"A triumph of audacity and bad taste."

June 29, 2007 3:46 PM

All This and World War II [trailer; IMDB] is a 1976 musical documentary that mixes World War II newsreels and movie clips with Beatles covers. Looks like Hitler disapproved. [lots more inside]
posted by kirkaracha (6 comments total)

Wikipedia; hard to believe Terry Gilliam passed on this. Reviews, extensive case study, and interviews.

Even by the standards of the studio which dropped
such oddities as "Myra Breckinridge," "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
 and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," this flick was more than peculiar.

You can watch the entire movie (parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven) or just watch Frankie Valli's "A Day in the Life" (D-Day), Henry Gross's "Help!" (North Africa), Wil Malone & Lou Reizner's "You Never Give Me Your Money" (Liberation of Europe), Keith Moon's "When I'm 64" (US troop ships in the Pacific), The Bee Gees' "Golden Slumbers" (The Blitz; what is it with them and horrible Beatles movies?), Elton John's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (air war/kamikazes), and the London Symphony Orchestra's "The End." (The LSO did most of the music in the film.)

The Bee Gees also do "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" and "Sun King" (Japan moves toward Pearl Harbor), The Brothers Johnson do "Hey Jude" (Stalin and the Red Army), Ambrosia does "Magical Mystery Tour" (Germany invades Poland), Leo Sayer does "I Am the Walrus" (Pearl Harbor attack) and "Let It Be" (internment of Japanese Americans), Jeff Lynne does "Nowhere Man" (Mussolini), Helen Reddy does "The Fool on the Hill" (Hitler), Peter Gabriel does "Strawberry Fields Forever" (his first solo song; Chamberlain appeases Hitler; "living is easy with eyes closed"), Rod Stewart does "Get Back" (as Nazis march backwards in reversed footage), and Tina Turner does "Come Together." And that's not all! (Somehow they avoided the temptation of matching U-Boats with "Yellow Submarine.")

You can buy the CD if you dare. AMG soundtrack review.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:47 PM on June 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

The Bee Gees also recorded "She's Leaving Home," "Lovely Rita," and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," but those recordings weren't used in the film.

I wish I'd thought of Beatle of the Bulge as a title (the page has links to MP3s, but they're broken).
posted by kirkaracha at 4:03 PM on June 29, 2007

Elton's "Lucy" was the only song on the album to be a Top 40 hit in the US (at the time, Elton was considered an 'automatic' hitmaker) and one of (I recall) only two or three songs without the London Symphony playing backup (which I'm sure handicapped some of the other songs as far as US radio). A true pop music/movie oddity, and a great find, kirkaracha, but eclipsed by the horror two years later that was the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton/George Burns starring "Sgt. Pepper" movie.
posted by wendell at 4:12 PM on June 29, 2007

You know who else disapproved? Yep. That's right. Hitl... oh wait.
posted by Effigy2000 at 12:28 AM on June 30, 2007

I actually bought this.

It is a two record set, in a box perhaps with a book. It must have been on sale or really cheap since I was only 13 and did not have a lot of disposable income. I was really really into the Beatles and had acquired all their commercial releases and was very upset that there wasn't going to be any new product, hence my desperation in buying crap like this. I maybe listened to it once and remember being very disappointed. I probably had to go buy a Kinks or a Who album to feel better.

I'm pretty sure I got rid of it at some point.
posted by marxchivist at 5:33 AM on June 30, 2007

Yeah, I remember this album. I bought it at Sears (and yes, I'm still exactly that cool) because it was the Beatles and it was dirt cheap. Yech.
posted by Egg Go Boom at 8:09 AM on June 30, 2007