|
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!.
Among the film's original working titles were Beatles Phase
II and what would have been Walter Shenson's suggested title,
Eight Arms to Hold You. The plot of the movie revolves
around a sacrificial ring which Ringo cannot take off. The band is chased
around London by members of the Indian cult of the goddess kali, headed by
McKern and Bron. In a desperate effort to dispose of the ring, the band
resorts to the bumbling efforts of mad scientist Spinetti and assistant
Kinnear; when his equipment turns out to have no effect on the ring,
Spinetti decides he too must somehow acquire it.
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 Duck Soup (now owned by EMKA, Ltd./NBC Universal)
and 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.
|