Help! (film)
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| Help! | |
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| Directed by | Richard Lester |
| Produced by | Walter Shenson |
| Written by | Charles Wood |
| Starring | The Beatles Leo McKern Eleanor Bron Mal Evans |
| Music by | The Beatles George Martin Ken Thorne |
| Cinematography | David Watkin |
| Editing by | John Victor Smith |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | UK July 29, 1965 |
| Running time | 92 min. |
| Country | U.K. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Help! is the title of a 1965 film starring the Beatles and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal and Roy Kinnear. The soundtrack was released as an album, also called Help!.
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[edit] Plot (Spoilers)
Among the film's original working titles were Beatles Phase II and, as suggested by Walter Shenson, Eight Arms to Hold You. In the beginning, an Indian cult is about to sacrifice a woman to the goddess Kali. Then they notice that she doesn't have the sacrificial ring on. Then it's revealed that Ringo Starr, drummer of the Beatles, has the ring on, and he can't take it off. The band is chased around London by members of the Indian cult of the Goddess Kali, headed by McKern's and Bron's characters. In a desperate effort to dispose of the ring, the band resorts to the bumbling efforts of a mad scientist, played by Spinetti, and his assistant, played by Kinnear; when his equipment turns out to have no effect on the ring, the Spinetti character decides that he, too, must somehow acquire it. In the end, when Ringo is about to be sacrificed, the ring suddenly comes off. Then he puts the ring on the leader of the cult, and a big attempt of sacrificing him starts.
The Beatles said the film was inspired by the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup; it was also directly satirical of the James Bond series of films. At the time of the original release of Help!, its distributor, United Artists, also held the rights to the Bond series (now owned by UA sister studio MGM).
A novelisation entitled The Beatles in Help! was written by Al Hine and published by Dell in 1965.
[edit] Film settings
Help! was set in London, Salisbury Plain, the Austrian Alps, Providence Island in the Bahamas and Twickenham Film Studios. Ring Starr commented in The Beatles Anthology that they were in the Bahamas for the hot weather scenes, and therefore had to wear light clothing even though it was rather cold.
[edit] Songs in Help!
Despite their extremely laissez-faire attitude toward their acting, there is no question that the Beatles took their music absolutely seriously. The song titles that appear in the film are:
- "Help!"
- "You're Going to Lose That Girl"
- "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
- "Ticket to Ride"
- "The Night Before"
- "I Need You"
- "Another Girl"
- (Song in underground scene: "She's A Woman")
- "A Hard Day's Night" (played by Indian band)
The Help! soundtrack is a tremendous showcase for John Lennon in particular -- the title track, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, and Ticket to Ride show a startling maturity in John's work; they represent his strongest songwriting up to that time and clearly point the way to Rubber Soul. In addition, Paul contributed the shimmering The Night Before and Another Girl while George contributed the very catchy I Need You.
The musical sequences are probably the high points of Help! They don't really break the continuity of the film, of course, because the whole thing is so loose -- Lester just puts the lads into surreal settings for the numbers (the Alps, a reef in the Bahamas, their Rube Goldberg London apartment block) and lets them do their thing.
[edit] Additional information
According to interviews conducted with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Starr for The Beatles Anthology, director Richard Lester was given a larger budget for this film than he had for A Hard Day's Night thanks to the commercial success of the latter. Thus, this feature film was in colour and was shot on several exotic foreign locations.
A sequence featuring Frankie Howerd and Wendy Richard was filmed but left out of final editing owing to its length. However, the sequence was left in the film novelization.
The "channel swimmer" who makes appearances during the curling scene and at the end of the film is Beatles road manager Mal Evans.
Critical opinion at the time of release was positive, but the film has not achieved a level of acclaim comparable to that for A Hard Day's Night. The absurd comedic style and frenetic pacing were in some ways a forerunner of future British comedy, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus. The film had a direct influence on the American television series The Monkees, which was patterned very closely upon the film.
The Beatles did not particularly enjoy the filming of the movie, nor were they particularly pleased with the end product. Lennon said in 1970 that they felt like extras in their own movie.
| “ | "The movie was out of our control. With A Hard Day's Night, we had a lot of input, and it was semi-realistic. But with Help!, Dick Lester didn't tell us what it was all about. I realize, looking back, how advanced it was. It was a precursor for the Batman 'Pow! Wow!' on TV -- that kind of stuff. But he never explained it to us. Partly, maybe, because we hadn't spent a lot of time together between A Hard Day's Night and Help!, and partly because we were smoking marijuana for breakfast during that period. Nobody could communicate with us, it was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time. In our own world. It's like doing nothing most of the time, but still having to rise at 7AM, so we became bored." --- John Lennon on filming Help! | ” |
A contributing factor was exhaustion atrributable to their very busy schedule of writing, recording and touring. Afterwards they were hesitant to begin another film project, and indeed Help! was their last full-length scripted theatrical film. Their obligation for a third film to United Artists was met by the 1970 documementary film Let It Be. The 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine did not meet contractual obligations because it did not star the Beatles themselves, and their only live appearance was featured for less than two minutes at the film's conclusion.
During the filming of Help!, George Harrison discovered the sitar, which he would later use in "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".
The film was mockingly dedicated to Elias Howe “who, in 1846, invented the sewing machine."
When Capitol Records in America issued the single " Ticket to Ride " in the U.S. , the label incorrectly listed the song as from the film's early working title "Eight Arms To Hold You" .
[edit] "Haze of Marijuana"
The Beatles later said the film was shot in a "haze of marijuana". According to Ringo Starr's interviews in The Beatles Anthology, during the Austrian Alps film shooting he and Paul ran off over the hill from the "curling" scene set to smoke a joint.
| “ | "A hell of a lot of pot was being smoked while we were making the film. It was great. That helped make it a lot of fun...In one of the scenes, Victor Spinetti and Roy Kinnear are playing curling: sliding along those big stones. One of the stones has a bomb in it and we find out that it's going to blow up, and have to run away. Well, Paul and I ran about seven miles, we ran and ran, just so we could stop and have a joint before we came back. We could have run all the way to Switzerland. If you look at pictures of us you can see a lot of red-eyed shots; they were red from the dope we were smoking. And these were those clean-cut boys! Dick Lester knew that very little would get done after lunch. In the afternoon we very seldom got past the first line of the script. We had such hysterics that no one could do anything. Dick Lester would say, 'No, boys, could we do it again?' It was just that we had a lot of fun -- a lot of fun in those days." --- Ringo Starr on filming Help! | ” |
In the Beatles Anthology Director's Cut, George Harrison admitted that they were smoking marijuana on the plane ride all the way to the Bahamas.
Paul McCartney also shared some of his memories of when they were filming Help!:
| “ | "We showed up a bit stoned, smiled a lot and hoped we'd get through it. We giggled a lot. I remember one time at Cliveden (Lord Astor's place, where the Christine Keeler/Profumo scandal went on); we were filming the Buckingham Palace scene where we were all supposed to have our hands up. It was after lunch, which was fatal because someone might have brought out a glass of wine as well. We were all a bit merry and all had our backs to the camera and the giggles set in. All we had to do was turn around and look amazed, or something. But every time we'd turn round to the camera there were tears streaming down our faces. It's OK to get the giggles anywhere else but in films, because the technicians get pissed off with you. They think, 'They're not very professional.' Then you start thinking, 'This isn't very professional -- but we're having a great laugh.'" --- Paul McCartney on filming Help! | ” |
[edit] Release history
Like the previous Beatles movie, A Hard Day's Night, Help! was originally distributed theatrically by United Artists (UA handled distribution from 1965 to the end of 1980). In January, 1981, rights to the movie reverted from UA to producer Walter Shenson, and the movie was withdrawn from circulation. Help! was released several times in different video formats by MPI Home Video and The Criterion Collection. On VHS, a version was released during February of 1987 through MPI, along with a reissue of "A Hard Day's Night" the very same day, and was followed by a special-edition release on October 31, 1995. MPI also issued a CLV laserdisc in 1995 and two releases on DVD, the first as a single DVD release on November 12, 1997 and the second as part of "The Beatles DVD Collector's Set" on August 8, 2000.
LaserDisc releases include a Criterion CAV laserdisc and a Voyager CLV laserdisc in 1987, each of which had three pressings. The first pressings had no UPC code on the gatefold covers while the other two had the UPC code either as a sticker or printed directly on the jacket. While the CLV editions usually sell for around $40, the CAV editions can sell anywhere from $80 to over $100. Most consider the rare Criterion CAV release to be the definitive edition. The film's transfer on the CAV laserdiscs was done correctly so that each still frame is motionless and ultrasharp. The musical numbers, which are presented in stereo, perfectly demonstrate the laserdisc medium's superior, uncompressed audio fidelity capabilities. The supplemental section, which has never been available on any other home video release, contains the following:
- original theatrical trailer (which includes scenes left out of the completed film)
- silent footage of the film set and of the world premiere
- still photos, some of which are introduced by text describing the production history of the film
- posters
- sheet music
- record jackets
- radio ads (on audio during the silent footage)
- an open interview, originally designed for disc jockeys, that you can utilize to fake out friends and surprise family members by reading the prompts on the screen and pretending to talk to the Beatles.
As of now (March 2007), all home video versions of "Help!" have since been removed from the market because of rights issues involving Apple Corps, now the full rights holders to the film.
[edit] Trivia
- Although it is quite obvious that the Beatles were getting chased by an Indian cult, especially since Ringo was supposed to be sacrificed for Kali, it was never explicitly mentioned. The script sidestepped ever saying "India" by saying "Eastern" instead. For example, when George Harrison is speaking to a chef of an Indian restaurant, he asks "Does this Eastern flavor come expensive?" Also, when Ahme gives Prof. Foot the shrinking juice, Prof. Foot tries to read the label but he laments he can't because it is "written in Eastern".
