Sgt. Pepper's Only Hearts Club Band [1978]

With no other source to turn to while Adam's laptop is in the shop, we turned to The Bad Movie Bible and pulled out this film that a lot of people apparently didn't even realize existed. It is an absolute marvel in cinema in that it somehow manages to have no plot, no themes, no characterization, and no dialogue. I don't even know how to explain this movie for that reason. The best explanation I could get was from looking up how this movie came to be. Apparently the producer had acquired the rights to 29 Beatles songs, gave them to a guy who has never written a screenplay before and he tried to arrange them into an order that could produce a story. In theory. This movie's cast is also stacked with music stars who had really high hopes only to later heavily regret their choices. The titular band consists of Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. There are cameos by Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. But still, but still, it is almost impossible to tell you what is happening. I will try, but I expect to fail.

In a town called Heartland that is good and pure, there was an original Sgt. Pepper band starting during WWI and continuing on to be the town's pride and joy. It ended in 1958 but has now been resurrected twenty years later with a totally new crew, and they're a rock band now. The original band leader's brother loves money and gets them a record contract in LA and while they're gone an evil man with dementia and sex robots named Mustard fills the town with sleaze and steals the original band's instruments, distributing them to various lowlifes. The band is alerted of this by their leader's girlfriend named Strawberry Fields, and they return to Heartland to get the instruments back. They do but Strawberry gets kidnapped and dies by falling off Aerosmith's set design. After her funeral Peter Frampton wants to end it all but it saved by a magical weather vane that also resurrects Strawberry. They sing "Sgt. Pepper's (Reprise)" and it's finally over. 

Now that managed to sound almost coherent, but remember that there's no dialogue, just music sequences and some voiceover from George Burns. The film's reviews use the word whimsy a lot and I barely even dug into that aspect: shiny clothes, a hot air balloon, parades, the whimsy list is endless. But is it bad in a fun way? It certainly is a little. While we bemoaned the nearly two whole runtime and lack of a real story, we did get a few loud laughs from exaggerated facial acting, absolutely absurdity, and a well-used dummy. I can't fully recommend it, but it's definitely an experience.

Spoon Rating: 4