Help

From left to right: Ringo, Paul, John (playing piano), George. Just in case.

In the mid-1960s, The Beatles were the hottest thing since sliced bread. The four guys from Liverpool not only topped the charts with their music, but they topped the box office with their movie A Hard Days Night in 1964. So, in 1965, they, director Richard Lester, and producer Walter Shenson got back together to make another movie for United Artists. The result was Help!

Unlike its predecessor (though more like Richard Lester's non-Beatles films), Help! was a surreal and literally colorful action adventure parody and a Homage to United Artists' most successful film series at the time, James Bond. Its plot was ahead of its time — real James Bond films wouldn't be so nonsensical for another decade.

As a film, it's probably better than Magical Mystery Tour, but not as good as A Hard Days Night.

The plot involves a cult from "the eastern country" (presumably but not definitely India) and loosely based on the Thuggee who make sacrifices to their goddess, "Kaili". The person to be sacrificed wears a large ring with an enormous ruby in it. Unfortunately, the cultists find out at the ceremony that the girl who was supposed to be sacrificed mailed the ring to Ringo Starr, who is now wearing it. So, the cult scrambles to England to get the ring.

The problem is, nobody can get the ring off Ringo. Thus, the deadline for the ring going to its original sacrifice passes, and Ringo is now the official sacrifice for the cult.

In their attempts to get the ring off Ringo, the Beatles approach two mad scientists. The mad scientists fail to get it off, and the Beatles cease co-operating with them. By this point, the scientists have decided that it's their ticket to world domination. This leads to a chase which leads the Fab Four and both sets of their pursuers to the Austrian Alps, Salisbury Plain (near Stonehenge), Buckingham Palace and The Bahamas.

Note: the Beatles often weren't sober while making this film. They had recently discovered marijuana. This hurt their performances. Unfortunately, Richard Lester was probably sober.

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Tropes featured:

• AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Clang's pronunciation of "Beatle" as "be-A-tle" (rhyming with "Seattle").
• Afraid of Needles: George passes out at the sight of a syringe.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The shrinking potion
• All Animals Are Domesticated: The tiger that is sent to attack Ringo at the pub is actually from a zoo and won't attack Ringo if he has 'Ode to Joy' sung to him.
• As Himself
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Clang's conversation with Bhuta on the train.
• Audience Participation: The film has been called "The Rocky Horror Beatles Show" at some conventions (most notably Beatlefest Chicago), where screenings are frequently interrupted by audience members counting the number of times John dials the phone and handing out sticks of Wrigley's spearmint gum during the "Paul on the Floor" segment.
• Bad Bad Acting: The Beatles indulge in this occasionally, particularly any time they're supposed to be acting like they're having a carefree, fun time and instead just deliver the most stilted laughs humanly possible. (as mentioned above, they were usually stoned, to the point that many times they disregarded memorizing the script at all)
• Big Damn Movie: Granted, anything with the Beatles in at the peak of their power is fairly awesome anyway, but then you throw in the British Army's tanks surrounding the band playing near Stonehenge accompanied by Stuff Blowing Up, the stadium of people singing 'Ode to Joy' to calm a tiger...
  • That last one though is just a shot of Stock Footage.
    • It's still AWESOME.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Beatles' house looks like 4 separate townhouses from the outside, but it is all one big room.
  • Also, it is Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. John = red, Paul = white, George = green, Ringo = blue.
  • In other words, it's a Cool House!
    • It is a Cool House indeed, because each Beatle has his own quirk to their room: Ringo has several vending machines, John has a bookshelf and his bed is in a pit in the floor, Paul has an organ which surfaces from the floor, and George has a bed of grass complete with a gardener!
      • There was also a deleted scene that showed that one of them also had a cow in a cupboard used for free milk.
  • Also Bigger on the Inside was the Eastern temple when it was brought to the Bahamas under a beach.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Ringo tries to escape from the tiger pit:

*looks directly into the camera* "All the rungs have been neatly sawed through the middle."

• • And before that, there was...

Ahme: *looks directly into the camera* "I am not what I seem."

• Brick Joke: About halfway through the film the scientists' bomb goes off and breaks a hole in an ice rink, with a cross-channel swimmer emerging from beneath and asking the way to the White Cliffs of Dover. He can be seen at the end emerging on a beach in the Bahamas and being redirected again by the Beatles.
• British Royal Guards: A small battalion of marching guardsmen immediately collapses mid-march after inadvertently getting hit with Knockout Gas.

Ringo: It must be their tea break.

• Buffy-Speak: "Hey, it's a thingie! A fiendish thingie!"
• Captain Ersatz: Kaili = Kali.
• Caption Humor: Comedic captions and intertitles abound in this.
  • Captain Obvious: A tiger's appearance has the caption "A tiger".
• Clingy MacGuffin: The ring.
• Comedic Sociopathy: John, most notably, but really all of them; at some point, each suggests cutting Ringo's finger off (John does so holding a steak knife and says it would be like "having a tooth out"), and George, Ringo and John's complete non-reaction when Ringo supposedly squashes Paul.
• Crazy Prepared: The cult dons (sometimes) elaborate disguises and rigs up Scooby-Doo-like traps in places they anticipate the Beatles will wander into.
• Crowd Song: The Ode to Joy, in German.
• Dartboard of Hate: The opening credits — the Beatles are on a movie clip, and Clang throws darts at the screen whenever Ringo or the ring is visible.
• Deadpan Snarker: Each of the Beatles.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Two lagers and lime, and two lagers and lime."
• Deus Ex Machina: Sort of.
• Fake Nationality/Fauxreigner: All the cultists from 'the East' are played by English actors. This is Lampshaded when the Beatles visit the Indian Restaurant "seeking enlightenment as to rings" from someone from "the mystic East" but quickly learn that everyone working there is English.

Ringo: He's from the West! Restaurant Host: No, the East... Stepney.

• Fan Service: Probably most blatant in the "hand dryer ripping off the boys' clothes" scene.
  • Also, naked Paul?
  • Paul on the beach in tight t-shirt and jeans further qualifies.
• Friend to All Living Things: Algernon claims to be this.

Algernon: I work better with animals. They trust me, you see. I should have gone into vivisection.

• Funny Background Event: George putting things into his pockets at the jewellery shop.
  • George spends most of the movie doing funny or awkward things in the background.
• Heel Face Turn: Ahme.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: The easily amused patron at the Indian restaurant also appeared in A Hard Day's Night as the guy jumping up and down with Ringo during the nightclub dance sequence.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: "The Exciting Adventure of Paul on the Floor".
  • Also something of a (deliberate, played for laughs) Big Lipped Alligator Moment.
• Is It Something You Eat?: George's reaction when holding a cymbal at one point.
• Intermission
• Latex Perfection: How does one manage that for Ringo?!
• MacGuffin: The ring.
• Mad Scientist: Professor Foot. Lampshaded by John when he says "This is absurd! You're nothing but a trite, hackneyed mad scientist!".
• No Sense of Direction: The Beatles' Road Manager Mal Evans, does a cameo as a swimmer who has this, looking for the White Cliffs of Dover while under some ice (in Switzerland — just roll with it) and again at the end in a Brick Joke in the Caribbean Sea.
• Old Shame: John Lennon hated this film when he looked back on it. In fact, the band as a whole wasn't too fond of the end product.
• Path of Inspiration: This cult, probably.
• Performance Video: It's a musical, and we get to see most of the songs performed.
• Pinball Protagonist: All four Beatles for much of the film.
• Police Are Useless: Averted (the police in this case being the British police, the Bahaman Police and fricking army). They do quite a good job protecting the Beatles, as the Inspector in charge turns out to be quite a bright penny. Hell, they even save the Beatles from the cult! Twice.
• Punk in the Trunk: Ringo, courtesy of Foot and Algernon.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The Beatles have admitted they more or less wanted a paid vacation, which is why they suggested some of the film's more exotic locations (The Bahamas, the Alps).
• Reality Subtext: Paul says to Ringo "Well, you didn't miss your tonsils, did you?", referencing the fact that Ringo had a tonsillectomy earlier that year.
• Running Gag: "John: "Getting nowhere, are you, jeweller/mad scientist/superintendent?"
  • People and things being referred to as "The famous X" ("the famous Beatles", "the famous Ringo", "the famous ring", "the famous temple", and so forth) primarily by the Superintendent, although the Beatles themselves as well as the written narration pick up on the trend.
• Say My Name: After Ringo is kidnapped in the Bahamas, the other three Beatles go about looking for him, shouting his name the whole time.
• Scenery Porn: The film does look good.
• Shout-Out: The version of "Help!" used in the movie's opening credits and on the American soundtrack starts with a snippet of the James Bond theme.
  • One of the orchestral cues is appropriately titled, "Another Hard Day's Night".
• Stuff Blowing Up
• Take Over the World: The main reason the mad scientists want the ring.

"With a ring like that I could, dare I say it, rule the world! I must have that ring! Algernon, the laser!"

• Theme Tune Cameo
• Throw It In: Part of the "Ticket to Ride" sequence, which the directors considered beautiful, was marred by the presence of telegraph poles in the background. Attempts at removing them failed...and then someone had the idea of superimposing musical notes over the wires in time with "I think I'm going to be sad..."
• Took a Level In Badass: George in the Bahamas. He jumps on the back of the scientists' moving car to rescue Ringo in the boot.
  • This is probably the most glorious moment in the whole movie. After spending the entire time messing around in the background, cheating at cards, and just sort of going with things, he fights off four cultists and very nonchalantly leaps on top of a car and rescues Ringo.
• Toplessness From the Back: Ahme's sister taking a bath in Part Two.
• Unfortunate Implications: This isn't a great depiction of Eastern cultures, particularly Hinduism, though it's clear Clang is running more a cult of personality than a real religion.

"Without the ring, there can be no sacrifice...without the sacrifice, there can be no congregation...without the congregation...no more me!"

• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The people in the Indian restaurant seem pretty undisturbed by the sight of a number of cultists strangling, kidnapping and replacing the staff.

Man (as his waiter is dragged off): Oh, rather a jolly place!

• • The Beatles seem rather undisturbed as well, at least until they see Ringo's hand nearly get chopped off. Of particular note is John's complete nonchalance over finding items in his food (the result of the chefs being knocked out).

John: What's this? Ringo: It's a season ticket. What did you think it is? John: Oh, I like a lot of seasoning in me soup.

• What Could Have Been: Footage for a few deleted scenes has been floating around. One of the most prominent ones is for a scene in which the Beatles attend The Sam Ahab School of Transcendental Elocution. While there, they, Sam Ahab, and another student known as "Lady Macbeth" are hypnotized by the cult's "Go to the Window" music, except for George, who was wearing earplugs. They try to chop off Ringo's hand while most of the room is in a trance, but George knocks the axe (!!!) they were using out of their hands and into a mirror. The cult flees and everyone wakes up to see the axe left behind. The scene ends with John removing the axe and asking Lady Macbeth "Is this a chopper that you see before you?". This scene would have explained why Ringo withdrew his hand so quickly the next time they tried to cut it off, as well as how the boys knew to plug their ears in the Scotland Yard scene.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The gardener from George's room is not seen again after playing the flute in "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away".