Critics correctly skewered the film upon its release, heralding it as one of the worst movies ever made, which it still is. But the Leonard Maltin school misses the fact that while movies might be good or bad, enjoyment of movies forms more of a bell curve, in which really, really, really bad movies are, in terms of watchability, about as great as the greatest films ever made. Pepper is so bad that it is easily as great as The Wizard of Oz, though in a completely misguided way. The concept – stringing together beloved Beatles songs into a fantastical storyline, and bringing in contemporary pop stars to act it out – seems less insane now that Broadway is glutted with crazily popular musicals based on the songs of ABBA, Billy Joel, etc. However, those shows weren't created with the utter lack of good judgment on display throughout Sgt. Pepper. Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees play the band, and the fact that they are a poor stand-in for The Beatles is bad enough; that they are such insufficient actors as to necessitate the film having no dialogue is where the magic really comes from. With only Beatles lyrics and occasional overdubbed narration from George Burns to hold things together, the surreal nonsense factor becomes epic. As such, this is a film where, if you turn away for a couple of minutes and then look up, you're bound to feel as befuddled as though you've been walloped with a waffle-iron. Why is George Burns soft-shoeing his way through "Fixing a Hole" with a couple of young girls following him around? Why is Steve Martin hamming it up with "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" in a room full of nurses? Did Barry Gibb just punch out Alice Cooper, landing him face-first into a pie?
The tone shifts wildly between genuine slapstick and absurd pathos, culminating in a scene wherein meek Peter Frampton struggles to overpower an obviously wasted Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, but is unable to, so his girlfriend Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) manages (though chained to a giant electrified dollar sign) to send Tyler plummeting to his death … killing herself in the process. Here, the film goes off into a truly weird funereal passage that ends with Peter Frampton throwing himself from a window in desperation. At that moment, the film cements its stature as a real gonzo classic, when a magical weathervane suddenly begins spinning wildly and abruptly transforms into Billy Preston, in gold lamé "Sgt. Pepper" suit, and he flies around the town square, belting out "Get Back" and literally turning back time with his laser-beam-firing fingers. Preston brings Strawberry Fields back to life, halts Frampton's suicide attempt, and materializes a huge chorus of mostly C-list celebrities to sing the film's closing number, a second reprise of the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise. This bizarre assemblage (which includes Carol Channing and Leif Garrett, among many others) is fascinating in a "Night of 1,000 Stars" sort of way.
The last bit alone makes SPLHCB a must-see, along with a sizable handful of other mind-bending moments. However, after awhile, it's really hard to endure the many pitiful cover versions, and the film becomes something of an endurance test. This aspect tends to be worse when the non-celebrities are involved, especially the horrible staging of "She's Leaving Home," anything sung by Sandy Farina, the why-is-this-included sequence involving non-superstar diva group Stargard, and the several scenes with British comic Frankie Howerd (as Mean Mr. Mustard) growling his way through various songs, bolstered by vocoded-robot background singers. Now, one vocoded-robot-sung Beatles song is fine, or all of them might be even better, but the reality here is either too many or not enough. What prevents Sgt. Pepper from being the greatest bad movie of all time is its occasional sense that it knows how ridiculous it is … that it is self-aware makes the film's wearying length seem downright sadistic. Whether SPLHCB is ultimately a joke on the viewer, or on itself, will always be up for debate.
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