User reviews

Am I the only one who liked this movie? After hearing nothing but bad press about it for years, I finally went out and saw it. I thought it was one of the most fun flicks I'd seen in years. All the characters were named after Beatles songs! Starring Billy Shears (Peter Frampton) and the Hendersons (the Bee Gees) "were all there" as well, "Sgt. Pepper" featured Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) as Billy's leading lady, and Mr. Mustard (Frank Howerd) was "such a mean old man." Let's not forget Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Dianne Steinberg), the Sun King (Alice Cooper), and Sgt. Pepper played by an old Beatles protege (Billy Preston). The movie also depicted countless cover versions of Beatles songs, including Earth Wind & Fire's "Got to Get You Into My Life." As the narrator, Mr. Kite (George Burns) even covered "Fixin' a Hole." Critics of the movie should be so critical"when they're 64," let alone 82! Sure, the plot wasn't worthy of a Kubrick screenplay, but what could be more accurate than explaining how corporatism is anathema to the fun of music, and how profound an impact the Beatles had on later artists. Look for Dame Edna (Barry Humphries) in one of the many crowd scenes. I have one final case for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." It had one of my favourite comedians (Steve Martin) singing one of my favourite Beatles songs (Maxwell's Silver Hammer). I'm picking out a thermos for this movie!

If you are looking for a movie that you can just sit back, relax and forget about the world, this movie is it.

Judging from the range of comments it produced, this one could very well become the gold standard for a 'cinema-Rorschach' test. Yes, the 70's eventually degenerated into over-the-top, disco-drenched silliness so of course it's understandable why some frame the film that way. All syrupy, wrong-headed excess. And part of me agrees with them - even Stigwood's other 70's 'successes' such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy strike me as not good enough to be called absurd. And remember that this IS a musical - which means you have to check your normal perspective at the door anyway. And THAT usually means you are either a musical lover or hater.

So, what are we actually reacting to here? 'I liked the 70's AND I like musicals - so I like this movie'? Or, 'I hated the 70's AND I hate musicals - so I hate this movie'? Or, 'I LOVE the Beatles - NO ONE can ever do their music the way they did it - so I hate this movie'.

OK, so it doesn't work for you or maybe it does. I thought the premise was inane (I generally don't like musicals anyway) and the acting was , well, inane also. And I didn't like the 70's when I lived through them and like them even less in retrospect - so I have some fairly deep garbage to wade through to give something like this a decent shake.

But, there are some qualities to recommend this film. I found the Bee Gees to be a surprisingly good fit for a lot of the Beatles tunes. Their rich harmonies complimented and in some cases provided unexpected new dimensions to the Beatle's themes. Not every song worked but most did. Unfortunately that was not the case with Frampton. His soft demeanor just didn't deliver on many of the tunes (Sgt Peppers theme, for example). Forget the acting - I ignored most of it.

Rather than pick the whole thing apart, I decided to reside in the camp that says 'sit back, shut off the brain and just listen to the music'. And that allowed me to appreciate George Martin's unerring hand on the throttle. His timing, attention to detail and sophisticated musical guidance were ever-present. The production quality should seem familiar to true Beatles fans.

So in the end, I thought the whole attempt to be so much lesser than any individual Lennon/McCartney song (many of them are entire stories in their own right anyway). And squeezing something as sublime as 'Because' out of Alice Cooper was just sad. But even so, I'd say overall the music as steered by Martin makes this one at least worthy of a listen, if not a viewing.

In 1978, when I was 12 years old, we were living in Moscow, while my father was stationed at the Canadian Embassy. To escape the "fun" of living behind the Iron Curtain, we routinely took the Moscow-Helsinki express and travelled around Scandinavia. Our trip always ended at this huge department store in Helsinki, where we'd order all our non-perishable groceries until our next trip. My brother and I were allowed to purchase one record apiece to take back with us.

So one time, I picked up the soundtrack to this film. I don't think the movie had been released yet. Goodness knows, I didn't know that the movie was going to be a howler. All I know is that I loved the soundtrack. I listened to it over and over, and pored over the photographs on the album cover, trying to get a sense of the movie.

A few years later, I read "The Golden Turkey Awards" and then I started to realize how bad the movie was. I didn't get my chance to see it until 1997. Oh, it stunk! Cheese everywhere, from the awkward love story to the campy antics of the villain and his robots.

And yet, I watch it every time it comes on TV. Finally, I have the movie to go with the soundtrack. And let's face it - I love cheesy movies.

This movie makes Magical Mystery Tour look like Citizen Kane. Hokey! Corny! Horrible! Do yourself a favor and just fast forward to Aerosmith's performance. What a way to Dis the Beatles. George Martin should be ashamed of himself! This movie could have been made by Fellini. It's one freak show after another. Just when you think it's bad, George Burns gets up and sings "Fixing a Hole". He sure fixed the holes in the sides of my head...my ears bled for a week. A better use of this movie would be as a public service to keep kids off of drugs. Peter Frampton is such a dork that he actually makes the Bee Gees look cool. That should get an award in itself. The sets were so cheesy I was expecting Henrietta Hippo and that green frog to pop out from the New Zoo Review. Maybe this movie is really just for three year-olds. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I stumbled across an unlicensed videocassette of the film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. Being a pop-culture junkie I had to have it. It ranks up there with the worst movies of all time - absolutely everything about it was poorly thought out. The basic premise is that they took all these Beatle's songs and strung them together to make a story, so the characters had to come from names or words from Beatle's songs: for instance, Frampton's character (the lead singer for the Lonely Hearts Club Band) is Billy Shears (if you'll recall Billy Shears is introduced by the Beatles at the beginning of Sgt. Pepper as the singer of 'get by with a little help from my friends... etc.). His girlfriend is named Strawberry Fields (any guesses where that came from?) Later he is tempted by Lucy, from the female rock band Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (I'm really not kidding), and happiness is threatened by Mean Mr. Mustard, who abducts Strawberry, and also Dr. Maxwell Edison (majoring in medicine with silver hammers). Although they sing 'Nowhere Man' and 'Polythene Pam' these names do not appear as characters somehow. There are about 20 Beatles songs in the movie not sung by the Beatles, and the lead characters never speak - all the narration is done by Mr. Kite ('a benefit for Mr. Kite' and yes there is such a benefit) played by George Burns who even dons a guitar to sing 'fixing a hole'. There are almost no words to describe how awful this film is. Everything about it was a complete disaster, although the Beatles' songs are all familiar and delightful, they are delivered in a context that simply doesn't work (for instance there are a couple of melancholy songs sung - 'long and winding road' etc. after Strawberry is killed in a fight with Aerosmith). One of the sublime moments was when Strawberry Fields sings 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. She's singing to herself about herself. Forever. Fantastic.

Production values were high - they spent a lot of money on this fantasy. It lost all of its investment and Peter Frampton, who's performance has to be seen to be believed (the cast of 'Punky Brewster' seems almost Shakespearean in comparison) was so embarrassed that he bought almost all of the prints back to have them destroyed for posterity's sake. But some got away, and I got my cassette. What a treasure.

Someone must have noticed that "Yellow Submarine" made money. That same person also noticed that the Bee Gees were popular. Put a popular disco group and popular Beatles songs together, and: magic???

Well, not really. This film hurts. It hurts all the more if one likes the Beatles' originals of these songs (OK, Aerosmith did a decent version of "Come Together," but that is not enough to mitigate the damage caused by the rest of the performances).

There are certain films that seem to be made just to put the tolerance of a badfilm watcher to the test. This film has its place in that pantheon, right between "Can't Stop the Music" and "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians."

Full disclosure: I don't like the Beatles, and in fact will go out of my way to avoid them. Nothing personal to their millions of fans, but I see nothing there that's the least bit appealing. To give you an idea exactly how much I know about popular music, though: for years I thought that was Mick Jagger singing lead for the FVB… silly me; it's Steven Tyler. Oops.

I don't like fantasy. Nor do I like the Bee Gees… well, maybe more specifically, I don't like disco and I still resent having it shoved down my throat every day of my life when I was in high school. The Brothers Gibb actually sound okay when they sing, as long as it's something other than disco… nice harmonies.

You might as well add George Burns to the things I don't like, as long as we're at it, and seeing as he's here.

During my most recent viewing, it finally occurred to me that perhaps Beatles fans actually see this kind of thing in their minds when they listen to the original music… perhaps they understand the odd lyrics and find meaning in them independently. Perhaps that meaning is even different for each listener. My own imagination can't find that kind of meaning in nonsensical things like walruses and strawberry fields and yellow submarines, but when it's all laid out for me as a story I can follow, even in an awkwardly cobbled-together effort like this one, I do like it. It's weird, exploitive, poorly acted by many (I'm looking at you, Mr. Frampton), over-long, grotesque in places (now I'm looking at Mr. Howerd and Mr. Martin) and very much a crass pop-culture money-making effort with questionable staying power… yet I'm entertained by it. I've probably seen it a half-dozen times. Sometimes I don't know why I'm watching it… but I still watch it, all the way to the end. I don't really 'get it', necessarily, but I enjoy it on some level.

Beatles fans probably universally dislike this production, and I don't blame them. I'd dislike it if I was a fan of the source material, but since I'm not, I approach this film on a whole different level and it works for me.

This film is an artifact from the Age of Cheese. Nobody who didn't grow up in the '70s can know that TV during the period was littered with "variety shows" - collections of bad cover songs, comedy sketches, and over-the-top costumes. The hosts were usually a middle of the road musical act, like Donny and Marie or the Captain and Tennille. The guests were a collection of actors, singers and comics. Everyone involved was expected to sing, dance and do comedy - regardless of specialty. You can imagine how painful - but inexplicably popular - the results were. This formula was cloned for the two most disgraceful desecrations of pop culture legends in history - The Star Wars Holiday Special and this film. In both cases, a group of random performers were crammed into a classic format, whether or not they belonged there. This is the rock and roll equivalent of a variety show. Everyone from George Burns to The Bee Gees to Steve Martin are given Beatles songs to sing, stretched over a wire-thin plot. The results are uneven as hell. The Earth Wind and Fire and Aerosmith segments justify the film getting an extra star from me. The songs they were given were perfect matches, and they put their own stamp on them. The rest? Mostly glitter and oh-my-God-am-I-really-watching-this? In short, just like the variety shows of old. This is definitely a relic of its time - and it should stay there. (By the way, the one time the variety show formula WORKED was The Muppet Show. Perhaps they should have made a Beatles musical performed by Muppets).

Ok, the acting is absolutely terrible and it's completely campy. But, that's part of it's charm. If you can watch the movie without comparing the Beatles versions, most songs hit the mark. Aerosmith's Come Together, Billy Preston's Get Back, and EW&F's Got to Get You into My Life, are still great. There are a couple of songs like Golden Slumbers that play better on the album. If you are fans of The Bee Gees, mainly Barry Gibb's hair, (which, somehow, actually steals a few scenes) and Frampton, you should be tickled. Some of the guest spots are great, some were just, eh. I imagine it will be up to who your favorite acts are. If you make it to the end of the movie, the credits roll out with a virtual who's who of the 70's singing the title song. The movie won't be for everyone, but those who love the 70's should have fun reminiscing.

Yes, as if seeing THIS movie weren't enough, I had to watch Olivia and Gene after it. I just saw SGT PEPPER on cable after a gap of 27 years and I can't believe I actually sat through the entire thing in a theater. With the aid of my DVR I fast-forwarded through all the songs and crammed it all in under an hour. It's ironic that the movie is about a money-grubbing producer whose label is a parody of Stigwood's logo...since obviously this movie was made by Stigwood to capitalize on every star possible without providing a plot or decent performances. It's like they had a meeting: "Who's cool now? Let's get them!" So we get George Burns, hot from his "Oh God" movies; Steve Martin, who was the hottest thing in comedy at the time and gives a King-Tutty performance; Frampton (no guitar solos?) and the Bee Gees; Alice Cooper, etc. But who decided to give Donald Pleasance the role of a toupee-wearing, pot-smoking label exec? There are SO many miscalculations in this movie...it must have been motivated by drugs, greed, stupidity, or a deadly combo of all three. Outside of some decent musical performances (no, I'm not bothered by the Beatle covers), the only real fun moment is playing "spot the 70s star" at the end. Carol Channing and Tina Turner? Dame Edna and Johnny Winter? Seals and Crofts (did they ever take off those hats)? Stephen Bishop and Chita Rivera? Plus Wolfman Jack! Alan Cumming did a good intro for this on cable. He compares the movie to a horrible highway accident which you can't help but look at, even though you know it's going to turn your stomach. Do NOT watch this lemon. It is horrific.

I have a very hard time believe that people do not like this movie. The storyline isn't wonderful, but it is passable. You can't watch this movie and expect it to be like an Oscar winner.

You WILL be disappointed.

I am sure of that.

The music is AMAZING, though, and that is what counts. Not to mention the star studded cast. Earth Wind and Fire, Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees, Aerosmith, and more. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. Any fan of the Beatles or music in general probably feels the same way.

To all the people that voted 10, I salute you. To all the people that voted 1, rethink your lives.

I saw this movie three times as a teenager. This was before I had listened to the Beatles very much. I loved the movie and I even owned the soundtrack.

At forty-four, I have heard the Beatles, seen the fall of the BeeGees and seen the stubborn persistence of an almost geriatric Aerosmith. They are indeed the "Future Villain Band".

Love the Beatles? You will hate this movie. Interested in a simpler time when the hair of rock stars sits in a quiet mass atop the head as if waiting to attack (check out Barry Gibb...or is it Maurice?)? Interested in hearing music that you grew up with and loved torn to pieces by dupes of producers that no longer cared if what they made was good...only profitable? Then, this is the movie for you as well...

Songs done well: Come Together, Got to Get You into My Life, Strawberry Fields and I'll Never Do You No Harm...

Songs that didn't stink: Lucy in the Sky, You never Give me Your Money and A Day in the Life...

Songs that were killed and the corpses urinated upon: When I'm Sixty-four, Fixing a Hole, Mister Mustard and Because...

Naw, actually, it was twenty-FIVE years ago today, that producer Robert Stigwood had a flea placed in his ear by SOMEBODY, (maybe agent/co-producer Dee Anthony, who repped both the Bee Gees AND Peter Frampton at the time,) and the flea said: "What is the greatest rock-and-roll album of all time? Who right now are the greatest, most popular music stars? And how can you possibly lose if you combine them both?"

Answer that question with a question: How could you possibly WIN???

To those who decry the defacing of a sacred cow, first of all, and pay close attention to this, people: THIS MOVIE IS A PRODUCT OF ITS TIME. Nothing in the late Seventies succeeded (or exceeded, as it were) like excess. If big was good, then bigger was even better, and the King of Media Overkill was Robert Stigwood at this period. Which was his standout quality, and his company's undoing. (Not to mention the undoing of quite a few careers along the way.)

Second of all, as it has already been pointed out, the timing SUCKED, even moreso than the movie itself. The SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER backlash was just beginning with PEPPER'S release, and even though Peter Frampton had proven himself still able to chart with such current hits as his cover of "Signed, Sealed and Delivered" and "I'm In You," (please hold your snickers), his album sales had begun to wane, a surefire indicator that his status as a pretty-boy guitar god was fading fast.

For the most part, the audience demographic the movie was aimed at was served as well as they could be. None of the teenybopper females in the theater audience I saw it with, (yes, I DID see it in a theater), gave one whisker on a rat's bee-hind that the album the movie was derived from was a classic, or that George Martin actually produced the soundtrack (well, most of it.) They sighed in rapture on cue when a dreamy closeup of The Brothers Gibb or Frampton came whizzing by, or sobbed uncontrollably at the 'oh-my-GAWD-this-is-so-maudlin' ending. I swear, THIS is the audience the producers should've seen it with, when the reviews came in chopping the entire project to shreds.

So, for a movie that represents everything that was both bad AND good about That Decade simultaneously, was there anything of merit to observe? YES. First of all, for the most expensive musical ever made in its day ("tupping the bill" at a whopping $60 mil plus), every cent is evident on-screen. Owen Roizman (who shot THE EXORCIST) managed to get every shot right, even if the pastels were enough at times to send an epileptic into grand mal seizures, and there was enough condescending sweetness for twelve diabetic comas.

Also, contrary to the rabid rantings of Beatlemaniacs everywhere, the soundtrack is the best part of the movie. I guess what makes it so hard for most people to watch, are the scenes that are almost painful indicators of what the movie COULD'VE been, because the energy and drive is so different from the rest of the goings-on.

Meaning Aerosmith's ball-busting cover of "Come Together," the finger-snapping, funk-injected "Got To Get You Into My Life" from Earth, Wind and Fire, and Steve Martin's super-manic "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," echoing his even better turn to come in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. No matter how much the remainder may induce severe bouts of wincing and cringing, these moments almost redeem Henry Edwards' "Yellow-Submarine-on-peyote-buttons" screenplay. ALMOST.

I bought this (and I'd be embarassed to tell you how much I spent) for a So-Bad-It's-Good movie party I decided to throw for some friends on New Year's Eve. Just to see if it was as bad as I remembered, (and as bad as people have credited it to be), I gave it a spin just for old time's sake. Time does heal old wounds, I guess, and as much as I snickered, groaned and chortled at the outlandishness of it all, I have to admit that at the very least, I was entertained. Kind of like when you're watching virtually nothing on Saturday night, until a rerun of "Donnie and Marie" comes on Nick At Night. And though you'd never tell your friends you did, you watched every painfully corny moment of it...and actually enjoyed it.

So that's how I think of PEPPER now, as a very secretively guilty pleasure.

And for those reading that last line and yelling "Is he CRAZY??? This is the BLACK HOLE OF MUSICALS!!" I can only say this: you have not lived as long as I have, or seen as many movies to be able to make that statement with any kind of confidence.

How do I know? Let me ask you: have you ever seen the musical version of LOST HORIZON? Mae West in SEXTETTE? Lucille Ball in MAME? Go sit through even ONE of those, boys and girls. I dare you. We can talk about really bad musicals after you've weathered THAT ordeal. I did...and lived to tell about it.

Music-biz impresario Robert Stigwood, head of the now-defunct, mostly-disco label RSO, produced several glitzy or garish movie musicals in the 1970s, this one being the very worst. Half-hearted attempt to turn music by the Beatles (including the songs and mod look of their album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band") into some kind of screen story ranks right up there with the most ill-fated ideas to leak from Hollywood. George Burns turns up as the Mayor of Heartland, narrating this "plot" about a resident rock group and their struggles with fame and fortune. Bringing together the Bee Gees with Peter Frampton may have seemed like a good idea when this was in pre-production; truth is, 1978 saw a decline in both acts' popularity, and the movie was pretty much dead on arrival (the soundtrack sold better, but wasn't the blockbuster expected). Not showcasing the Bee Gees' best attributes (doing their sultry mix of disco and soul, and performing it live) and instead trying to make the three of them actors almost killed their career. A few stray engaging moments, but mostly just embarrassing. NO STARS from ****

Stunned by the audacity of the makers of this film, my good friend Andy and I duly presented ourselves at the local cinema on its release, just to see how awful it could be. Andy is the biggest Beatles fan I know, apart from me (we have been friends since we were both 11, 30 years ago), and on the awfulness score neither of us was disappointed. I haven't seen this film for 23 years, but time has not, alas, erased its sheer appallingness from my memory. If I may utter the ultimate words of condemnation, this film could not have been worse had it been made in the 80s! I read reviewer Morlock's appreciative review with mounting disbelief until he (?) revealed himself as a non-fan of The Beatles. It is probably pointless to deliver a sermon to the perpetrators of sacrilege, or their misguided apologists. Perhaps I shouldn't even dignify this justly-forgotten movie by reminding people of its regrettable existence. That said, I think I have a moral duty to warn Beatles fans to avoid this grotesquely misbegotten travesty like the plague. Non-fans of The Beatles are too far-gone in the ways of unrighteousness either to heed or merit such a warning.

This movie didn't just kill Peter Frampton's career but it killed the careers of everybody who was involved with or had anything to do with this movie. I saw this movie shortly after George Harrison died and it's a good thing that I only saw this once because I couldn't believe how stupid it was. When I don't want to watch Alice Cooper or Aerosmith or George Burns then that's bad. Calling Sgt Pepper's a "bad movie" would be an understatement because this movie sucks big time. I'm not BSing that comment because that's the truth.

Let's face it Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees are NOT actors. They're singers and to have singers pass themselves off as actors is really bad.

Is it perfect? Far from it, however it has great music and fabulous costuming and even a sweet message is you actually pay attention to the background story. People are just so uppity about music and movies that sometimes they forget to allow themselves to be entertained. This is not Oscar worthy but that doesn't mean it complete crap. I remember when this first came out and all my school friends were complaining that it was "disco" stars doing the Beatles music and how they would ruin it. It seems to me that you CAN'T ruin the Beatles. The lack of actors in the movie was it's downfall. They tried to do the slapstick that the Beatles did in their movies and in some ways it worked and some it didn't.

Personally I would love to see a remake staring the Scissor Sisters! Now THAT would be all sorts of awesome.

If Ed Wood had a big budget and decided to make a musical, this would have been the result. This should have been called "Plan Nine From Hollywood."

This is one of those movies that is so inane that it angers you. The whole point was to get as many stars of 1978--the has-beens of 1979--into the movie and butcher a lot of Beatles classics. It smacks of a cheesy pretentiousness that you rarely see outside of the MTV video awards.

Yes, many of the artists had their careers blow up in flames after this movie. That's good, but it's not enough.

OK, I've been hearing a lot of negative reviews for this film. To be honest, I do agree that watching it alone is very weird. I borrowed this from the library, and I am a HUGE Beatles fan so I had to watch this, and I felt stupid-but pleased. I was pleased with some of the covers of songs! Others I was less pleased with. I personally loved this because it had a very campy feel, and I could definitely see this being shown at midnight showings with a "Rocky Horror" style viewing. It was not THAT bad, people! When they did "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight", I almost cried... almost, still worth mentioning though. Plus, they got some pretty good bands doing covers! Sometimes, flattery towards an amazing band, is a form of showing appreciation for that of which was perfection. Overall, I LOVED the camp feel of this movie! Covers I loved: Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Come Together, Fixing a Hole, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight, Get Back, Covers that I did not like: Mean Mr. Mustard (unbearable), Oh! Darling, that's all the ones I hated I think... I didn't mind the others (they aren't THAT bad!)

This movie is like a trainwreck. You don't want to watch, but its impossible to resist. Some of the songs aren't bad at all! Earth Wind & Fire and Aerosmith turn in excellent performances. Overall the movie is so over the top and campy, that you can't possibly take as anything but a somewhat fun romp, the likes of which we will never see again.I can only speculate on the amount of drugs that were consumed on the set of this movie..haha. The ending has to be seen to be believed. A crowd of 70's personalities and musicians on a platform singing Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I can only imagine what the 70's were like to live through, but if this is any indication...LOL...

OK, as bad ideas go, this one is the worst! This movie is soooooo unwatchable it hurts. I mean that in all senses of the word. John Lennon actually called Chapman and asked him to kill him after he saw this film. True Story! The movie is based loosely on the album, although it contains songs from other Beatles records. The worst being Steve Martin doing Maxwell's Silver Hammer. I love Steve a lot! He must have been on some serious 70's drugs to agree to this. Terrible! I can't say "terrible" enough for you to truly grasp how crappy this movie is. THE BEE GEES star! They do! Aerosmith can't even save this crap. Someone please find all the copies of this movie that ever existed and destroy them! BURN THEM! The flames will reach the heavens and John and George can R.I.P. OK, so you think I'm wrong? Go ahead! Watch it yourself! Prove me wrong children, prove me wrong! Ps IMDb is crap for not letting me post anymore!