Director: The Beatles
Released: 26 December, 1967
Length: 50 minutes
Medium: Colour

On an aeroplane flight between the US and Britain in early 1967, Paul skethced out the basic ideas for the Beatles' first self-penned, directed and produced film. His idea was that the group would rent a film crew and tour bus, fill it with people, tour the countryside and film whatever might happen. The results would be aired on television and provide an hour's worth of escapist entertainment.

Accordingly, the band collected forty-three actors, circus performers, friends and associates and took to the road. Unfortunately, that's very nearly the whole story. The first project undertaken after Brian Epstein's untimely death, Magical Mystery Tour was sorely in need of his vision and organisational skills, which the Beatles had taken for granted for years. No one prepared accomodation for the passengers and crew, and nobody knew what to do about the hordes of fans that kept traffic gridlocked for miles behind and in front of the bus. A script had never been developed and very little of interest happened spontaneously.

Despite Paul's six month effort to edit the footage into a narrative involving a mystery tour secretly guided by four ("or five") mysterious magicians, he had very little to work with. John's sequence, in which the obese Aunt Jessie dreams of mountains of spaghetti, is, at least, vaguely unsettling. Even the six songs flounder in their lack of purpose, except perhaps the surreal, if overly cute, treatment of "I Am The Walrus". Five other compositions debut in the film. Paul's title song "Magical Mystery Tour", "The Fool On The Hill", "Blue Jay Way", "Flying" and "Your Mother Should Know".

None of the film's shortcomings escaped the critics when the show was aired and Magical Mystery Tour became the Beatles' first unqualified flop. This was a rude awakening after the heady breakthrough of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although Paul continues to defend the film as a piece of experimental television, it is still remarkably directionless and humourless.

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