Help! (1965)

One of my all time favorites.

Excellent but underrated film

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Help! is the unloved Beatles movie. It's not as witty as A Hard Day's Night or as cute and dazzling as Yellow Submarine. Magical Mystery Tour has developed an IMHO unearned reputation as an "experimental" classic, and even the dour Let It Be is seen as a bracing look at the "real" Beatles. Help!, however, is remembered as the movie where the Beatles got really stoned and didn't seem to care how the movie turned out. This is a rare occasion where the Beatles were wrong in their assessment of their own work. The plot, while a tad manic, isn't the disjointed mess people claim it is, but a fairly standard MAD magazine-style parody of James Bond movies in which our heroes are chased around various exotic locales. The musical numbers are full of the quick non sequitur cuts that would become the stock-and-trade of The Monkees the following year, while the action parodies would influence both Get Smart and Batman. The Beatles complained that they felt like extras in their own movie, but if so the supporting cast carried the weight just fine. Leo McKern (who would soon play an equally bizarre antagonist in The Prisoner) is hilarious as the high priest of Kali (a character played seriously in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom) and the gorgeous Eleanor Bron is charming as Ahme. Even better is Victor Spinetti, seen briefly in A Hard Day's Night and here given full reign as a mad scientist. It's a shame that the Beatles, all lovers of comedy, never made another dramatic feature, as they might have suggested working with the likes of Spike Milligan or even Monty Python.How are the Beatles themselves? Not bad, actually. The scenes where they were high out of their minds must have been relegated to the cutting room floor, because while slightly heavy-lidded they nonetheless deliver their lines with wit. What raises Help! above the other Beatle movies other than A Hard Day's Night, however, is the movie's visual style. Art director Ray Simms creates a mod look for the group's wonderful shared house, and cinematographer David Watkin makes sure the audience knows the movie is in COLOUR. The Beatles may have never *looked* better than they do in the recording session scene for "You're Going To Lose That Girl."(Note: the one aspect of the movie that has not aged well is the use of "brownface" for Indian characters. It's especially troubling considering George's later embrace of Indian spirituality. However, in both a very funny scene involving "experts" and the later scenes in the Bahamas the writers do get a few digs at colonial British prejudices. Still, these scenes may be troubling to modern audiences)

I am a huge Beatles fan. I am a huge fan of the album Help! But this movie is an exception. I had previously seen Yellow Submarine (1968), which didn't even feature the real Beatles for the most part, mind you, so I thought Help! would be even better. Instead, it was just a boring, unfunny mess. It wasn't the worst movie I had ever seen, and there were some good parts, but half the movie was either hard to follow, or just didn't make sense. For one thing, the plot moved along too fast. So much so, in fact, that I actually forgot what the plot was 10 minutes in. Also, the movie isn't that funny. I remember watching this movie with my uncle and he was laughing his butt off, but I was scratching my head a lot. My favorite parts:-The performance of "You're Going To Lose That Girl," and Ringo's fall through the floor -The "intermission." I was ROFLing during this scene.-When Paul is revealed to be in a car trunk and says "Hello!"Other than that, however, this movie just fails to please me. (Maybe it's because I didn't ask it to "please please me?") Oh, that was a bad joke, I apologize. Overall, this movie isn't great, but it isn't terrible. As said before, I have seen worse (much worse), but this is one film I'd rather not see again, as much as I love The Beatles. Sorry, Beatles!

The film is set in London and was released in 1965. This fascinating film is starring four men who are the Beatles. One of them, Ringo gets the sacrificial ring set by the girl who was to be sacrificed. The members of the cult will then track the Beatles down in order to sacrifice Ringo. The Film has been directed by Richard Lester. However, it is complicated to define this kind of movie because it is a melting of comedy, science fiction, thriller... The plot focuses on the ring that is impossible to remove from Ringo's finger. In fact, I found the idea surprising and unexpected. However I find some passages confusing and boring, sometimes the film is unpleasant. As regards the script, I think it is strange but funny. The stage set and the sound effects are appropriate. So to my mind, the film is a feel good movie, pleasant to watch but I don't consider it as a Masterpiece.

"Help !" is a movie about and starring the Beatles. It is difficult for us to give it a genre : it is an absurd and/or burlesque movie, like for example in England a few years ago with the Monty Python (Their influence in the comic field is compared to that of the Beatles in music.); or currently with film directors like Quentin Dupieux. The plot isn't really important here, like "Rubber"(by Q. Dupieux) : The story of a devil rubber killing people (it is more or less something like that). But here, the lack of a plot is a pretext to show music videos between crazy scenes. We can consider it a Road-Movie, because in fact, it is a road-movie (even if we can not talk about Road- movies before "Easy Rider" in 1969 by Dennis Hopper, except perhaps for "Pierrot le Fou" by J-L. Godard in 1965). The famous rock band goes from England to the Alps (Ausrtia) and the Bahamas (in Nassau) because of an Eastern Cult track Ringo to sacrifice him to a goddess but, before killing him, they must paint him red. It is because Ringo is wearing a sacrificial ring that he can't remove. The Fab Four always have to escape to stay alive. then other people will join their quest : police men (Scotland Yard) without any weapons; an Eastern woman who easily fell in love with Paul McCartney; a mad scientist needing a Nobel Prize, etc.Personally, I love that kind of movie and I like this one too because it is a good one after all. It well represents that 'British humor' even if the movie was directed by Richard Lester (American), his touch is perceived with the editing where scenes and video-clips are well linked together; in a way that is not surprising. This is interesting, if we want to extrapolate, "Help!" reminds me the masterpiece "Man with a Movie Camera" by Dziga Vertov (in 1929) off course not for the Kino-Pravda! But only with the musicality from pictures.