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As long as there have been movies with sound, popular music stars have tried their hand at movie stardom.

Wednesday Jan 19, 2005.     By Joel Wicklund

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As long as there have been movies with sound, popular music stars have tried their hand at movie stardom, some aiming to become legitimate actors and others content to play themselves in carefully tailored star vehicles. Of the latter group, the Beatles probably set the high-water mark with their first two films, "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" Movies following their lead have ranged from the skillful to the downright bizarre, as this week's suggested viewing demonstrates.

There was no more obvious Beatles imitators than the Monkees, the band created for a television show patterned clearly after their films ("Help!" in particular). The irony is that, unlike some of the prefabricated pop stars of today, the Monkees actually turned out a fair amount of decent music, both before and after it actually started playing its own instruments on record. And their TV show was pretty good too, assuming you enjoy its brand of Marx Brothers meet Benny Hill meets Ernie Kovacs comedy. Just as the enterprise behind the band enlisted some top songwriters, so too were some legitimate creative artists (and businessmen) put in charge of the TV show.

Bob Rafelson, a co-creator and producer of the show, would go on to an impressive filmmaking career including two of Jack Nicholson's best early films, "Five Easy Pieces" (1970) and "The King of Marvin Gardens" (1972), as well as an underrated later collaboration, "Blood and Wine" (1996). Before any of these films, he and Nicholson co-wrote his first feature film, "Head" (1968), starring none other than The Monkees.

Fans expecting a movie like the TV show, however, were instead given a surreal, plotless, cinematic experience that attacked the band's product-driven existence. With their show already cancelled and tired of the confines of their teenybopper following, the band members were willing participants in their own destruction. Upon first seeing this film, steeped in psychedelic imagery and hippie-era excess, I thought it was a fun but fatally dated throwaway. Seeing it again a decade later, however, I've come to appreciate its anything goes spirit, filmmaking craft and the seriousness of its satire.

With such memorable scenes as Davy Jones being challenged to work harder on his music by Frank Zappa (accompanied by a talking ox), the Monkees being vacuumed out of Victor Mature's hair, and cameos by Annette Funicello, boxer Sonny Liston and others, "Head" might seem like a campy affair. But not far beneath its wild, frivolous surface is a biting commentary on how an often grim modern world is hidden by our obsession with entertainment. The point is made rather shockingly when the film cuts from one of the most horrific images of the Vietnam War (the filmed execution of a Viet Cong prisoner) to a screaming fan at a Monkees concert.

With a new war upon us and a dizzying array of media and technological toys at our disposal, "Head" no longer seems dated. It seems downright prescient. For all of its absurdity, the film leaves something of a chill at times, particularly when a scientist guiding the band through some abstract modern factory of dreams tells them he is creating "a new world: its only preoccupation will be how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your times is that you may get exactly what you want."

Rhino Video's "Head" DVD includes some trailers and chapter stops that go immediately to the celebrity cameos and to the songs (though only "The Porpoise Song" really ranks with the band's best material).

Critics have derisively called the Monkees the "prefab four," a label Monty Python's Eric Idle also adopted for his Beatles spoof, The Rutles. The story of this musical "legend that will last a lunchtime" is charted in Idle's very funny made-for-television film, "The Rutles – All You Need Is Cash" (1978). It features some dead-on imitations of Beatles' tunes (written by Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who also plays Ron Nasty, the film's John Lennon stand-in) and cameos by Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, several "Saturday Night Live" cast members and a well-disguised George Harrison. This was clearly an inspiration for "Spinal Tap" and should amuse anyone who enjoyed that great parody. Knowledgeable Beatles fans will, of course, get a lot more out of it. Rhino also distributes this DVD, which includes a commentary track and introduction by Idle, some deleted scenes and a photo gallery. Idle also made a late-coming sequel, "Can't Buy Me Lunch," in 2002.

From the deceptively lighthearted to the enjoyably silly to the utterly strange, I'll finish this pop icon excursion with a guarded recommendation of "Can't Stop the Music" (1980), starring the one and only Village People. Much like the Monkees, the Village People were a mercenary concept before they became an actual group. Unlike the Monkees, they never evolved past their gimmick: six guys dressed as male archetypes designed to appeal to gay disco fans. Give credit where credit is due, however, as they scored with several hit singles and won a following larger than that very specific audience. Suburban moms, pops and kiddies still dance to "YMCA" in sports stadiums, aware of the song's blatant sexual subtext or not.

By 1980 the Village People's star was starting to dim and their one and only movie was a flop, but an unforgettable one. From the opening credits with a hyper Steve Guttenberg roller-skating down the streets of New York to the jaw-dropping production number "Do the Milk Shake," there is rarely a scene that doesn't leave the viewer bewildered at its very conception.

Suggestive dancing and sexual double-entendres mix uncomfortably with a plot and banal dialogue better suited for a '70s Disney family film. Then there is the "please stop" sexual slapstick between busty Valerie Perrine and Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner (surprisingly, this would not be his last dramatic role), several more unlistenable songs, and the biker guy's unforgettable line, "Leather men don't get nervous." Maybe not, but a few extras sure look uneasy during the "YMCA" sequence, which ends any doubts the Village People had forgotten their core audience. A DVDetours salute to cult film-friendly Anchor Bay for putting "Can't Stop the Music" out in all its letterboxed glory, complete with a nicely written essay summarizing the band's career and a production stills gallery that includes some rather revealing poses from the Indian, the Cowboy, the Cop, the Solider, the Construction Worker, and yes…the Leather Man.

Films featured in DVDetours™ may be difficult to find at many video stores but are widely available from some of the online rental services, such as Netflix, Green Cine, QwikFliks and Blockbuster Online. Inventories vary from company to company and DVDetours has no connection to any of these services.

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