Magical Mystery Tour is a 1967 British made-for-television musical film written, produced, directed by, and starring the Beatles.

The premise was inspired by Ken Kesey's Furthur adventures with the Merry Pranksters and the then-popular coach trips from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights.

Much of Magical Mystery Tour was shot in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent, and the script was largely improvised.

Other group members on the bus include the tour director, Jolly Jimmy Johnson (Derek Royle); the tour hostess, Miss Wendy Winters (Miranda Forbes, credited as Mandy Weet); the conductor, Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler); and the other Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison).

During the course of the tour, "strange things begin to happen" at the whim of "four or five magicians", four of whom are played by the Beatles themselves and the fifth by the band's long-time road manager Mal Evans.

Aunt Jessie begins to have daydreams of falling in love with Buster Bloodvessel, who displays increasingly eccentric and disturbing behaviour.

The tour involves several strange activities, such as an impromptu race in which each of the passengers employs a different mode of transportation (some run, a few jump into cars, a group of people pedal a long bike, while Starkey ends up beating them all with the bus).

The film ends with the Beatles dressed in white tailcoats, highlighting a glamorous old-style dance crowd scene, accompanied by the song "Your Mother Should Know".

The film is interspersed with musical interludes, which include the Beatles performing "I Am the Walrus" wearing animal masks, Harrison singing "Blue Jay Way" while waiting on Blue Jay Way Road, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes' "Death Cab for Cutie" sung by Stanshall.

Magical Mystery Tour was ultimately the shortest of all Beatles films, although almost ten hours of footage was shot over a two-week period.

[10] Lennon recalled in a later interview, "We knew most of the scenes we wanted to include, but we bent our ideas to fit the people concerned, once we got to know our cast.

[8] Much of Magical Mystery Tour was shot in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent,[12][13] as it was not possible to book any London film studio at short notice.

During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the colourful, hand-lettered bus hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed.

As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC Radio Documentary "Celluloid Beatles", the film lacked footage to cover the sequence for the song "Flying".

[20] Magical Mystery Tour was viewed negatively by not only critics, but also by many Beatles fans for, as Ultimate Classic Rock journalist Dave Swanson described it, "its stream-of-consciousness style.

"[34] Writing in 1981, sociomusicologist Simon Frith said that the film was symptomatic of the transformation of "pop" into "rock", the latter being concerned with art and self-expression over mass entertainment.

He described Magical Mystery Tour as "a willfully inexplicable TV special which put most of the audience to sleep" and added: "The Beatles were no longer in control of their time.

"[35] Magical Mystery Tour had its first US presentation at the Fillmore East in New York City on 11 August 1968, shown at 8 and 10 pm, as part of a fundraiser for the Liberation News Service.

[full citation needed] In a 1993 interview, Harrison said the negative response from the press was "understandable too because it wasn't a brilliant scripted thing that was executed well.

[37] In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe comments on the similarity between Magical Mystery Tour and the exploits of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

[40] A comic strip adaptation of the film's plot was drawn by British caricaturist Bob Gibson and printed in the sleeve of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack album.

Also released is a deluxe edition "collectors box" featuring the film on both DVD and Blu-ray, in addition to a 60-page book, and a reproduction of the original mono UK double 7" vinyl EP.

The 2012 remastered Magical Mystery Tour DVD entered the Billboard Top Music Video chart at number 1 for the week ending 27 October 2012.