Magical Mystery Tour (1967) on Netflix
Recently widowed Auntie Jessie sets off with her nephew Richard B. Starkey on a mystery coach tour of the English countryside. Magicians watch the bus as strange things befall the passengers.
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- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.1/108,563 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
A party of passengers gathers for a mystery coach tour of the English countryside. Aboard are Auntie Jessie, recently widowed, and her nephew Richard B. Starkey, who bicker as the coach rolls along, plus tour director Jolly Jimmy Johnson, hostess Miss Wendy Winters, conductor Buster Bloodvessel, and John, Paul and George. In a remote castle, four or five magicians follow the bus's progress and seem to guide it. Strange things befall the group along the way: a race in which each rider picks a different way to travel, a stop where an army sergeant shouts orders, and a tiny tent that holds a projection theater. Auntie Jessie pictures a romance with Buster Bloodvessel. An accordionist leads the passengers in a sing-along, and songs break up the journey.
Cast
- Roger Ruskin Spearas The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
- George Claydonas Photographer
- Shirley Evansas Accordionist
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During the shoot, so many cars followed the Beatles' hand-lettered coach hoping to see what the passengers were up to that a running traffic jam developed; it ended when John Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus.
- Short of footage for the "Flying" sequence, editor Roy Benson reused aerial shots from Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove that were stored at Shepperton Studios, and Kubrick telephoned him to complain.
- John Lennon dreamed he was a waiter piling spaghetti onto a woman's plate, so the scene was filmed and included in the movie.
- Ivor Cutler's part as Mr Bloodvessel inspired the stage name of Buster Bloodvessel, the singer of the English two-tone ska band Bad Manners.
- The reception in 1967 was so poor that nobody bothered to properly archive a negative of the film, so later re-release versions had to be copied from poor-quality prints.
- The film's premise came from Ken Kesey's 1964 cross-country American bus tour aboard Furthur with the Merry Pranksters, and from the then-popular coach trips from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights.
- Unable to book any London film studio at short notice, the Beatles shot much of the film in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent, filming interiors such as the "Your Mother Should Know" ballroom in disused aircraft hangars.
- Paul McCartney, who said he was quite pleased with the film looking back, noted on The Beatles Anthology DVD that it contains the band's only video performance of "I Am the Walrus".
Stills
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