A participant in a Beatles Facebook group I belong to announced that she had just seen the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, and that lit a fire in me to indulge myself once again in making comments on blog posts and videos about what Peter Frampton's mother called "that awful movie" all over the Internet. It seems there are plenty of reviews of the Sgt. Pepper movie - negative, of course - on YouTube which are nasty, acerbic, trenchant, and as funny as hell . . . more so than anything I've ever written about this cinematic monstrosity, and I'm jealous of these folks for offering such wonderfully conceived reviews even as I tip my hat to them.
I post these video reviews with sole purpose of continuing to spread the word of this film's awfulness to prevent younger generations of Beatles fans from seeing it.
Over the years, the Sgt. Pepper movie has come to be appreciated among many people - even some Beatles fans, like this person I mentioned on this Beatles Facebook page - as pleasurable camp, a movie that's so bad it's good. To be fair, the movie does have a few interesting scenes, such as the performances from Earth, Wind and Fire ("Got To Get You Into My Life") and Aerosmith ("Come Together"), as well as Steve Martin's manic "wild and crazy guy" shtick. And to be fairer still, a couple of its stars have no regret for appearing in it. Although the movie didn't make her a star, singer Dianne Steinberg - who has since married Steve Miller's bassist Kenny Lee Lewis and is now Dianne Steinberg Lewis - enjoyed her work in the movie and calls it the highlight of her career; she's also been active as a performer and as a music teacher in California. (Some of her interviews are on YouTube.)
But let's look at the big picture (and I don't mean the film's ugly logo).
The 2020 Bee Gees documentary How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ostensibly covers their musical achievements and also their involvement with theatrically released movies, but one such movie fails to get any mention. Guess which movie.
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"There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don't exist as a band and never performed Sgt. Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed." - Robin Gibb, 1978
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