The "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Sucks Ass" Thread

Cafe Society
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No, no, no- not the Album.

I just recently saw the movie for the first time ever. A friend has it on DVD and he delights in making people watch it. He tricked us with a “won’t it be fun to watch a bad movie” pitch.

Now, I went into it knowing that it would be bad. I had heard about how bad it was. I just wasn’t prepared.

Is there any point going into the story? It almost doesn’t seem worth it to have to code out Spoiler boxes. Really, this movie was spoiled when they made it.

[SPOILER]Well, the story follows the Hearts Club Band- Frampton and the BeeGees. Really, it follows Frampton. The BeeGees’ characters are really simply present in each scene and contributing to the music, but their characters are completely undeveloped. They’re just Frampton’s band. They get corrupted as Frampton gets corrupted, they get redeemed as Frampton gets redeemed.

To say that the BeeGees’ characters are undeveloped suggests that Frampton’s character is developed. No, that’s not the case. Silly, silly small-town boy leaves Strawberry Fields, the small-town sweetheart, behind as he pursues fame and fortune and gets corrupted by the evil record industry (as well as by Lucy Diamond- the antithesis of the pure, innocent Strawberry Fields).

Luckily Strawberry redeems him as she uncovers the evil plot hatched by the suits to steal Sgt. Pepper’s magical instruments and deliver them to their evil master- a yet unseen villian referred only as FVB.[/SPOILER]

And this whole story is told only through the lyrics of Beatles songs that were not written with any through stroy in mind- certainly not this story. I should really say that the story is meant to be told through the lyrics. The story is really only told by the pictures on the screen, the songs don’t tell any story at all and are in fact painfully jammed in where they only fit by the greatest stretch of the imagination. (Holy crap! The I Want You scene still has me in pain!)

And the music? The music is crap! Of course all the songs are good, but the performances are horrible!

Aerosmith was great and Earth Wind and Fire was great, two of the three performances that I was familiar with prior to watching the film (the other performance I was familiar with was Steve Martin, which I just assumed would work within the context of the film- well, there was no context, it made no sense.)

What I didn’t know going in was that George Martin was actually involved in this nightmare. He actually arranged and directed all the music and produced the soundtrack. This is what disappointed me the most. What the hell was he thinking??? Why even get involved in such a train wreck? Then, once on board, what the hell was he thinking as arranger and producer??? He already had first-hand experience making all those songs sound perfectly awesome- how did he then end up making them sound perfectly awful???

Aaaargh!

Points of Interest:

[SPOILER]You really can’t get any more Deus Ex Machina then with Billy Preston’s appearance at the end. Not only does he bring Strawberry Fields back from the dead, but he simply makes her appear on a street corner! Her entire death was just to facilitate the inclusion of some “sad” songs, then she’s brought back to life for the “happy” ending.

We finally meet FVB and find that “FVB” stands for “Future Villain Band”, played by Aerosmith. What’s the message here? That new music with a new sound is nothing but a corruption of the purity of the old music? Future Villain Band??? WTF??? If the film was meant to celebrate music the only bad guys should have been the suits. Future Villain Band???[/SPOILER]

I think this movie was actually worse than the similarly themed The Apple. I actually enjoyed how bad The Apple was. Sgt. Pepper was just sad.

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What, no mention of Marvin Sunk, the Sun King? :wink:

No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the thing. I do, however, have Alice Cooper’s Life & Crimes set which includes “Because”. “Because”? :dubious: Should be “Why?!” :eek:

That piece of music is enough to convince me that I’ve either got to own that movie or avoid it like the plague!

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No, not bad but sad. There are moments in the movie that are positively surreal, but overall…shakes his head and leaves…

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The moustache he sports in the movie makes him look so different. We thought he was Zappa at first.

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I only vaguely remember it, but didn’t it have something to do with a drug-induced aze and a spinning bed that looked like a record? Ugh.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention George Burns singing “Being for the Benefit Of Mr. Kite!”. I guess at least they should et some kind of skewed logic points just for thinking of that bit of casting.

I think of all the travesties committed upon Beatles songs in that film, Alice Cooper’s “Because” is probably the most egregious (although who sang “She’s Leaving Home” in the movie? And I recall “Mean Mr. Mustard” was pretty crap, too).

George Martin’s done nothing but screw with the Beatles’ legacy since they broke up. Did you hear the horrible tribute album he put out a few years back, with Jim Carrey doing “I Am The Walrus”? Holy shit.

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"Drug-induced haze, that is.

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Check this site for a more thorough retelling, with pictures.

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Okay, I actually waited for this to hit the dollar theatre in my college town and still walked out of it – and even though I was only there for maybe 45 minutes, I still felt cheated.

What a god-awful train wreck. Though I do like as the original poster noted, Aerosmith and EW&F – I also find listening to George Burns strangely amusing.

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I remember reading an interview with the Bee Gees when the movie came out – I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone so goddamn full of themselves: they asserted that in the future, “Sgt. Pepper” would be remembered not as a work of the Beatles, but the Bee Gees! Boy, they were right on the mark, huh?

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SPLHCB doesn’t work at all as a narrative (the writer, Henry Edwards, only wrote one other feature and had been part of Timothy Leary’s acid experimenting group), but if you look at it as a musical revue of Beatles covers, it’'s actually enjoyable. Sure, the Bee Gees are the epitome of 70s cheese now, but I thought they did justice to the material. I prefer Aerosmith’s cover of “Come Together” to the original, and ditto with Earth, Wind, and Fire’s cover of “Got To Get You Into My Life.” I especially liked Sandy Farina’s vocals and think it a great pity that this was her only film.

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Hey! I liked that movie!

Of course I was only 8 years old when I saw it.

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I never saw Sgt Pepper or The Apple, but I did see Can’t Stop the Music. Can I play the godawful musical game too?

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Hello, my name is friarted.

(Hi, friarted.)

I was in high school when the movie came out.

I saw it twice in the theatre.
I bought the double album (still own it).
I had & read the novelization (wish I still owned it just for the collectability factor.)
I actually said choke at the time that sob THAT I LIKED ITS VERSIONS OF THE SONGS BETTER THAN THE BEATLES!!! collapses into paroxysms of weeping

God forgive me.

Thank you.

I now feel clean.

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Oh, I thought you meant “drug-induced adze.”

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OP, I’m with you. There are no words to describe the badness of this movie. It is among the worst travesties ever committed to film. But it goes beyond mere “poor” into “fascinatingly bad” territory. It’s so horrible I’ve recommended it to people, mostly because I want somebody to talk to about how bad it is. In fact, if you haven’t seen it, I do recommend it, because you will never know how bad it is just from having it described to you.

In short, everyone involved with this disaster in any way should be ashamed of themselves.

Nitpick:

I think you mean “Fixing a Hole”. Those creepy kids shouting “I’m right!” are burned in my brain forever.

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I actually love this movie. I didn’t realise it was on DVD! I think the art direction is really good, and I think the way they tied all the songs together is kind of fascinating. As is the idea of having “good bands” and “evil bands.” Corny, but I like it.

I’m a pretty big Beatles fan as well as a Bee Gees fan; I think a lot of the versions the Bee Gees did are better because the Beatles didn’t really sing that well. (I think the EWF version of “Got to get you into my life” reflects poorly on both groups, heh.)

As a little time capsule of “who, what, and what style of filmmaking were big in the summer of '78” it’s pretty neat.

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I saw the movie a couple years back. I liked it at the time, but looking back on it now, I think it’s mostly rubbish.

The only part I particulary liked was the Steve Martin bit, where he’s singing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”(which I rather like anyway), even though it has nothing to do with anything.

THough I was rather pissed at the end when they go through that whole, rather sad funeral sequence to “You’re gonna carry that weight”, only to bring her back 5 minutes later.

If there’s one thing I destest more then being emotionally manupulated by death, it’s rendering any emotional investment null and void by pulling an idiotic and pointless deus ex machina.

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I didn’t find this movie to be unwatchably bad. I would categorize it as “camp” or “kitsch.”

There’s your rotten awful drek, and then there’s your fun drek. I thought this was mildly enjoyable, as drek goes.

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I’m actually pretty disappointed in myself, because in five years of obsessing, collecting, scavenging, begging, stealing, and borrowing Beatles music/books/memoribilia/and everything else Beatles related, I never found this movie.

Now I feel I should watch it for completion’s sake…but at the same time, I’m too frightened to actually seek it out.

Maybe one day…

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