Even more than "Yellow Submarine," "Help!" is a film for the kid in every Beatles fan. Unlike "Yellow Submarine" and "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" is more a film for Beatles fans than outsiders.
It's human-sacrifice time at an "Eastern" (read "Indian") temple, but the ceremony is halted when the angry Clang (Leo McKern) realizes his would-be victim has lost her ceremonial ring. Turns out it's in the possession of a drummer named Ringo (Ringo Starr) who along with his fellow Beatles (John, Paul, and George) is soon being chased from A (Alps) to B (Bahamas) by Clang and his homicidal congregants.
"Help!" was how the Beatles followed up on the surprise success of "A Hard Day's Night", with a nod in the direction of that other British property of United Artists, James Bond, as it sends up a stream of glam, globe-trotting silliness. Another major influence here is Bob Dylan. Dylan pushed John Lennon in a more introspective songwriting direction, seen here with the title song and the sublime "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away". Less positively for the film, Dylan also introduced the Fab Four to cannabis, their drug of choice throughout the "Help!" shoot.
Lennon called it the band's "marijuana-for-breakfast" period, and while I don't see any telltale redeyes, the band members do seem curiously disengaged, from the project and each other. Except for one scene where the other three Beatles try to persuade Ringo to lose the ring, even if it also means the finger its stuck on (John: "Me and Paul haven't seen you make any use of that finger, have we, Paul?"), there's not much chemistry on display. Was it just pot, or that other drug called fame that made them so haggard after only a year?
They look best when miming a series of terrific songs presented inventively by director Richard Lester. "You're Going To Lose That Girl" is shot in a studio with eerie light effects shooting through the haze of cigarette smoke. George Harrison's "I Need You" chugs along nicely as the Beatles perform behind a cordon of tanks. "Another Girl" has the boys playing in the sand with pretty girls, laying out the blueprint the Monkees would follow a year later on American TV.
As a Beatles fan, there's something special also about seeing the band in 1965, a kind of high-water mark of their popularity. Their moptops have sprouted into mushrooms, while Beatlemania itself was mushrooming in popularity (their August 1965 concert at New York's Shea Stadium would be the biggest in their career) and recognition (MBEs meant a real trip to Buckingham Palace, not the fake one seen here).
The movie is a trip, in a good way mostly, as long as one doesn't try to follow the ever-vanishing plot line. No, "Hard Day's Night" didn't have a plot line, either, but it had the Beatles in concrete form. Here, the sharpness of Lennon's performance, and Harrison's banter with the others, is less on. Paul McCartney again brings up the rear in the acting department; perhaps his mind was on that "Scrambled Eggs" ditty he was working on between takes. Even Ringo seems sluggish, dopey rather than winsome (who can forget that look he gives the seductress in the train car in "Hard Day's Night"?)
It may have been the drugs, it may have been the celebrity, it may have been that they were handed a dodgy script. But something about the Beatles both disappoints and redeems "Help!" No, the chemistry's not there, but the charisma still is. It reminds me of another thing Lennon said later: No matter how wretched things got, something about the four of them and the image they carried pulled them through. "Eight Arms To Hold You" was this film's working title; it may have been what was holding them, too.
It's human-sacrifice time at an "Eastern" (read "Indian") temple, but the ceremony is halted when the angry Clang (Leo McKern) realizes his would-be victim has lost her ceremonial ring. Turns out it's in the possession of a drummer named Ringo (Ringo Starr) who along with his fellow Beatles (John, Paul, and George) is soon being chased from A (Alps) to B (Bahamas) by Clang and his homicidal congregants.
"Help!" was how the Beatles followed up on the surprise success of "A Hard Day's Night", with a nod in the direction of that other British property of United Artists, James Bond, as it sends up a stream of glam, globe-trotting silliness. Another major influence here is Bob Dylan. Dylan pushed John Lennon in a more introspective songwriting direction, seen here with the title song and the sublime "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away". Less positively for the film, Dylan also introduced the Fab Four to cannabis, their drug of choice throughout the "Help!" shoot.
Lennon called it the band's "marijuana-for-breakfast" period, and while I don't see any telltale redeyes, the band members do seem curiously disengaged, from the project and each other. Except for one scene where the other three Beatles try to persuade Ringo to lose the ring, even if it also means the finger its stuck on (John: "Me and Paul haven't seen you make any use of that finger, have we, Paul?"), there's not much chemistry on display. Was it just pot, or that other drug called fame that made them so haggard after only a year?
They look best when miming a series of terrific songs presented inventively by director Richard Lester. "You're Going To Lose That Girl" is shot in a studio with eerie light effects shooting through the haze of cigarette smoke. George Harrison's "I Need You" chugs along nicely as the Beatles perform behind a cordon of tanks. "Another Girl" has the boys playing in the sand with pretty girls, laying out the blueprint the Monkees would follow a year later on American TV.
As a Beatles fan, there's something special also about seeing the band in 1965, a kind of high-water mark of their popularity. Their moptops have sprouted into mushrooms, while Beatlemania itself was mushrooming in popularity (their August 1965 concert at New York's Shea Stadium would be the biggest in their career) and recognition (MBEs meant a real trip to Buckingham Palace, not the fake one seen here).
The movie is a trip, in a good way mostly, as long as one doesn't try to follow the ever-vanishing plot line. No, "Hard Day's Night" didn't have a plot line, either, but it had the Beatles in concrete form. Here, the sharpness of Lennon's performance, and Harrison's banter with the others, is less on. Paul McCartney again brings up the rear in the acting department; perhaps his mind was on that "Scrambled Eggs" ditty he was working on between takes. Even Ringo seems sluggish, dopey rather than winsome (who can forget that look he gives the seductress in the train car in "Hard Day's Night"?)
It may have been the drugs, it may have been the celebrity, it may have been that they were handed a dodgy script. But something about the Beatles both disappoints and redeems "Help!" No, the chemistry's not there, but the charisma still is. It reminds me of another thing Lennon said later: No matter how wretched things got, something about the four of them and the image they carried pulled them through. "Eight Arms To Hold You" was this film's working title; it may have been what was holding them, too.