One from the Vaults: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

One from the Vaults: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

So many times naive young indie rockers and pop culture lovers ask themselves, "It's the Beatles, how can you mess it up?" That phrase, kind of like "I'm not racist but..." should automatically signal to you that something is amiss. But even I found myself at age fifteen asking, "This movie can't be as bad as everyone says it is - how can you mess up one of the best albums ever?" Then I watched it and found out exactly how you can mess up one of the best albums ever.

May I present to you a timeless piece of cinematic vomit, 1978's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I rewatched it over the weekend and found it to be even worse than I remembered. Sometimes I wonder if the filmmakers asked themselves the above questions, though I think the only question they really asked was, "how much coke can you buy in this town?" (answer: enough to get through a film shoot)

The record Sgt. Pepper's had the Beatles pretending to make a concept album so they could secretly experiment with their sound. Likewise, the movie Sgt. Pepper's had the filmmakers pretending to make a rock opera so they could secretly showcase some bitchin' Beatles covered by the Bee Gees. Yes, friends, that's right, the band portraying the Beatles' alter ego is the Bee Gees and is led by Peter Fucking Frampton. And unlike the Lisa Bonet's cover from High Fidelity, when he sings you're aren't going to "kind of like it now." You're going to wonder what dark personal vendetta Frampton has against the Lennon family.

That alone should be enough of an explanation, but let's try to dive into the plot. The Product Description from Amazon states it a little too coherently for its own good: "SGT. PEPPER'S GRANDSON AND THREE OTHER GUYS FORM A BAND AND FIGHT BAD GUYS.MUSIC FROM THE BEATLES. "

George Burns as Mr. Kite, the town historian, tells the legend of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, who singlehandedly conquered both world wars and the great depression through British brass music. After Sgt. Pepper dies, his grandson Billy Shears and three of his buds decide to reform the band and perform in their quaint hometown of Heartland. There's also Billy's stepbrother Dougie, who's bitter because he didn't get breastfed or some shit and I can't tell if he ever figures into the plot again because everyone in the movie looks so fucking whitebread that I can't tell who's who.

Anyway, the band magically gets a record contract and goes to LA, where they promptly get drugged by a record exec and raped by a pop soul band, which everyone in the film's universe seems to find completely a-ok. They forget about that and record a record and get world famous. Meanwhile, Mean Mr. Mustard and his gang of robotic rubber dominatrix ladies, who hate love and music, cruise into Heartland. The band isn't there to protect the town by playing "When the Saints Come Marching in" or "God Save the Queen" so Mr. Mustard steals some magical instruments as commanded by the mysterious FVB via computer and then turns the town into a pinball brothel.

Billy's girlfriend Strawberry Fields runs away to get the band back from LA and save the town. They steal Mr. Mustard's pedovan and drive to beat up Alice Cooper and Steve Martin and then come back to play a concert with Earth Wind and Fire. Then Strawberry gets kidnapped by Mr. Mustard and taken to Aerosmith, who've been pulling the strings the whole time. Strawberry dies in a giant neon gyroscope while Frampton beats up Steven Tyler.

Billy is pretty bummed about his dead girlfriend, so he tries to jump off a roof. But wait! The weathervane that's been watching over the town the whole time turns into Billy Preston and stops him with his magic trumpet! And turns all the bad guys into Catholic religious figures! and reanimates Strawberry! And then a bunch of celebrities join around and sing the reprise from the album.

The reason this is so long and describe the whole plot is to spare you the pain. For the love of God, those are two hours you'll never get back. Sometimes you think it's going to verge into "so bad it's good" territory and you're proven horribly wrong, kind of like getting a staph infection from a flu shot. I understand that the Beatles are hard to tackle despite how many people have tried, but these guys were handed material on a silver fucking platter and decided to use it as toilet paper instead. Steve Martin dresses up as a crazy doctor - almost the same act he'd reprise in Little Shop of Horror with flying colors - and dances around to Maxwell's Silver Hammer and it's still not good.

The thing is, I don't understand why this film is so bad. The Bee Gees don't automatically suck the win out of a film, and on paper this should be a campy romp with some great cameos. But it's not. Sweet sassy molassy, how it's not. So I blame Peter Frampton. Sure, I suppose the casting director is partially to blame for creating a horrific world in which Peter Frampton can triumph over Alice Cooper, but the casting director wasn't the one prancing around in a pink suit and fuggling my brain.

So, in short, this movie is bad. And not the fun kind of bad, more like being given a puppy and then watching being thrown into a woodchipper. It takes the worst elements of the campiest of 70s musicals and shoves them into a film while taking a huge dump on something that should at least be fun if not good.