Stupid Bloody Tuesday

Yesterday, all our troubles seemed so far away; now at looks as though they're being brought back to life on DVD!

Tuesday means new audio and video releases here in the United States, and today, thanks to some idiot in Hollywood, the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 nonrock nonmusical based on the Beatles album of the same name, is coming out on DVD. Seasoned fans of the Beatles, of course, know that this is perhaps the worst rock movie ever created; it attempted to take 28 late-period Beatles tunes and weave them into a story that would be staged as a rock opera, with no dialogue other than narration from George Burns to move what passed for the plot along. The movie starred the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, with a supporting cast that included everyone from Alice Cooper and Billy Preston to Burns and British comedian Frankie Howerd (no typo there, that's how he spelled his surname).

A couple of years ago I wrote an article on the Sgt. Pepper movie for the Beatles fan magazine Daytrippin' describing how big a disaster this flick was, so I won't repeat the details as to why it sucked, but suck it did. Beatles fans generally know it sucks; third- and fourth-generation fans have been taught to avoid it, and most of them thankfully do so. Yet Universal Studios continues to reissue it in the latest home video format available. A DVD version? Great - it probably has unwatchable outtakes that are even goofier than the scenes that made the final cut. How about commentary from the surviving cast members? Alice Cooper readily admits his role in the Sgt. Pepper movie, and a quarter century later he still looks back on it and laughs, but is Steve Martin going to be in any mood to explain his role in it? The Bee Gees have long since apologized for appearing it, and Peter Frampton is well aware that it destroyed his career, which he has only recently restored to something resembling respectability. How about some commentary from Sgt. Pepper movie producer (and Bee Gees manager) Robert Stigwood on why on earth he would let this awful movie get reissued, possibly with added outtakes to make it seem even worse?

This fetid piece of crud has been available in video stores in one format or another for as long as there have been video stores, always sitting there waiting to tempt the neophyte Beatles fan who might think that it's a legitimate Beatles-related film. Ditto the soundtrack album (even more horrid), which had been lurking in used record stores before being reissued on compact disc five years ago. Now a new, digitally enhanced generation of Fab Four fans stands to be conned. Take it from me, all you kids who discovered the Beatles through the 1 CD: avoid the Sgt. Pepper movie like the plague! Please pass on it, out of respect for the group and for the people who made this movie, not to mention those of us who saw this movie. Get the original Beatles record instead.