Credit: Dangerous Minds / 20th Century Fox

If you thought the movie version of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the lowest point in Beatles-related cinema, allow me to introduce something even more astonishing.

All This and World War II somehow manages to combine Adolf Hitler, archive footage of the Second World War, and a soundtrack of Beatles songs performed by some of the biggest rock stars of the 1970s. It isn’t a documentary, a musical, or really a war film either. It’s one of those glorious train wrecks that leaves you wondering how on earth anybody convinced a major Hollywood studio to pay for it.

The basic idea sounds almost like a practical joke. Take thousands of hours of wartime newsreel footage, splice it together with clips from old Hollywood combat movies, then soundtrack the whole thing with contemporary artists covering Lennon and McCartney classics. Somewhere along the line, somebody decided that Helen Reddy singing ‘The Fool on the Hill’ over footage of Hitler or Rod Stewart belting out ‘Get Back’ while ranks of Nazis goose-step across the screen would produce something profound.

Instead, it produced one of the strangest films ever released by a major studio.

All This and World War II is a hit-and-miss affair that somehow achieves a kind of magnificent awfulness while occasionally allowing little worm-like glimmerings of brilliance to ooze through the sprocket holes. Had it not carried the 20th Century Fox logo, you’d swear it was an underground art film assembled by a gang of dadaist acid casualties who somehow managed to persuade half the British rock scene to help out.

The cast list alone is enough to make your eyebrows disappear into your hairline. Elton John, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Peter Gabriel, Bryan Ferry, Keith Moon, Roy Wood, Frankie Valli, Leo Sayer, the Bee Gees, Status Quo and Jeff Lynne all signed up to reinterpret Beatles songs, making the soundtrack look, on paper at least, like one of the greatest tribute albums ever assembled. Listening to it without the visuals, quite a few of the performances are genuinely terrific.

It’s when the pictures arrive that everything goes gloriously sideways.

Released in 1976, All This and World War II staggered into cinemas, bewildered almost everybody who saw it and disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived. Critics hated it, and audiences largely ignored it. Within weeks, Fox had pulled the plug. For years, rumours circulated that the studio had destroyed every print and negative in existence. That turned out not to be true, thankfully, but the film nevertheless became one of those legendary lost oddities whispered about by Beatles obsessives and cult movie fans. It never received an official VHS release, never appeared on DVD and, for decades, even bootleg copies proved remarkably elusive.

Then, naturally, YouTube came along.

Suddenly, this extravagantly misguided cinematic experiment could once again be experienced in all its bewildering splendour. Watching it today feels less like sitting through a conventional film than witnessing an elaborate dare that somehow spiralled completely out of control. It proves, if nothing else, that if you lock enough editors in a room with enough wartime footage and Beatles songs, they will eventually produce something that vaguely resembles a movie, even if it’s the cinematic equivalent of throwing paint, glue and assorted household objects against a wall to see what sticks.

The really fascinating thing is that every viewer will probably come away with a different favourite disaster. Helen Reddy solemnly singing ‘The Fool on the Hill’ over images of Hitler gets my vote for the film’s single maddest creative decision, although Rod Stewart’s version of ‘Get Back’ accompanying marching Nazis runs it close. Then there’s the Bee Gees crooning ‘Golden Slumbers’ while London disappears beneath bombs, smoke and collapsing buildings. Every few minutes the film somehow manages to top its own previous lapse in judgement.

And yet…

Every now and then, something unexpectedly clicks. A particular song lands against a particular sequence of images in exactly the right way and, for a brief moment, you begin to understand what the filmmakers thought they were trying to achieve. Then somebody inevitably follows it with another spectacularly tone-deaf juxtaposition, and the spell is broken all over again.

That’s probably why the film has developed such a loyal cult following over the years. Complete failures often prove far more interesting than respectable successes. Had All This and World War II merely been competent, it would probably have vanished into the television schedules decades ago and been forgotten. Instead, it survives as one of those impossible-to-explain curiosities that simply have to be seen to be believed.

My bad taste meter never once left the red zone.

Frankly, that’s recommendation enough.

All This and World War II Soundtrack songs:

• ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ – Ambrosia
• ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ – Elton John (includes an uncredited John Lennon on lead guitar and backing vocals)
• ‘Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight’ – The Bee Gees
• ‘I Am The Walrus’ – Leo Sayer
• ‘She’s Leaving Home’ – Bryan Ferry
• ‘Lovely Rita’ – Roy Wood
• ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ – Keith Moon
• ‘Get Back’ – Rod Stewart
• ‘Let It Be’ – Leo Sayer
• ‘Yesterday’ – David Essex
• ‘With a Little Help from My Friends/Nowhere Man’ – Jeff Lynne
• ‘Because’ – Lynsey De Paul
• ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ – The Bee Gees
• ‘Michelle’ – Richard Cocciante
• ‘We Can Work It Out’ – The Four Seasons
• ‘The Fool On The Hill’ – Helen Reddy
• ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ – Frankie Laine
• ‘Hey Jude”—The Brothers Johnson
• ‘Polythene Pam’ – Roy Wood
• ‘Sun King’ – The Bee Gees
• ‘Getting Better’ – Status Quo
• ‘The Long and Winding Road’ – Leo Sayer
• ‘Help!’ – Henry Gross
• ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – Peter Gabriel
• ‘A Day in the Life’ – Frankie Valli
• ‘Come Together’ – Tina Turner
• ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ – Will Malone & Lou Reizner
• ‘The End’ – The London Symphony Orchestra