Magical Mystery Tour film | Page 11 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

My comments from a while ago:

Picture me at Christmas 1967. I’m a British 15 year-old lad, absolutely mad about everything Beatles. I’ve had the Magical Mystery Tour double EP on the record player since the day it came out (nineteen shillings and elevenpence!) and I know the music backwards, forwards and inside out. I’m almost dying with excitement, and finally Boxing Day comes around, we’re all in front of the telly…

Within 15 minutes I’m shrivelling with embarrassment. By the time it’s over, I want the floor to open up and swallow me.

Some years later – 1979, I think – it was shown on British TV, in colour this time, and I watched it again because I couldn’t believe that it was actually as bad as I had remembered.

It was.

Yes, the music sequences were good and, yes, there were some good moments (those with Nichola, the little girl, for instance), but even those tended to go on and on long after they’d made their point (the spaghetti dream sequence). And it was just crammed full of stuff which rambled and had no point – the mad race round the aerodrome, the perfunctory attention paid to the other travellers, Victor Spinetti’s unfunny recruiting sergeant gobbledegook, the wizard interludes, even the stripper (which was a massively embarrassing sequence to have in your living room at teatime in 1967).

As a teenager and Beatle fanatic I was well aware of how bad it was, and my opinion has never changed. Yes, I “get” mystery tours, and the whole thing of a boozy day out on a charabanc, but this was supposed to be a film which entertained people, and it simply wasn’t very good.

So Spielberg as a film student held it in high regard, eh? I bet he did, if only for the lessons he learned from it: one, start with a proper script, not a circle divided into segments. Two, get a proper director. Three, only one editor, please. Oh, and four, start with a proper script (so important it’s worth repeating). MMT is an object lesson in what not to do.

So why did I buy it on Super 8, then VHS, and why will I snap it up on DVD the day it comes out…..?

Update: Otober 2012

Yes, I did buy the Blu-ray the day it came out, and I add these comments:

1. The musical bits are still great, only in better definition and surround sound.

2. The rest of it is still rubbish, only in better definition and mono sound with occasional surround effects. I was happy to see a couple of bits (John and Nichola, for instance), but almost all the good bits (and definitely all the cr*p bits) are extended far beyond their natural life. I loved the orchestral arrangement of All My Loving accompanying the Jessie/Mr Bloodvessel romance sequence.

3. McCartney’s director’s commentary is full of aggressive defensiveness, explaining how wonderful and ahead of its time it was (competing with Fellini, Truffaut etc. – oh, please!), with an air of knowing what complete sh*te it was (and his voice was massively croaky, good job he wasn’t singing it).

4. The “Making of” and other documentaries are middling interesting if somewhat sketchy. You get to see stripper Jan Carson’s nipples at last. I have been waiting so many years for that, I can now die knowing my life is complete.

5. The additional/revised visual material accompanying Your Mother Should Know , Blue Jay Way , I Am The Walrus , Fool On The Hill, is worth watching once or maybe twice. These are NOT alternative versions, they just have outtake visual material over the songs.

6. The new video for Hello Goodbye comprises some footage of assorted folk including Fabs in the editing suite, intercut with some incomprehensible stuff involving four young people in the snow. All in b/w. WTF. Seriously. WTF.

7. I was intrigued to at last meet the lost Lennon/McCartney piece Jessie’s Wild Accordion. This is the soundtrack to a sequence called Nat’s Dream which was cut from the film. The tune – played by accordionist Shirley Evans in a session produced by John (who also “directed” Nat’s Dream, so I’m guessing he wrote the piece) is a jaunty, cheerful little rambling accordion piece with some mild percussion. I rather liked it. The Nat’s Dream video material accompanying Jessie’s Wild Accordion involves “comedian” Nat Jackley (one of John’s favourites, but not one of mine – he has a single piece of schtick and it’s not funny), an ageing weird looking bloke in pants and string vest, flat cap and stick on Hitler moustache, sniffing round after young ladies in bathing costumes. It makes him look like a pervert and I’m not surprised it was cut. I’m glad to have this, though.

8. Also cut was I’m Going To A Field, a musical number by Ivor Cutler (Mr Bloodvessel). Very straight faced weird humour, I rather liked this and wished they had left it in. I’m glad to have this, too.

9. Also cut was a video for Traffic’s Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. Heaven knows what it was doing in there in the first place, but it would have been better than some of the stuff they left in. Another one I’m glad to have.

 My brother got me the deluxe box set for my birthday last year. It was a nice bit of memorabilia to have. I liked looking through the booklet. But it is on the bottom of a bookshelf in the corner of the room now gathering a bit of dust. I gave away my original DVD copy of the film to a fellow Beatlemaniac. I’ve never hated the film, but it’s never been one of my favourites either. I like to put it on when I want to watch something but am too tired, simply don’t want to have to focus too hard on a plot or am doing something else and want something on in the background, much like playing music. Though that last option has really gone since we got the chromecast and I can put youtube videos on the big telly.