Help!
Entry updated 10 March 2025. Tagged: Film.
UK film (1965). Walter Shenson Films. Directed by Richard Lester. Written by Marc Behm (story); Behm and Charles Wood (screenplay). Cast includes Eleanor Bron, Patrick Cargill, George Harrison, Roy Kinnear, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Leo McKern, Victor Spinetti and Ringo Starr. 92 minutes. Colour.
The second film starring the Beatles is a comedy with elements of Fantasy and sf. An Indian cult, needing a certain ring to be worn by a sacrificial victim, discovers that it has somehow been sent to Ringo Starr, who is now wearing it; determined to get it back, their leader Clang (McKern) and his cohorts travel to England and make several unsuccessful attempts to reclaim it. When they cannot get the ring off his finger, Ringo then becomes the planned sacrifice. The ring has also drawn the attention of a Scientist who studied it, Professor Foot (Spinetti), and his assistant Algernon (Kinnear); they covet the ring because of its unusual properties, which Foot believes will enable him to "rule the world". Their efforts to obtain the ring include using a "relativity condenser" (sometimes illogically called a "relativity cadenza") that causes the Beatles to move unnaturally slowly (see Time Distortion). Assisting the Beatles in fending off their attackers are the head of Scotland Yard (Cargill) and a sympathetic female colleague of Clang named Ahme (Bron) who at one point tries to employ a shrinking serum to shrink Ringo's finger but instead accidentally reduces Paul McCartney to a few inches in height (see Miniaturization). Eventually, the ring spontaneously falls off Ringo's finger and ends up on the finger of Clang, who then becomes the intended victim of the sacrifice. The action periodically pauses to enable the Beatles to perform songs.
Critics have generally preferred the Beatles's first film, the realistic A Hard Day's Night (1964), and the Beatles themselves disliked this one so much that they apparently resolved to never make another film, turning down some proposed scripts for a third film. Its most memorable impact on the Beatles is that it introduced George Harrison to the sitar and, eventually, Indian culture as a whole, influencing their later music. Despite its detractors, Help! is consistently entertaining, with a superb supporting cast, even if the depiction of the Indian cultists may seem offensive to modern viewers, and it arguably provided astute if unintentional predictions of the coming negative effects of globalization, terrorism, and advanced Technology falling into the hands of ordinary citizens. [GW]
further reading
- Gary Westfahl with Lynne Lundquist. "Victims of a Globalized, Radicalized, Technologized World; or, Why the Beatles Needed Help!" in A Sense-of-Wonderful Century: Explorations of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press/Borgo Press, 2012) [nonfiction: pp131-143: pb/photocollage]
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