OK, so last night, I saw a truly wretched high school performance of a rarely-produced off-Broadway show - “Dames At Sea” and I started wondering if the MST3K gang would ever consider doing an “all-musical” show. There are SO MANY bad film musicals (you can see the IMDB list here: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls058531440/ and the mind reels at the possibilities!
What bad movie musical do you think the gang SHOULD tackle? “Roller Boogie?” A ‘Gamera’ like series devoted to Elvis’ films? “You Got Served?”
Saw that and The Wiz on Showtime a year ago. Two Universal musical flops in the same year with good soundtrack yet being bad movie. Pepper is ne of my favorite Cinema Snob reviews ever as well and let’s not forget the riffing for the Star Wars Holiday special on the “destined to age poorly” Wiz.
“That’s ironic. It’s George Burns who’s just convinced me there’s no God!”
“Your movie this week is Paint Your Wagon, adapted from a Lerner and Lowe musical originally made when they were both learners and both low. It stars Clint Eastwood at a low point in his career and Jean Seberg at a high point in her career.”
Consideration should be given to At Long Last Love, the 1975 movie which dared to ask the question, “Burt Reynolds sings?”. You, dear viewer, must weigh the evidence and judge for yourself.
I’ve only seen parts of this movie. Even though Peter Bogdonavich had an interesting gimmick – filming a black and white movie in color, so all the costumes, sets, props, etc. were in black, white and shades of grey – it looked like a pretty dreadful affair.
I like The Wiz. It may have turned into a vanity project for Diana Ross, but the music is great and I’m there for the “decaying urban fantasyland” setting. Kind of similar to The Warriors, which was a very different movie but I believe came out the same year, when NYC seemed in many ways like a post-apocalyptic setting.
I need to see this. There were a number of movies from around that time that looked like they were directed by a sentient bag of cocaine, and out of all of them, The Apple has to be the most ridiculous.
IIRC, this movie was also one where they intentionally recorded the performers singing “live” instead of in studio, like almost every movie musical ever made does. Has this trick ever worked? The most recent violator of this filmed musical rule is the infamous and highly riffable Cats.
They did this with the movie version of Les Miserables, directed by the same guy who went onto direct Cats. The result? Russell Crowe, a guy who can actually sing (and had his own band), sounds like sh!t in it. Anne Hathaway doesn’t sound well either, and Hugh Jackman, a dude who normally has a great voice, also isn’t that great.
