SGT [sic] PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978)

 

SGT [sic] PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978)

Dir. Michael Schultz

Written by Henry Edwards

Starring Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees, George Burns, Steve Martin, Donald Pleasance, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Earth Wind and Fire, Carel Struycken

There should be a law.

Once upon a time, some rich asshole bought the rights to 29 Beatles songs from Sgt. Pepper and Abby Road for an off-Broadway jukebox musical, which apparently was a thing people did back then (in fact, this particular asshole, one Robert Stigwood by name, had already done something similar with 1977's SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER). And of course, when he discovered that the docile US population was unwisely willing to tolerate this kind of chicanery, he decided that while he had the rights, he might as well grind out a movie, too. It would tell the classic story of Sgt [sic] Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a four-piece brass band who became beloved during their stint in World War I, and who returned to their hometown of Heartland, USA, to remain popular through the decades until they died in 1958. Then, although the movie is not explicit on this point, it appears their bodies were stuffed and displayed in the local museum along with their magical instruments(?), which is where the story picks up with the grandson of the band's leader, Peter Frampton (The Simpson Season 7 Episode 24), who dresses like the Lawnmower man and has the Bee Gees as a backing band.

If it seems weird to you that a filmmaker would start a movie called SGT [sic] PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND by introducing a WWI-era band of that name, only to immediately kill them and skip ahead to 1978, strap in, kid, because that will seem like airtight narrative efficiency by the time we get to a British comedian who lives in a van with two robot gimps and obeys the commands of a psychedelic video screen which will ultimately task him with stealing the beloved magical instruments of the original Sgt [sic] Pepper's band, as part of a dastardly plan by a mysterious secret society to utilize the instruments' magical powers to transform the world's youth into mind-controlled automatons in boy-scout uniforms. Meanwhile, the Peter Frampton ensemble must experience a meteoric rise to fame and be tempted by rock and roll excess before the movie forgets about that entirely and they have to go and recover the magical instruments from the secret society's various colorful henchmen.

Or, at least, I'm pretty sure that's the gist of what happens; parts of this story are directly explained via the narration of George Burns (!), (playing a "Mr. Kite," and yes, they will literally play a Benefit For Mr. Kite before the credits roll) but when he's not explicitly describing what's happening on-screen, good luck figuring out what the fuck any of this is supposed to mean. You see, Burns speaks the only actual dialogue in the film; everything else in the story is communicated entirely via the medium of Beatles covers. Which could, in theory, be made to make some sense, I suppose; I don't recall Julie Taymor's 2007 all-Beatles musical ACROSS THE UNIVERSE struggling with basic comprehensibility. But the problem here is that these particular Beatles songs are, by and large, a selection of the band's most specific and direct storytelling, and they are absolutely and unequivocally not telling this particular story. Not one of these songs is, even in the most vague, elliptical way, about battling the evil henchmen of a brainwashing robot cult to regain a suite of magical brass instruments, and yet they are our only means of trying to discern the basic plot of a movie which is, to the extent which it can be meaningfully said to be about anything, about battling the evil henchmen of a brainwashing robot cult to regain a suite of magical brass instruments. 

We are often faced, then, with songs in which only the title or a few tossed-off lines have anything at all to do with what we're actually seeing; witness the bizarre dissociative fugue that occurs as Steve Martin (!) speak-sings his way through "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." It is true that he is playing a character named "Maxwell Edison," and he does appear to incidentally own a silver hammer, but otherwise not a single word from the rest of the song --and everyone in the movie always sings the whole song-- has a single goddamn thing to do with what we're actually watching. The lyrics are our only window into what the story is supposed to be --remember, there's no dialogue whatsover outside of the very occasional Burns narration-- so there's no way to just ignore them, and yet he's singing "Maxwell Edison majoring in medicine / Calls her on the phone / Can I take you out to the pictures, Joan?" despite the fact that there is no Joan, no phone, and not one goddamn thing he's talking about has anything to do with the movie we're watching.

There is a character called "Strawberry Fields," and never mind what a fucking insane name that is for a human, the real problem is that she sings the song "Strawberry Fields Forever". You know, the one which begins, "Let me take you down, 'Cause I'm going to / strawberry fields." I'm, I'm! As in, “I am!” First person singular! Never mind that the rest of the song is meaningless gibberish in this context anyway, you know what character would make more sense singing "I'm going to strawberry fields"? LITERALLY ANYONE NOT ACTUALLY NAMED "STRAWBERRY FIELDS." Good Lord, people, just fucking think about this for just two goddamn seconds before you start shooting it!*

And then, above and beyond all that, there's the crippling issue that the production is set, for no reason in particular, in America, despite the soundtrack of what might be the most aggressively British pop songs in the history of music. The lyrics are constantly talking about Lancashire, "ten-bob" notes, lorrys, getting sacked, and what have you --hell, both Frampton and the Bee Gees are British!**-- and yet the movie absolutely insists that this is a home-grown American affair. It's madness! The movie offers absolutely no explanation about why this at-a-minimum third-generation American band is suddenly singing about Lancashire, and doesn't even appear to notice that it's odd. 

(For the record, though, the funniest mismatch between screen and lyrics is when Barry Gibb, singing "A Day In The Life," looks at the camera and solemnly narrates that he "Woke up / got out of bed/ dragged a comb across my head." He looked like this at the time: 

Yeah, uh, Barry, I think there was probably a little more to it than that.)

Very occasionally, the movie's baseline idiocy bleeds into outright psychosis in a way which is at least visually interesting; a scene where devilish (?) Label boss Donald Pleasence (!!) speak-sings his way through "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" while seducing our boys into signing a record contract*** gradually degenerates into a opulent nightmare Nicolas Roeg would be proud of (the film was shot by five-time Academy-Award nominee Owen Roizman, of THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST fame!). The gaudy, tasteless overkill of it all sporadically brushes up against some kind of giddy camp, although it can also seem weirdly chintzy and small-scale for something so obviously hoping to overwhelm with excess. Still, a few sequences feel frisky and odd enough to entertain; Martin's rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" at least has the benefit of some energetic choreography which the film almost entirely lacks (Patricia Birch, of GREASE [but also GREASE 2] is credited, but the songs are mostly performed by rockers who don't dance). And I guess I'm incapable of not being charmed by seeing Alice Cooper (!) as the head of some kind of mustachio'd brainwashing cult, however little actually comes of it.

Mostly, though, this is a literally unbelievable trainwreck of incomprehensible madness, and rarely even eccentric enough at that to be fun. Mostly it's just exhausting. Even the covers are so strikingly similar to the originals as to hardly feel exotic; every now and then they get a little bold, as when the band gradually twists "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" into some kind of weirdo disco workout, but mostly the result of Frampton and the Bee Gees covering this material is simply faithful reconstructions of the originals**** with distinctly wussier vocals. And the Beatles weren't exactly Pig Destroyer to begin with, so when I say these covers are wussier, you can believe me that you're going to notice. After a while, suffering through George Burns, Alice Cooper, Steve Martin, and Donald Pleasence speak-singing actually becomes a bit of a relief. 

Before the film's release, Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees announced: "There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don't exist as a band and never performed Sgt Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed." Fortunately that did not turn out to be the case; if anything, the opposite is true. Still, despite its relatively low profile in modern times, there's no getting around it: SGT [sic] PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND THE MOVIE does exist, and we just have to reckon with that fact. And it is a sobering one. This must surely be the most sobering film to ever be made by people who were most emphatically not sober. 

But lest you start to pity the film for its dizzying ineptitude, remember: it made that Aerosmith cover of "Come Together" a hit. So however much it suffered, it deserved much worse. 

* Also, Earth Wind and Fire are on hand to perform "Got to Get You into My Life." But here's the thing: they're not actually a part of the plot or anything. At one point, our heroes just go to an Earth Wind and Fire show, and hear that one song. I'm not complaining though; at least Earth Wind and Fire get to walk away with their dignity marginally intact, and besides, stopping everything to go to an Earth Wind and Fire show is the only action Frampton and Co. take in the entire film that makes these jokers seem in any way relatable or sympathetic.

**The Bee Gees were all born in Manchester, although they rose to fame after moving to Australia in their teens.

*** Which, uh, they want to sign, and in fact came here to sign, and never regret signing, so I don't know what's up with the sinister tone here.

**** Original Beatles producer George Martin is on board here in the same capacity, presumably just for the opportunity to spite his old band by exactly recreating the lush production they were so hostile to.