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Oh Dear Oh Dear. Look what too much coke, too much hubris and too little homework can lead to. *Spoiler* Narrated Mr Kite (George Burns who does most of the talking) four callow lads from Heartland USA take up the mantle of the deceased Sergeant Pepper whose music ended two world wars and pulled America out of the Depression. No I'm not making this up. A greedy media mogul hears the music and signs them up, hoping to bleed them white while plotting world domination with the help of a mad scientist (Steve Martin) and an evil Future Villain Band (Aerosmith). Their slogan is 'We Hate Love. We Hate Joy. We Love Money' However, despite these machinations, the power of the music always prevails to the extent that Strawberry Fields is even risen from the dead and Frankie Howerd turned into the Pope. A challenge, when watching bizarre piece of 1970s kitsch is check how many times you find yourself saying 'What were they thinking?' Barry Gibb, apparently in all seriousness, told Rolling Stone magazine that this movie would lead to their covers becoming the definitive versions of the Lennon-McCartney works, because "the Beatles don't exist as a band now and they've never done Sergeant Pepper live anyway." He was talking about a movie in which the Fab's Bee Gee-Peter Frampton alter egos utter virtually no dialogue, something that puts a crimp on the Billy Shears-Strawberry Fields romance. (even the greatest actors can only resort to meaningful facial expressions for so long and neither are even passable actors). A movie in which Aerosmith, bleary eyed and powdery of nostril agreed to join so Steve Tyler could kill Frampton on screen, whom they hated. In 1978 a Sunday paper in Britain reported that George Harrison was considering suing over this movie. It's not hard to see why. Despite George Martin being on hand, respectable covers by Earth Wind and Fire and Aerosmith are the exception. The rule is the truly teeth grinding 'When I'm 64' by Howerd and Sandy Farina. If producer Robert Stigwood and director Michael Schultz had had their ears to the ground, they'd have known a few things. First off, the Hollywood musical was dead and buried. Yes, the 1970s might have had the likes of Bob Fosse's Cabaret but that relied on good acting and a compelling screenplay. Secondly, rock itself was moving away from the baroque and the lavish spectacle. Punk was only one manifestation of this shift. If the London based Stigwood had switched on Top of the Pops and seen Queen's video for the monster hit Bohemian Rhapsody he might have guessed that video and MTV were just a few short years away. Thirdly, the target audience for a movie that has no real script and bargain basement special effects despite an obvious hefty budget can tell the difference between the deliberately overblown before-its-time irony of Ken Russell's Tommy (1975) and campy kitsch.

Picture this: The year is 1983. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is drifting from the radio and Dynasty is on the TV. A wide-eyed child sits in the cinema, having been vowed by the two Superman epics of 1978 and 1980...the apocalyptic death of Krypton, the baby lifting the truck in Smallville, Clark's bumbling crush on Lois, General Zod's defiant screams at an emasculated Son of Jor-El, Metropolis a battleground...ahhhh, it was going to take some doing to top all that. But that child had faith in the people who made I and II. And then along comes a camp slapstick comedy to make a particularly corny episode of the Batman circa 1968 look like the work of an auteur. Yes, I was that child and this review is turning into a rant but by God, I was only one of many many wide eyed children. The first two movies made $100 million each, compared with around $59 million for this one. And yes, Superman IV probably grossed about $19.99 (about twice its budget) but the idea of Superman breaking his rule of non-interference in human history is a good premise, spoiled by lack of money and talent. Superman III, conceived as a comedy vehicle for Richard Pryor, was a bad idea that exactly lived up to its promise. Pryor plays Gus Gorman a man whose IQ is supposedly high enough for him to be able to do ridiculous like make the green and red man brawl on the traffic lights but exposes his wealth to the villain Ross (Vaughun) and shoots off the edge of the villains's skyscraper penthouse on skis (which he survives). Gus; computer skills get him in with Ross and his lover and sister who are plotting to use computers to control the world's wealth, something that Superman is constantly thwarting. For example, he puts out a fire in a chemical factory but blowing cold on a lake, lifting the huge chunk of ice and laying it down on the scene of the blaze...we can't imagine that doing good for the community that's been robbed of its lake. Using a shard of radioactive kryptonite, they manage to create an evil superman. "I hope you don't expect me to save you...cos I don't do that any more!" he tells the blonde bimbo sitting atop Liberty's crown. Never mind, he will have his way with her later on (I thought in SM II he had to be divested of his powers by the red rays of Krypton before an erection was possible?) Still we would imagine that an evil superman would do something like lazer ray the waste tanks open on a nuclear power plant and irradiate the whole west coast of America. Instead he goes into a bar and fires peanuts at the mirror..."What ya lookin' at?!" the drunk, dark-caped crusader, now sporting a jawline of stubble, slurs at the plebs in the street. He also does things like blow out the Olympic flame (whoa major league evilness here!) and beat up his goodie-goodie alter ego in a junkyard. As for Clark, he goes to Smallville and comes face to face with one time crush Lana and his bullying nemesis Brad, the movie's most bearable part. But at the end of the day, this is not so much Superman and Pryorman the Movie. And Pryor was always at his best when a foul-mouthed, taboo-busting stand up. No disrespect either to Robery Vaughun but as a screen villain, he has neither the wit of Gene 'Miss Tessmacher!' Hackman nor the menace of Terrence 'Kneel before Zod!' Stamp. Let us hope lessons have been learnt and we don't see Brandon Routh pared with Chris Rock next summer with the latter taking up half the movie...

"A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year 10191. The Known Universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, my father. In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange. The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness, the spice is vital to space travel...." intones a pretty lady against a starry backdrop at the start of this movie. Right so we've that out of the way, let's get down to the actual movie. Ooooops back she comes " Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, the spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe, a desolate, dry planet with vast deserts. Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as the Fremen, who have long held a prophecy, .. that a man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom. The planet is Arrakis,... also known as .. Dune." Are you still reading this??? Think what it must have been like for the poor souls in the cinemas back in 1984-5. Frank Herbert's Dune was an immense literary success back in 1965 with its visions of a galactic imperium that had moved beyond technology as our culture recognizes it and begun manipulating biology and space travel. Thousands of years before, something called the Butlerian Jihad had seen humanity revolt against controlling machines and establish an almost neo-feudal power structure wherein hereditary bodies such as the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild play off competing planetary dynasties against each other. Herbert's novel alluded to the Middle Eastern Oil crisis, the ecological movement, hallucinogenic drugs and was shrewd enough to predict the revival of Holy War as a political force. When he agreed to collaborate with David Lynch in the early 1980s to film all this a problem arose: would the big screen adaptation be true to the novel's esoteric intellectualism or would it simply be Star Wars with a knife-wielding Sting? In the end, they opted for a action-love story with space opera elements, but kept in enough 'weird stuff' to placate any sci-fi long-hairs who had read the novel in '65. And, surprise surprise, they ended up alienating the kids and the hippies. A number of problems doom Dune to damnation. Firstly, the woefully inept casting. Kyle McLachlan is a fine actor for sure, but as a messiah to the Fremen and a love interest to Chani (Sean Young) he just doesn't cut it. To be fair, he is given an appallingly dire script which at one point has him seeking 'closure' for his Dad's brutal murder by riding on a giant worm and bellowing into the desert night "Father...the sleeper has AWOKEN!!!!!!!!" That's to say nothing of the annoying voice overs that riddle the movie ("I will bend like a reed in the wind" while duelling with Sting or "Fear is the mind killer! while having his hand toasted in a box). Also, a slew of fine actors and actresses are given walk-ons that allow them to do little more than scowl and deliver turgid dialog. Jose Ferer looks like he about to burst out laughing while addresses a massive tadpole in a tank during a visit by the Spacing Guild. That said, there are some highly ridiculous performances too. On no account watch any part where the badly dubbed cute kid Alia speaks with food or drink in your mouth because you'll risk choking. Then there are the shoddy special effects that bely the fact that Dune had a then unprecedented $50 million budget. The part when the floating baron, screaming in agony is sent hurtling through a wall to be eaten by a giant phallic worm is truly hilarious. Speaking of which, the one half-effective sequence in the movie is set on the Harkonnen home world of Giedi Prime. Recalling Lynch's Eraserhead, it is all hissing pipes and mutation. Even here, the silly dialog is ubiquitous, as the Baron's mentat intones "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion." Huh??? Possibly no movie in history has capped Dune for silly names..Thufir Hawat, Irulan Corrino, Paul Usul Maud Dib, Feyd Rautha Harkonnen, Shadout Mapes, Gurney Halleck, Gom Jabbar, Kwitzatz Haderach.... When you see this dire effort, you will be yelling 'Chuk....saaaa!' at your DVD player in the hope that you too, like Paul Maud Dib, can make it explode.