Help!

Part 3 - Release and Reception

With principal photography for the film completed on 11 May 1965, the release and marketing of Help! followed an almost identical pattern to the previous film. Again it was accompanied by the near-concurrent release of a soundtrack album, a single (the title track) and a novelization. Again it was publicized by a Royal premiere at the London Pavilion (29 July). Again this was attended by Princess Margaret, and again the event attracted around 10,000 fans to Piccadilly Circus. Moreover, the promotional posters for the film were almost a blueprint of the first movie's, with the pop art lettering emphasizing the major selling point of seven brand-new songs.

However, if the release and marketing slants of the films were identical, then the reviews weren't. Help! elicited a mixed bag of critical reactions, ranging from extravagant praise to harsh criticism. Indeed, while Sunday Times reviewer Dilys Powell favourably compared the film to the ‘Goon Shows’ and Clive Barnes of the Daily Express to the Marx Brothers (These boys are the closest thing to the Marx Brothers since the Marx Brothers’35), other critics were less forthcoming with their praise, attacking the film's frenetic narrative pace and lack of character development. For example, Nina Hibbin of the Daily Worker strongly criticized these elements, complaining that ‘you find yourself sinking deeper and deeper into your seat, dazed, bemused, punch-drunk, defeated, limp.’36 Likewise, Cecil Wilson of the Daily Mail was also unimpressed, maintaining that the film ‘reduces them to robots' and complained that the vast array of visual jokes were ‘like so many plums which fail somehow to merge into the pudding’.37

Despite a more lukewarm reception than was perhaps expected, the film still performed favourably at the British and American box-office, doing ‘about as well’38 as its predecessor and thrilling audiences with its inventive musical sequences. As Victor Spinetti remembers, ‘You can never ever, once you've seen it, forget that Ticket to Ride’ sequence. It burst onto the screen and it was magical. On the opening night, people just burst into cheering at the end of that sequence.’39

Likewise, the soundtrack material performed well, with the album retaining a number one position in Britain for nine weeks and the title track single for three. The other single release, Ticket to Ride’, had been released some weeks before the film and also topped the British charts for three weeks. American sales were no less impressive and, despite the format differences mentioned earlier, the three film-related releases topped the Billboard, Cashhox and Record World charts. Moreover, the track ‘Yesterday’, which appeared on the British album and was released as a single in America, also topped the American charts, in Hertsgaard’s words becoming the song which ‘more than any other ... extended the Beatles’ appeal beyond their initial core audience of young people and forced remaining mainstream sceptics to acknowledge that this band was no mere fad but a musical force to be reckoned with.’40 Indeed, by 1995 it had long established itself as the most covered song of all-time, with well over two thousand versions in the thirty years since its release.41 Ultimately for the Beatles, the success of the Help! film and soundtrack represented the pinnacle of their mass appeal as all-round family entertainers, and although the film was released just seven weeks after they had received their MBE awards, they would never appear this ‘wholesome’ again.

The release of the film also signalled the end of Lester's cinematic association with the Beatles as a group, although in the following year he went to Spain to make How I Won the War (1966), a deeply satirical anti-war comedy which included a minor role for John Lennon as the pacifist Private Gripweed. As Lester remembers, ‘I didn't want to do another film with them because I felt that they had reached the stage that for both of us it would be right to go off on our own and not be continually linked.’42 And certainly, the Beatles ‘had reached the stage where they wanted much more control over their own destiny’.43 Reflecting on his final Beatles movie, Lester maintains that he ‘always preferred’ Help! to A Hard Day’s Night because he felt that it was a ‘much harder job’, and that ‘it was not just an ordinary sequel’.44 Indeed, although the film never attained the same critical status as its predecessor, its brave and for the most part successful change of direction forces one to wonder what a third Beatles/Lester movie might have produced.

In the months following the film's commercial success, a number of ideas were discussed for the Beatles' next starring role in their third United Artists feature film project, although producer Walter Shenson was unable to find ‘a script or storyline that everyone was able to agree on’.45 At one point, it was announced that the next Beatles film was to be an adaptation of Richard Condon’s Western, A Talent for Loving, but the idea was eventually dropped and subsequently produced elsewhere. Another idea which received serious discussion was a Three Musketeers' film, but again the project failed to progress beyond the planning stage since, in Shenson's words, the idea was ‘rather corny and, thankfully, nobody wanted to do anything like that’.46 Perhaps the most notorious unrealized script was developed by playwright Joe Orton in early 1967, shortly before the Beatles embarked on their own film-making venture. Orton had achieved considerable notoriety for provocative farces such as Loot, and had been contacted by Shenson with a view to developing an existing script for the new Beatles film. In January 1967 he was invited to dinner with Paul McCartney, who praised Loot despite announcing that ‘the only thing that I get from the theatre ... is a sore arse’.47 Orton's ideas grew and by February 1967 he had completed the first draft of a self-penned piece entitled Up Against It. The script, a predictably madcap and provocative cocktail of sex, politics and murder, was, however, considered unsuitable for the Beatles, and was returned to its author in early April without comment. ‘Fuck them’ was Orton's comment.48

© Bob Neaverson 1997 - 2008