The Bee Gees and Frampton’s acting ability and chemistry make Rex Reed in Myra Breckenridge and Mariah Carey in Glitter (2001) look like Mercury Theater cast members. They are killed by the female Strawberry Fields instead, which I guess is some sort of compromise. A footnote here: The Bee Gees were to defeat Aerosmith in unarmed combat in the film, leading Joe Perry to walk off the set until cooler heads prevail. Nobody you love is unscathed, save Aerosmith, who play the evil Future Villain Brand. ![]() Donald Pleasence is a music exec that sings poorly! They took Alice Cooper out of the asylum where he would fitfully write Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) and had him appear as the Sun King. Did you love Maxwell, of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” fame? Then you’re going to hate Steve Martin as the dentist version of him! Yes, years before Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and at the height of his stand-up fame, even Steve Martin is rendered unloveable by this fecund monstrosity of a film. Yes, Michael Schultz, the famed director of the Fat Boys’ Disorderlies (1987), Car Wash (1976) and The Last Dragon (1985) made this movie with all the technical brilliance of your father with a Super 8 at the theme park.Įach song replaces the beloved guitar, bass and sitar of the Beatles with a synthesizer that only plays human farts.Įvery song that you adored will be personified by singers and/or actors you will grow to despise. To wit:Įvery single frame is as loud and garish as possible (and not in an Alejandro Jodorowsky way). I had been overtaken by the delirium of this paean to excess. I maniacally cackled in her face and began laughing so hard that my sides began to hurt. Why those names? Don’t ask! And in the starring role, Peter Frampton is Billy Shears (and not the man who took the place of the headless Paul McCartney if you believe in urban legends)!Īt some point in the proceedings, my sainted wife asked if we could shut the movie off. That’s right, kids! It’s the hip sound of today, as frogingly croaked out by the star of Oh God! Meanwhile, the Bees Gees play Mark, David and Bob Henderson. Kite, he of whom the song For the Benefit of… is about) with every other bit of dialogue being sung. So to get across the tale - such as it is - George Burns would be the only person to speak (he’s the Mr. In fact, there isn’t even a story, unlike the Who’s Tommy. Peppers an aural feat, there was no such film to inspire this outing. Whereas the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds directly influenced and made the audio Sgt. Writer Henry Edwards had never written a script before. It’s when reality allows its ugly head to intrude that we see just what an epic failure of a movie this is. So up until now, until that first shot of the film, this all makes sense. Add in what I editorialize was the kind of cocaine mountain that only the ’70s and Martin Scorsese could concoct and…ladies and germs, we got ourselves a motion picture! And even worked with Paramount - the same studio who launched Saturday Night Fever - to get the movie greenlit. He got Beatles’ producer George Martin and Abbey Road Studios on board. Stigwood purchased 29 of the Beatles’ best songs for use in a Broadway play and then had the brainstorm to create a film, using the aforementioned big music stars. Even better, Saturday Night Fever and Grease came out on Robert Stigwood’s RSO Label. The Bee Gees had also covered the Beatles for a BBC doc in 1976, despite years of critical derision that they were simply clones of the boys from Liverpool. So this ersatz Fab Four - if you will or won’t - had star power, at least on vinyl. That number today is well nigh impossible to reach today it equals around 13% of the overall records sold in 2016. The album spent 97 weeks on the charts, selling 8 million copies. Peter Frampton - after a journeyman career of playing in bands and being seen as a viable solo artist - had finally scored big with Frampton Comes Alive! in 1976. It truly does not get any higher a mountain and the fall, we’ll soon see, does not get any further. But between that and Barry Gibb producing Grease’s title song (and I just want to throw in that the Bee Gee’s also wrote and arranged 1979’s Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers opus, “Islands in the Stream”), the boys from Manchester via the Isle of Man were on the top of the world. ![]() ![]() The Brothers Gibb had just come off Saturday Night Fever (1977), a movie that transcended the screen and spawned a movement. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Band - starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton - probably made all the sense in the world. Let me reiterate: In 1978, a movie version of Sgt. Often one goes into a bad movie asking - to borrow the name of a highly entertaining podcast - how did this get made? Or worse, you have to stop and ask yourself, in the case of a film that ends up offending both target audiences, such as 1972s The Pink Angels, who exactly is this movie being made for?
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