Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is a fantasy directed by the Beatles and produced by Denis O'Dell for Apple Films. It was originally aired by the BBC on December 26, 1967. 50 minutes. On an airplane flight between the U.S. and Britian in early 1967, Paul sketched out the basic ideas for the Beatles' first self-penned, -directed, and -produced film vehicle. His idea was that the group would rent a film crew and a 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 wonderful entertainment.

Accordingly, the band collected forty-three actors, circus performers, friends, and associates and took to the road. Unfortunaly, that's not the whole story. The first project undertaken after Brian Epstein's untimley death, Magical Mystery Tour was sorley in need of his vision and organized skills, which the Beatles had taken granted for years. No one prepared accommodations 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 intrest happened spontaneously.

Dispite Paul's six-month effort to edit the footage into a narritive 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 mountians 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 compisitions appear in the film: Paul's title song, "A Fool On The Hill," "Blue Jay Way," "Flying," and "Your Mother Should Know."

None of the films shortcomings escaped the criticts 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. Peppers Lonley Heart's Club Band. Although Paul continues to defend the film as a piece of experimental television, viewed from a vantage point of nearly twenty-five years, it is still remarkably directionless and humorless.