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Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band
Fans of the 1975 rock opera Tommy might have a head start with 1978's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a silly and overblown tribute to one of the Beatles' best albums that attempts to craft a story around the songs on the album, with pointless and confusing results. The film also attempts to turn certain rock and roll musicians into actors with disastrous results.
The so-called story follows a band from a small fictional town called Heartland that consists of lead singer Billy Shears (Peter Frampton). the Henderson brothers (The Bee Gees), and Billy's brother Dougie (Paul Nicholas) who acts as their manager. They are discovered by a sleazy record producer with a bad toupe named BD Hofler (Donald Pleasance), who gets them in the middle of a dangerous plot against the entire music industry in LA.
The plot, if you want to call it that, is really not the thing here. The thing here was to provide a cinematic valentine to one of the Beatles biggest selling albums and on that angle, the movie really delivers. Some of the Beatles' most memorable hits are lovingly recreated with the respect they deserve. Unfortunately, the story that screenwriter Henry Edwards comes up with, based on a play by Tom O'Horgan and Robin Wagner, is so convoluted and pretty much impossible to follow. It's only made worse by the fact that the story is done in the form of a rock opera, I assume in an attempt to make sure Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees didn't have to attempt any real acting.
The Bee Gees were fresh off their monster selling soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and Frampton had just completed a 1000-city tour of the US, so it's not a surprise that producer Robert Stigwood wanted to ride the crest of these guys' success, Unfortunately, director Michael Schulze, who is best known for directing a lot of Richard Pryor's earlier work, was out of his element here, overseeing a big budget musical, thinking if he bombarded the senses enough, the viewer wouldn't notice the empty cinematic experience they were getting.
Some of the musical sequences worked. I liked the opening rendition of the title tune, the fantasy production of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" consisting of a billboard coming to life, Aerosmith's take on "Come Together" and Earth Wind and Fire's cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life." But every time the operatic narrative took over, the film came to one dead halt after another.
This film did nothing for the careers of Peter Frampton or the Bee Gees, but there are a couple of other people whose careers managed to survive this debacle like Pleasance, Carel Struycken, and in his official film debut, Steve Martin playing a demented plastic surgeon, bringing down the house with a number called "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," Sadly, stealing this film was no great feat. This big budget disaster is pretty much an embarrassment to all involved, except maybe the Beatles, who were wise enough to stay off screen.
Fans of the 1975 rock opera Tommy might have a head start with 1978's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a silly and overblown tribute to one of the Beatles' best albums that attempts to craft a story around the songs on the album, with pointless and confusing results. The film also attempts to turn certain rock and roll musicians into actors with disastrous results.
The so-called story follows a band from a small fictional town called Heartland that consists of lead singer Billy Shears (Peter Frampton). the Henderson brothers (The Bee Gees), and Billy's brother Dougie (Paul Nicholas) who acts as their manager. They are discovered by a sleazy record producer with a bad toupe named BD Hofler (Donald Pleasance), who gets them in the middle of a dangerous plot against the entire music industry in LA.
The plot, if you want to call it that, is really not the thing here. The thing here was to provide a cinematic valentine to one of the Beatles biggest selling albums and on that angle, the movie really delivers. Some of the Beatles' most memorable hits are lovingly recreated with the respect they deserve. Unfortunately, the story that screenwriter Henry Edwards comes up with, based on a play by Tom O'Horgan and Robin Wagner, is so convoluted and pretty much impossible to follow. It's only made worse by the fact that the story is done in the form of a rock opera, I assume in an attempt to make sure Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees didn't have to attempt any real acting.
The Bee Gees were fresh off their monster selling soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and Frampton had just completed a 1000-city tour of the US, so it's not a surprise that producer Robert Stigwood wanted to ride the crest of these guys' success, Unfortunately, director Michael Schulze, who is best known for directing a lot of Richard Pryor's earlier work, was out of his element here, overseeing a big budget musical, thinking if he bombarded the senses enough, the viewer wouldn't notice the empty cinematic experience they were getting.
Some of the musical sequences worked. I liked the opening rendition of the title tune, the fantasy production of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" consisting of a billboard coming to life, Aerosmith's take on "Come Together" and Earth Wind and Fire's cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life." But every time the operatic narrative took over, the film came to one dead halt after another.
This film did nothing for the careers of Peter Frampton or the Bee Gees, but there are a couple of other people whose careers managed to survive this debacle like Pleasance, Carel Struycken, and in his official film debut, Steve Martin playing a demented plastic surgeon, bringing down the house with a number called "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," Sadly, stealing this film was no great feat. This big budget disaster is pretty much an embarrassment to all involved, except maybe the Beatles, who were wise enough to stay off screen.