Magical Mystery Tour is an hour-long television film starring The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) that initially aired on BBC1 on 26 December 1967. Upon its initial showing, the film was poorly received by critics and audiences.
Despite being the shortest Beatles film, nearly ten hours of footage was shot over a two week period. The core of the film was shot beginning on 11 September and finishing on 25 September. The following eleven weeks were mostly spent on editing the film from ten hours to 52 minutes. Scenes that were filmed but not included in the final cut include:
Much of the film was shot in and around RAF West Malling, an airfield in Kent that had recently been decommissioned. Many of the interior scenes, such as the final ballroom sequence for "Your Mother Should Know", were shot in the disused aircraft hangars. The exteriors, such as the "I Am the Walrus" sequence, and the marathon race, were filmed on the runways and taxi aprons. RAF Air Training Corps cadets can be seen marching in some scenes, and during "I Am the Walrus" an RAF Avro Shackleton is seen orbiting the group.
The mystery tour itself was shot throughout the West Country of England, including Devon and Cornwall, although most of the footage was not used in the finished film. The final striptease sequence was shot at Paul Raymond's Raymond Revuebar in London, and the sequence for "The Fool on the Hill" was shot around Nice, France. The visual sequence for the instrumental "Flying" uses aerial footage on tinted film originally intended for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The film was unscripted and shooting proceeded on the basis of a mostly handwritten collection of ideas, sketches, and situations, which Paul McCartney called the "Scrupt". The situation is that of a group of people on a British charabanc bus (in a Bedford VAL Panorama) tour, focusing mostly on Mr. Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) and his recently widowed Auntie Jessie (Jessie Robins). Other group members on the bus include the tour director Jolly Jimmy Johnson (Derek Royle), the tour hostess Miss Wendy Winters (Mandy Weet), conductor Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler), and the other Beatles.
During the course of the tour, "strange things begin to happen" at the whim of "four or five magicians", four of whom are played by The Beatles themselves and the fifth by long-time road manager Mal Evans.
During the journey, Ringo and his Auntie Jessie argue considerably. During the tour, Aunt Jessie begins to have daydreams of falling in love with Buster Bloodvessel, who displays eccentric and disturbing behaviour. The tour involves several strange activities, such as an impromptu race in which each tour group member employs a different mode of transportation (some run, a few jump into cars, a group of people have a long bike they pedal, while Ringo ends up beating them all with the bus). The entire tour group also crawls into a tiny tent in a field, inside which is a projection theatre. There is a strange scene where the group walks through what appears to be a British Army recruitment office. The film culminates with the men of the tour group watching a strip show.
The film is punctuated by musical interludes which include The Beatles performing "I Am the Walrus" wearing animal masks, George Harrison singing "Blue Jay Way" while waiting on Blue Jay Way Road and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes's "Death Cab for Cutie" (sung by Vivian Stanshall himself).
The film was first shown in the United Kingdom as a made-for-television film on the BBC; it was shown in black-and-white on BBC1, then in colour on BBC2 a few days later. The poor critical reaction to the telecast soured American television networks from acquiring the film, while its one-hour running length made it commercially unviable for theatrical release. It was not seen in commercial theatres in the US until 1974, when New Line Cinema acquired the rights for limited theatrical and non-theatrical distribution; it was not broadcast on American television until the 1980s in syndication. However, it was shown in 1968 at the Fillmore East in New York City as part of a fundraiser for the Liberation News Service. The critical reception in 1967 had been so poor that no one had properly archived a negative, and these later re-release versions had to be copied from poor-quality prints. By the end of the 1980s, MPI (via rights holder Apple Corps) had released the movie on video, and a DVD release followed many years later. An official rerelease was issued on 30 September 2008.
The British public's reaction to the film was scathing. Hunter Davies, the band's biographer, said: "It was the first time in memory that an artist felt obliged to make a public apology for his work". McCartney later spoke to the press, saying: "We don't say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn't come off. We'll know better next time." However, with the passage of time, McCartney's view of it has changed: "Looking back on it, I thought it was all right. I think we were quite pleased with it".
The documentary The Compleat Beatles (narrated by Malcolm McDowell) gave this description: "Largely a project of Paul's, the idea was to travel the English countryside in a bus filled with friends, actors and circus freaks, and to film whatever happened. Unfortunately, nothing did".
