a Jezebel by Galt (Hair) MacDermot which is thuddingly bad and I’ve no idea what it’s about. (But I love the title and MacDermot can write a good tune when he wants to.)

Or the recording of Guys and Dolls starring the overrated Rat Pack?

Or the recording of Man of La Mancha starring Jim Neibhors (“Well goooooooo-lly, Sargent Carter”!) and Madyline Kahn.

I could go on and on, but I want someone else to have a chance:
Anyone else? Only requirements are A) Obscure (no Tony winners that you happen to hate) and B) stunning in their badness.

Fenris

*at one point they rhyme “creek” with “creek”. Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter and Tim Rice, watch out!

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Nope. It was Jim Nabors, Jack Gilford, and an opera singer whose name I’ve forgotten – not Madeline Kahn.

And, at the risk of alienating your goodwill, I lov that album, and wish I could find a copy. Nabors is great, Gilford is the perfect Sancho Panza, and the opera singer pulls off Aldonza/Dulcinea wonderfully. Certainly a helluva lot better than the team of Peter O’Toole, James Coco, and Sophia Loren that starred in that awful movie of the play.

The obscure musical that I want to see – I keep missing it – is Plan Nine from Outer Space. It started life as a student production at the University of Utah – just before I arrived there. It went on to a professional life in the Midwest. AFAIK it’s ever been produced on either coast. From what I hear, some of the songs are pretty good, and the play is fine until it hits a brick wall somewhere in the second half.

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Nope. It was Jim Nabors, Jack Gilford, and Marilyn Horne – not Madeline Kahn.

And, at the risk of alienating your goodwill, I lov that album, and wish I could find a copy. Nabors is great, Gilford is the perfect Sancho Panza, and Horne pulls off Aldonza/Dulcinea wonderfully. Certainly a helluva lot better than the team of Peter O’Toole, James Coco, and Sophia Loren that starred in that awful movie of the play.

The obscure musical that I want to see – I keep missing it – is Plan Nine from Outer Space. It started life as a student production at the University of Utah – just before I arrived there. It went on to a professional life in the Midwest. AFAIK it’s ever been produced on either coast. From what I hear, some of the songs are pretty good, and the play is fine until it hits a brick wall somewhere in the second half.

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I would say that nothing tops Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band starring Peter Frampton and The BeeGees for all-around badness.

I tend to avoid really obscure musicals. [Marvin the Martin] They’re so irritating - I just want to pinch them. [/Marvin the Martin]

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Boy, howdy, that brings to mind Skidoo, a 1968 movie musical directed by Otto Preminger (!) and misusing a huge cast of characters: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Arnold Stang, Slim Pickens, even – fer chrissake – Harry Nilsson and Groucho Marx as God, in what, sadly, was his last film.

I used to own the soundtrack album for this train wreck of a film and kept it for years just to hear Nilsson sing the closing credits – that’s right, every last best boy, key grip and copywright notice set to sort of a free-flowing song. Bizarre beyond belief.

And, yes, I saw this in a theater way back then. There is next to no plot, and the actors look as confused as everyone else.

One of the reviewers on the IMDB says that Preminger’s daughter controls the negative to protect her father’s memory and that it’s never been released on video.

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Marylin Horne.

Actually Madeline Kahn is in it as Antonia (“I’m Only Thinking of Him”) and I just listened to it again this evening after writing about it, and you’re right. It is good.

Although Keith Richards, from the original London cast is a far better Quixote.

Heh. And my copy of it was recorded in “glorious” Quadrophonic sound…

Another obscure one is At Long Last Love starring Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, someone named Duilio Del Prete (who can’t sing, dance or act…not that anyone else (except the wonderful Madeline Kahn) can either. It’s a pastiche of Cole Porter songs that the idiot director has chosen to rewrite the lyrics to. :rolleyes: What kind of moron rewrites Cole Porter???

Fenris

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I think you need to change the category for “Weird Romance.”

(and I’m finding it scary that I knew all the good, but failed musicals )

But you have inspired me to be more adventurous when going through the musicals section, and pick up and buy the things that look really, really awful.

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Um. NOT “Keith Richards”. :rolleyes:

The guy from the London recording was “Keith Michell”

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Keith Michell was Henry VIII in the BBC/PBS production of The Six Wives of Henry VIII

And if you look above, you’ll see that I already corrected myself on Marilyn Horne befoe you did (but not before it got sent off).

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I detested the movie musical version of Lost Horizon. Burt Bacherach meets Shangrila.

But I am puzzled by the listed of “Guys and Dolls.” Maybe you are referring to a recording of the music that I am not familiar with. The original Broadway show won five Tony awards, including “best musical.” Just a few years later, the movie version came out with Frank Sinatra. It was “okay.” I don’t think any other Rat Packers were in it, but correct me if I’m wrong. In the mid-seventies there was another version but I don’t know much about it except that it was an all black cast.

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Is that spelled “Shangrala”? It doesn’t look right either.:smack:

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I usually see it hyphenated, “Shangri-La”.

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Let us not forget Carrie: The Musical , but that never had a chance of being good. Who’s idea was that!? :smack:

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Fenris, you’re right on-the-nose about how some obscure musicals might have made it big if not for a few bad breaks here or there. Remember that Rocky Horror was obscure for quite awhile. Nobody today would remember the semi-popular stage production if the movie hadn’t become a hit, and the movie only became a hit years after release through the persistence of an originally small group of moviegoers. A few twists of fate here or there and who knows…

I suppose we should be glad the bad ones you mention faded into obscurity, especially since so many bad ones didn’t.

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I have a weak spot for Paint Yer Wagon. Probably because Clint Eastwood sings! Badly, but he sings. It’s sort of like watching a talking horse. :smiley:

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That’s the one Homer Simpsons rents, in the worst ever Simpsons musical episode and clip show.

BTW, was the movie musical version of Lost Horizon the one with the guy from Logan’s Run and Austin Powers?

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Gonna paint yer wagon,
gonna paint it fine,
gonna use oil-based paint,
'coz that wood is pi-ine.

(Chorus)

Ponderosa Pine - ooo-oooo!

Hee, hee, hee…

Thanks for reminding me! I haven’t seen Paint Your Wagon in years. Time to rent it.

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I agree – and look at that non-musical cast: Peter Finch, Michael York, George Kennedy – what were they thinking? I showed this film at my annual Bad Film Festival a couple of years ago.

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A while after the movie, there was a studio cast recording of Guys and Dolls. Sammy Davis Jr, Dinah Shore, Jo Stafford, etc. were in it. It was as bad as you’d expect from that lot, although it does have Allan Sherman doing a number (“Sit Down, you’re rockin’ the boat” iirc). Here’s a link.

And surprisingly, Carrie: The Musical’s music isn’t bad. (I understand that the staging, script, casting (the high-school kids all looked like they were in their late 20s,) design, etc were dreadful but a friend got me a bootleg from eBay (“They were selling it on eBay: how can it be a bootleg?”) and having listened to it, there’s some damned good music in it. And since Barbara Cook stars (in the London version) you know it’s got at least one ultra-talented person in it.

Fenris

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I’ve always wanted to see the movie, but no-one shows it on TV and I don’t believe it’s available to rent or buy.