I’m not a Bee Gees hater. I enjoy most of their music from the disco era. The soundtrack to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is an incredible album. “How Deep Is Your Love” is one of my all-time favorite mildly-creepy love songs. But that still doesn’t qualify The Brothers Gibb to play stand-ins for The Beatles, and so it’s no wonder that SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND is truly one of Hollywood’s all-time worst.

Frampton - who was indicating his willingness to take bad career advice when he wrote the song “Show Me The Way” - plays Billy Shears, the identity Ringo assumed to sing “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Along with his buddies, Mark, Dave, and Bob (The Bee Gees) they form a new version of the “legendary” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that helped end World War I with their jubilant, unifying music. They bequeathed their magic instruments - yes, magic instruments - to the town of Heartland, to forever protect it from evildoers and electronica. While the new Sgt. Pepper’s band is selling out to record mogul B. D. Hoffler (Donald Pleasence), a gentlemen named Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howerd), who drives around in a golden Winnebago controlled by two funk-singing robots and an evil computer, schemes to steal the instruments to, um, to do, something, I guess. This film would confuse and demoralize even our greatest thinkers. Even a pothead couldn’t find deep underlying meaning in SGT. PEPPER, a movie that makes GLITTER look like BATTLESHIP POTEMPTKIN.

As terrible as Frampton and The Bee Gees are - and they are terrible - their badnicity pales in comparison to that of SGT. PEPPER’S many guest stars, who each take a turn flogging The Beatles’ music with their tone-deaf renditions of immortal classics. Pleasance pisses all over “I Want You.” Alice Cooper eviscerates “Because.” Howerd commits a sin against nature with “When I’m 64.” Steve Martin, who plays a similar role in a nearly identical costume in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS to the opposite effect, made me want to cry while he destroyed one of my favorite Beatles’ tunes “Maxwell Silver Hammer.” And George Burns - GEORGE &$(#ING BURNS! - sings “Fixing A Hole”. I’m using the term “sings” very loosely here mind you. Burns’ phlegmy, monotone performance makes even Leonard Nimoy look soulful.

Because the guys playing Sgt. Pepper’s band are Australian and British when the characters supposed to be all-American, and because they have the acting talent of department store mannequins, there is almost no dialogue in SGT. PEPPER’S. The whole story is told through an endless barrage of these hack Beatles covers. By attaching them to a narrative, and leeching as much literal meaning as possible from them, PEPPER’S gets worse and worse (and weirder and weirder) as it rolls along. At one point a weathervane comes to life (and looks like Billy Preston) and sings “Get Back” while zapping people with his magic weathervane energy. He zaps one girl and informs her “GET BACK LORETTA!” but the girl’s name is Strawberry. She looks at him confused until he realizes that Preston is referring to her, then goes on her merry way.

Strawberry is, of course, named after “Strawberry Fields Forever.” She is Billy’s sweetheart, and pines for him after the band sells out and forgets their roots. Later the pair are reunited after Billy has been shocked with 10,000 volts of electricity and knocked unconscious, and she sings “Strawberry Fields Forever” to him. The line goes “Let me take you down cause I’m going to/Strawberry Fields.” So, what, is she is going down to herself? That sounds a little too dirty for a Beatles song.

In the worst example of how poorly these songs work in cinematic context, Barry Gibb sings “A Day In The Life” after one of the other characters in the film has been killed. The other Gibb brothers watch as Barry wanders their estate singing a mediocre rendition of the John Lennon classic. When he gets to the line “I’d love to turn you on,” he kneels beside Robin and Maurice and sings it right to them as if professing his love. Since when was “A Day In The Life” about incest?

Eventually all the villains are revealed to be in the employ of Future Villain Band, played in a drug-addled stupor by Aerosmith. SGT. PEPPER’S actually expects us to believe that the greatest evil force in the world is Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Hm, on second thought, that’s not as outlandish as it first appeared. After all, they did write “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.” Their eternal physical youth - Tyler actually younger today than he did in SGT. PEPPER’S - also suggests some sort of Satanic pact.