60 Years Ago, The Beatles Tackled James Bond With Help!

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The greatest challenge that any biographical film about the Beatles has faced is that the “Fab Four” rose to prominence during an unprecedented explosion of celebrity-focused media. Even if the upcoming four-part biographical project from Sam Mendes ends up unearthing previously undiscovered details about the group and their exploits, it will still have to contend with more than six decades of documentaries, news reports, and candid videos that featured Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as themselves. Whereas even Elvis Presley kept his personal life at a distance from his adoring fans, the Beatles’ personalities became so recognizable that fans were universally comfortable referring to them on a first-name basis.

One of the great novelties of the Beatles was that they inspired unusual fanfare and obsession from audiences in their native country of England, who had been traditionally associated with more reserved social practices. The screaming crowds and relentless photographing reached a new apex in 1964, in which the four “lads from Liverpool” came to America in the most important moment of the British Invasion. America had caught “Beatlemania,” and so it only made sense that the band would next have to take over a new medium. Their first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night, may have been intended to cash in on the stranglehold that the Beatles had on popular culture, but the comic brilliance of director Richard Lester turned the 1964 farce into one of the most influential music films ever made.

Unlike critically-panned Elvis star vehicles like Blue Hawaii or Spinout, A Hard Day’s Night cast the Beatles as somewhat fictionalized versions of themselves, and was set during a particularly chaotic 36 hours preceding an appearance on television. Even if the title was shared with the band’s fifth studio album, A Hard Day’s Night would have been more aptly named by the final track of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. By showing all the madness and mayhem that constituted “A Day in the Life” of the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night transformed the band from musicians into larger-than-life characters on the level of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, or Superman.

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A Hard Day’s Night had the novelty of being released prior to the legitimization of musician documentaries. Before D. A. Pennebaker transformed the genre with his highly influential “rock-docs” Don’t Look Back and Monterey Pop, the very notion of seeing these artists on the big screen was a draw. A Hard Day’s Night earned two Oscar nominations and rave reviews, so a sequel seemed like a given. However, the wild experimentation that was taking place in the Beatles’ music during this era ensured that John, Paul, George, and Ringo wouldn’t sign on to anything that wasn’t at least a tad transgressive. Yet, the Beatles were also in a medium that they had less experience in; if A Hard Day’s Night had used Lester as a “hired gun,” Help! gave him the opportunity to be the definitive auteur.

Given that the Beatles themselves were a more popular brand than anything specifically tied to A Hard Day’s Night, Help! wasn’t under any obligation to retain stylistic similarities. Shot in color and given a more extensive musical score, Help! featured the Beatles as Marx brothers-esque stooges in the midst of an international adventure. After Ringo accidentally obtains a sacrificial ring sent to him by an adoring fan, the Beatles find themselves the targets of an eastern cult (loosely inspired by the Thuggee movement) desperate to complete an ancient ritual. A sacrificial ring would require a victim, but because Ringo finds it impossible to remove the circular band from his finger, all sorts of shenanigans begin to ensue.

Although parody films had existed before in the form of Abbott and Costello’s crossovers with the Universal monsters characters, Help! created a unique subgenre of spoofs that weren’t directly tied to an existing property. Comparisons could be made with British adventure films like Bhowani Junction and North West Frontier, both of which depicted tensions with modern India, but Help! also featured a touch of the supernatural that felt closer in style to Roger Corman’s low-budget horror-comedies of the era, such as The Raven. The broader subject material presented an intriguing hook to audiences; even if this was a story that they had seen before, they were now getting it through the Beatles’ point-of-view.

It was no coincidence that the release of Help! coincided with the growing popularity of another major British export that captured the imagination of American audiences. James Bond had become a movie star bigger than James Dean, Marlon Brando, and John Wayne combined, and United Artists was keen to mix in some cross-promotion into Help!, which debuted the summer before 007 took his first aquatic adventure in Thunderball. Sean Connery’s dry, snarky humor had brought levity to the early Bond films, but the Beatles were allowed to heighten the absurdity when they found themselves at the center of a different international conspiracy.

It’s through a series of misinterpreted signals and secret allegiances that the Beatles find themselves working alongside Scotland Yard, with a conclave of evil scientists and cult members in hot pursuit. The anti-establishments sentiments eschewed by the Beatles would grow more prominent in subsequent years, particularly after the Vietnam War occupied a more significant role in global politics; however, there is a sly hint of satire within the depicted incompetence of law enforcement in Help! Even though they are viewed as untrustworthy hooligans by the airless suits that conduct international affairs, the Beatles are more successful in suppressing the cult members than any of the cops are. The fact that their heroism is all accidental only makes this satirical point even finer.

A stark difference between the Beatles and the next generation of musicians-turned-actors was that Help! existed to amuse, but not lionize them. The group is more than willing to poke fun at the personality traits that they had been ascribed; Paul was a bit too smooth for its own good, John’s inclination towards chaos was often disruptive, George’s pensive existentialism often masked his confusion, and Ringo is perhaps the only person who could unwittingly spark the rage of a dangerous cult. Regardless of how much say the Beatles had in shaping the personas they’d be attached to throughout their respective careers, Help! was an opportunity to turn themselves into characters.

Help! does provide an origin story to the light-hearted blend of pathos and adventure that Lester would crystallize within the more emotionally articulate work he did in the next two decades, including A Funny Thing That Happened On The Way To The Forum, The Three Musketeers, Robin and Marian, and Superman II. Whether it was a folklore hero like Robin Hood, a literary icon like D’Aratagan, or a comic book character like Kal-El, Lester was often interested in modern mythmaking. Although the Beatles were more limited as comedic performers, Help! had a streak of self-deprecation that ensured viewers could pick up on the inherent irony. Among the various fourth-wall breaking jokes in Help! is a peculiar closing statement at the end of the credits, which dedicates the film to “the memory of Mr. Elias Howe, who, in 1846, invented the sewing machine.” Although inspired by the abstract humor of The Goon Show, the post-credit gag in Help! could be perceived as the ancestor to Marvel’s beloved “bonus stingers.”

Subsequent interviews with the surviving Beatles in Martin Scorsese’s HBO miniseries George Harrison: Living in the Material World and Ron Howard’s crowdpleasing documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years revealed that the band’s enthusiasm about the film waned over the course of the taxing shoot. Exotic locations like the Austrian Alps and Paradise Island may have looked beautiful onscreen, but performing complex sight gags amidst strenuous weather conditions put the band in a foul mood. The Beatles’ exasperation is somewhat notable in some dialogue scenes, but there’s a surprising amount of their personal interests that made it into the finished cuts. The band employs various disguises amidst their infiltration of Buckingham Palace, and their co-stars included many wild animals; as both zoologists and Beatles fans are well-aware, references to animals have significant double meanings or contain thematic allusions in classics songs like “I Am The Walrus,” “Rocky Racoon,” “Octopus’s Garden” and “Blackbird,” among many others.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to the pacing of Help!, and why it ultimately never fulfilled the Beatles’ ambition to reach the satirical heights of Duck Soup, is that the musical performances aren’t directly tied to the narrative. A Hard Day’s Night’s mockumentary style invited natural opportunities for the Beatles to burst into strong, whereas Help! justified cutting to performances for additional surrealist gags. Not every insertion is awkward, as “Ticket to Ride” adds whimsical humor to a scene in which the Beatles learn to ski. However, moments in which the Beatles perform forced the film to rely on visual threads to retain the flow of the story. These odd, dreamlike segments feel like the forbearer to the modern music video; in particular, the band’s performance of “I Need You” against the backdrop of the Salisbury Plain mirrored many similar setups that would appear in early MTV videos within the subsequent decades.

Help! has been often dismissed by hardcore Beatles fans because the album of the same name came at the end of the group’s touring years, and reflected the embitterment that Paul and John felt about having to appease commercial audiences. It’s particularly striking as the studio release that predates the unprecedented run of Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road, each of which could be realistically named the single greatest album of all-time without raising any eyebrows. Nonetheless, Help! has some truly beautiful tracks that indicated that the Beatles’ period of experimentation was not completely unexpected. “You’ve Got To Hide You Love Away” features an impressively stripped down acoustic performance from Lennon, and “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” plays as slightly matured version of the Beatles’ early “advice songs,” such as “She Loves You” or “You Can’t Do That.”

Although a contemporary reconsideration of Help! could point to its influence on Monty Python, The Monkees television series, and even Adam West’s Batman (which lifted the “Pow!” and “Bam!” onomatopoeia), it’s also fair to point out the film’s shortcomings regarding cultural appropriation. Even if the use of Indian-style music would be adopted by George in subsequent songs like “Norwegian Wood” and “The Inner Light,” the depiction of the cult of Kali worshippers is broadly cartoonish at best, and blatantly racist at worst. Although the same could be said for some of the Bond films of the era (with the yellowface in You Only Live Twice being the worst offender), the disinterest in diverse lifestyles within Help! makes it an outlier in the Beatles’ body-of-work.

Given the well-documented studies that the Beatles made into Eastern philosophy within their later albums, it may be easier to pin the blame for these creative decisions on United Artists and Lester. However, the Beatles were at least tolerant of the offensive caricatures in Help!, which was so glaringly written in bad faith that they cannot be dismissed as simply a “product of their time.” Beyond the laziness of demonizing a minority group, the regressive cult members in Help! reflect the fact that none of the film’s characters are given any depth. Although Wilfrid Brambell gives a genuinely delightful performance as Paul’s grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night, the characters in Help! merely exist to transport the Beatles between scenes.

Perhaps younger audiences that discover the Beatles through the plethora of content now available on Disney+ may not be able to appreciate Help! without a few disclaimers, but it’s hard not to feel as if the film represents a last grasp of innocence within the band’s trajectory. Even abysmal reviews of Help! acknowledged the positive impact that the Beatles had on popular culture, but the following years would see controversies relating to the “More Popular Than Jesus” comment, the band’s unabashed drug use, and the infamous “butcher cover” of Yesterday and Today. Even if it took a roundabout way of examining the essence of the Beatles’ creative identity, Help! was released in an era where they were still part of the monoculture.

Help! also marked the Beatles’ last major foray into cinema, as it was followed by the critically maligned television special Magical Mystery Tour and the animated Yellow Submarine, which did not feature any of the band members until a brief live-action cameo at the end. The Beatles would last appear on the big screen together in Let it Be, the controversial documentary that captured the moments leading up to their eventual breakup. Although there was a lot to enjoy within Peter Jackson’s eight-hour docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, released in 2021, it showcased an older, matured version of the band that had lost their childish innocence.

Help! may have opened up the opportunity for the Beatles to pursue individual cinematic projects, as George became a somewhat renowned producer on beloved comedies like Withnail & I and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, as well as more dramatic features like Neil Jordan’s Oscar-nominated drama Mona Lisa. Ringo, who proved to be the finest actor of the batch in Help!, would go on to have memorable appearances in farcical comedies like Candy, The Magic Christian, and Son of Dracula. Paul’s onscreen work was more limited, even if he ended up delivering an all-time theme song with the titular track of Live and Let Die, which seemingly closes the Bond-parody circle that Help! had started. As for John, it’s hard to not grow melancholy thinking about what films he could have made had his life not been cut short in 1980; within his lifetime, John expressed admiration for filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Frederico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, and Orson Welles.

If Help! doesn’t necessarily represent the Beatles’ best efforts, then it is certainly a project that no one else could have made. Given its absence from streaming, it’s unlikely that it will see a major reconsideration when so many other hidden gems from the Beatles’ early history are bound to be undiscovered. Nonetheless, Help! was made with the goal of being unserious and purely enjoyable, serving as a reminder that the Beatles were great entertainers before they were ever considered important artists.

Liam Gaughan is a film critic, writer, and entertainment journalist with over twelve years experience writing about popular culture. His bylines include Polygon, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Observer, High on Films, Central Track, Collider, Taste of Cinema, Slashfilm, and Movieweb. He also posts ramblings and thoughts on Letterboxd and X at @TheLiamGaughan.