Toomorrow (1970)

The man behind The Monkees teamed up with a James Bond producer to build the next pop sensation. An unknown named Olivia Newton-John would front the project. The band would launch with a self-titled movie.

TOOMORROW (1970) was directed by Val Guest, the Hammer veteran behind The Quatermass Xperiment. It was co-produced by James Bond producer Harry Saltzman and music producer Don Kirschner.

In the film, the band are London students playing to pay their way through college. Their keyboardist has built a synthesizer he calls the tonaliser, and its sound reaches the Alphoids, a dying alien race who decide only these vibrations can save their civilization. The aliens abduct the band and make them play.

It lasted about a week in cinemas before Guest, unpaid, got an injunction against it. Kirschner is said to have loathed Toomorrow so much that he refused to let anyone screen it for the rest of his life.

A lawsuit sealed it away for more than forty years, and until a recent restoration, almost no one had seen twenty-one-year-old Olivia Newton-John's first starring role.