Check out Nathan Rabin's hilarious essay on SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (the 1978 movie, not the 40-year-old album) in The Onion's AV Club blog. This sentence alone is (as they say) worth the price of admission:
The closing number is a maraschino cherry of awfulness atop a ten-scoop Sundae of pure crap.
Although I've made ample time to watch such notorious flops as XANADU and CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, I haven't seen this film and I'm a little afraid to. Even I have a threshold that can't fully support the idea of Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees slaughtering and trivializing Beatles songs with the bloated excesses of an era not immune to laboriously bad taste... I'd probably have to get liquored up first.
And yet, I can watch this over and over again. At least with SGT. PEPPER'S, I have a feeling you could discern what kind of audience it tried to court (no matter how misguidedly), but THE APPLE is just flabbergasting with its futuristic world of "1994", over-the-top musical extravaganzas (including one full of synchronized sex and a Donna Summer sound-a-like) and many, many sequins. It's worse than its two brethren (mentioned above) in the 1980 post-disco, pre-new wave, all-camp terrible trio, but it's fascinatingly bad, and that's the difference.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I resemble that remark! Dude, I grew up on the Sgt. Pepper's movie, little trifle of fluffy whipped cream that it is. I know the film versions of most Beatles songs better than the originals and still have my original LP soundtrack album. This film has the distinction of being the one film my grandparents took me to in which my grandfather never once nodded off!
You do need to see this. Even if you think it's total crap (and you might), I defy you to at least call Sandy Farina (as Strawberry Fields) anything less than delightfully charming.
And as for that maraschino cherry of a finale -- don't you know who's in it?! Along with about 150 other assorted celebrities... Carol Channing. Imagine a musical number that includes her and Leif Garrett. And Tina Turner. And Sha Na Na. And Tammy Wynette (I think). And ... good God, you really need to see this film.
I totally want to be there when you do.
Post a Comment