Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
July 24, 1978
Universal
Musical, Fantasy
VHS
B+

This may well be the most enjoyably bad movie I own.  I'd seen it many times, although not recently, and I still found myself laughing out loud this time.  Much of it was at the rich, creamy WTFness of the plot.  I think if any one of us were given the task of writing a story inspired by the music of (mostly) the Sgt. Pepper album and Abbey Road, no one would come up with anything remotely resembling the screenplay by Henry Edwards.  At least half of us would think to set the story in England, given not only stars Peter Frampton and the Gibbs, but also the lyrics of "A Day in a Life."  But we don't have the pointlessly vivid imagination of Henry Edwards.

Here's the link to my review of Edwards's novel inspired by the film:  http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/11/sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band.html.  Yes, I gave it an F+, while this I'm ranking quite a bit higher.  There are a few reasons for that.  One, some of the flaws in writing didn't make it onscreen, like all the extraneous characters.  (There is, however, a dog that romps with Billy and Strawberry in flashbacks, although it's entirely absent from the rest of the film.)  The egregious sexism is milder.  And, yes, it really makes a difference when you can see and hear the performances.  (Also, my criteria on that blog was different, ranking quality rather than enjoyment.)

Now I suppose I may as well say right up front that I have no beef with disco, not even the process of disco-fying uber-classic rock like the Beatles.  Except for a few notes that are clunkers, and yes, that syllable elongation that the Bee Gees do, their renditions, with and without Frampton, are actually pretty good.  I think Earth Wind & Fire's "Got to Get You Into My Life" and Aerosmith's "Come Together," while different than the originals, are good matches.  Then there are the contributions from the leading ladies, the understandably obscure Sandy Farina and Dianne Steinberg, as respectively Strawberry Fields and Lucy.  They're good singers, but, as happens with a lot of the songs, no one has thought through the lyrics, so that we have Strawberry singing about going down to herself and Lucy telling us about being in the sky (well, against a billboard) with her band, the Diamonds.  The worse examples though of the lyrics having little or nothing to do with what's happening onscreen are the misapplied "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" (when did Billy beat "his woman" and keep her apart from the things that she loved?), and most of all "Get Back."  (Unless Billy is the "mama" in the high heels and the lowneck sweater.)

Some of the songs are just straight up badly sung.  As with Lucille Ball in Mame, George Burns (Mr. Kite) was never known for his singing, even before decades as a smoker.  (By the way, this movie earns Burns the Longevity Award, since it was made 45 years after International House.  Even Groucho didn't make movies for that long, although he came close.)  Frankie Howerd and Steve Martin are other comics not known for their music.  (And, yes, I like "King Tut," but not for the singing.)  Even Alice Cooper fails to acquit himself, but then "Because" was never meant to be used for brainwashing.  Worst of all are the "computerettes" (digitally altered versions of the Bee Gees) who ruin a song or three.

Watching the movie this time, I was struck by how much of what was associated with the various villains-- plastic surgery, punkers in a video arcade, greed, and, yes, computers-- would all be considered good in the following decade.  But Good in the sense of Heartland and "kindness," and disco and men with shoulder-length soft hair and unbuttoned soft shirts, of course must triumph in the end.  Except for poor Frampton, whose career this pretty much killed.  The acting, Burns's aside, ranges from forgettable to embarrassing to excruciating.  If Chase and Hawn were one of the all time cutest screen couples in Foul Play, Frampton and Farina deserve some sort of award as perhaps the most brain-dead couple.  When in doubt, which is often, he wears a goofy grin, while I MSTed Mr. Kite's line about the threat of Strawberry being turned into a "mindless groupie": "Well, she's halfway there."  The Bee Gees at least have moments, Maurice especially, when they seem to be in on the joke of what a travesty this movie is.  No wonder their careers survived relatively unscathed.

Of "Our Guests at Heartland" in the big finale, Keith Allison was a waiter in Sextette; Stephen Bishop would go on to write the Oscar-nominated "It Might Be You" for Tootsie; Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" would pop up in The Spirit of '76; Randy Edelman would be the arranger for "Kumbaya" in Troop Beverly Hills; D.C. LaRue did a couple forgettable songs for Thank God It's Friday; Curtis Mayfield's "Mama Didn't Lie" would be one of the songs in the original Hairspray; Lee Oscar would contribute "Pass That Dutch" to Mean Girls; Frankie Valli had recently sung the theme to Grease, while Sha-Na-Na was the band at the big dance contest in that movie; Johnny Winter would contribute several songs to Roadie's soundtrack; and Gary Wright would appear on the soundtrack of Wayne's World ("Dream Weaver").  (And several of the guests ended up writing for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode "Tormented.")

It's not entirely clear what Connie Stevens is doing there, to say nothing of Carol Channing, but at least they're known as singers as well as actresses.  The real question is how Barry "Dame Edna Everage" Humphries got in.

John Wheeler, who's Mr. Fields, was Judge Bregoff in Mame.  Ellen Travolta (John's sister) was a waitress in Grease, and though she's uncredited here, she's pretty recognizable in a couple scenes as some relative of the band.

Jeffrey Weissman was also in I Wanna Hold Your Hand and would be in Johnny Dangerously.  
Pat Crenshaw, looking older than his 59 years in the role of a Western Union delivery "boy," would be "Man Dying in Elevator" in The Gong Show Movie.  Stanley Coles, who's in Sgt. Pepper's band in the early scenes, would be a guard in Love at Stake.

You'd think Michael Schultz would never work again, but he directed, among many other things, Scavenger Hunt the next year.

It's sort of like the Pottersville sequence in "It's a Wonderful Life," only with extra cheese.

Foul Play

Foul Play
July 14, 1978
Paramount
Comedy, Mystery, Romance
DVD
B+

I saw this movie at the time, when I was 10, and even now watching the title sequence, with Barry Manilow singing "Ready to Take a Chance Again" (alternately belting it out and almost confiding it to us), as Goldie Hawn drives her little yellow VW Bug along the coast to San Francisco, gets to me in a way that no other title sequence does.  (I get shivers from "Hedwig's Theme" in every Harry Potter movie, but that has less to do with the visuals.)  Hawn plays an uncertain librarian, sometimes in big glasses, but there is the giggly Goldie side at some moments.  And yet, she's also thoroughly convincing as the "damsel in distress" who can sometimes rescue herself and try to solve the mystery of who's trying to kill her and why.  She furthermore has probably never looked so simultaneously beautiful and girl-next-door adorable.  She's well named Gloria Mundy, "glory of the world."

She's perfectly matched, comedically and romantically, with a post-Saturday Night Live Chevy Chase, at the peak of his looks, charm, and talent.  He plays a bumbling but clever cop named Tony, who's assigned to protect her, and there's a nice, very '70s moment, when she balances her feminism and her attraction to him.  He apologizes for his chauvinism, while still talking about her "ass," and they're more attracted than ever.  They have incredible chemistry together, such that I had to bump this up from a B to a B+.  I honestly can't think of a cuter film couple, but it's not just the way they look, but the way they talk and smile, and all they bring out in each other, like his sweetness and her mischief.  Interestingly, perhaps to keep the PG rating (despite the violence, drug use, and profanity, including the old ladies' dirty Scrabble game), we don't see Gloria and Tony do more than kiss, although it's very clear that they spend the night together at his place, and we see him wake up in just his jockey shorts.  The sex being offscreen allowed me to see this movie at such a tender age.

Meanwhile, however, there's the Stanley character played by Dudley Moore.  When Goldie needs a place to hide out, she approaches Stanley in a singles bar and asks him to take her home.  He of course thinks he's going to get lucky.  So while she's nervously peeking through binoculars-- "You're into that, too?"-- he gets his "pad" ready for a night to remember, with the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" record, blow-up dolls, a stag-film projector, and a bed that is almost indescribable.  In these days of Internet porn and all-- I'm considering seeing an R-rated comedy called "Sex Tape" this week-- the pad may seem a lot less shocking than it did 36 years ago, but it's still very tacky, and unlikely to impress Gloria.  She's less outraged than puzzled when she looks away from the window, but their paths will cross again.

The funniest moments probably belong to Billy Barty as a "dwarf" Bible salesman that Hawn attacks when she thinks he's one of the bad guys.  Both the attack, and her hospital visit later that day, are played just right by both Barty and Hawn.  Burgess Meredith also does well, as Hawn's protective landlord with the laughing pet snake.  Chuck McCann has a brief bit as the owner of the revival theater where Gloria first witnesses a death.

The movie was written and directed by Colin Higgins, seven years after Harold and Maude.  (And not long after Silver Streak, which I haven't seen since the time.)  It is for the most part successful, although I do think the last half hour is the weakest, with an Obligatory '70s, not Chase Scene, but Rush to Save the Day Scene, that involves things like driving the wrong way on a one-way street, car crashes, and ethnic and other stereotypes (like Italians who exclaim, "Mama mia!").  And while there's more at stake at the Mikado production than there was in the Night at the Opera finale, I don't think this sequence works entirely.  Still, it's great at the very end to see Chevy & Goldie go from smooching (they are a great team of smoochers) to shrugging and taking bows, as Mr. Manilow proclaims he's ready to take a chance again.  (And I'm not even a Manilow fan, except here.)  Both Chase and Hawn are great reactors, separately and as a team.  Like the rest of the movie, they walk a balance between realism and cartoon.

So how's the movie as a mystery?  Well, it's certainly suspenseful, and I remember being really scared as a kid, especially of the albino, but there are a lot of moments of putting convenient clues together, and the cigarette pack with the microfilm in it (probably the most dated of many dated elements in the movie) turns out to be a complete McGuffin.  If you just apply the Gilligan's Island Rule of Broadcasting, then you know that the television news is repeatedly reporting that the Pope will be visiting San Francisco soon, and thus you know whom the villains want to assassinate.  (When Foul Play was first scheduled to be shown on TV in 1981, it had to be postponed because of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.)  There are aspects that are homages to Hitchcock, some of which I get, some of which I don't.  I have the sense we're not meant to take the mystery entirely seriously, as when late in the film Tony says Gloria will have to identify the albino because she's the only one who's seen him and "he may be in disguise."  What, in colored contacts and a toupee?

Marc Lawrence, who plays Stiltskin ("The Dwarf"), would soon be another villain, Webster in Goin' Coconuts.  Rollin Moriyama and Mitsu Yashima, who play the Japanese couple in the taxi, would be Chinese in Americathon.  Marilyn Sokol, who plays Stella, would be Lulu in Can't Stop the Music.