A 1980 musical set in the far-flung future of 1994! At a song competition festival, a boyfriend/girlfriend team, Alfie (George Gilmour) and Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart!), have their song ruined by the evil Mr. Boogalow. His song wins and he proceeds to take over the city (don’t ask). He also tries to break up Alfie and Bibi because he wants Bibi all to himself. Alfie refuses to let her go without a fight…
A true wonder…this is just a movie you watch in utter amazement. Is it good? No…but it’s just the most enjoyable bad/good movie I’ve seen in a long time. The costumes are incredible (in a good way), the songs are actually not bad, the singing is very good and the huge production numbers are full of energy and color.
On the bad side–the plot makes little sense–you spend most of the movie trying to figure it out–especially the ending! My guess is that the film went through some heavy editing before being released. The acting is amazingly bad–Sewart looks lost (small wonder) and as for Gilmour…he’s definitely the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen and has a real nicely toned body which he shows often (this movie has a surprising amount of male and female skin for a PG), but he’s a terrible actor–no wonder this was his only film. Basically this film is ridiculous but everybody plays it so straight it becomes fascinating.
A bit of trivia: The film (which takes place in New York) was shot in West Berlin and half the cast speaks with British or Irish accents! Also, this has to be seen letterboxed–the video and TV versions are almost incomprehesible visually.
So, in a way, I loved every second of this movie. Gilmour is stunning, songs are seriously pretty good and I was never bored for one second. A great camp classic awaiting rediscovery.
