"Stop Worrying! Help Is On The Way!"
That line, or catch phrase if you will — from one of two trailers (both included here as extras) for the American release of the Beatles' 1965 film Help! — is just one of the many great things about it that I had completely forgotten about when I sat down to watch this great film tonight for the first time in at least a decade or two.
For me, the Beatles second movie, Help!, represents a unique snapshot in time. And as I watched it tonight on the newly restored version they finally made available on DVD, the memories came flooding back.
Thank God, that whatever hurdles which kept this release from the public for so many years have finally been cleared. For me, Help! holds personal significance.
If there are moments in your life you forever remember — things like 9/11 or when Kennedy was shot — for me, the first of these moments was seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was a seven-year-old boy. Even at that young age, I knew in my heart, that what I was witnessing was something that would alter history - a fact which has since certainly proven true, and then some.
But as that same seven-year-old boy who sat transfixed in front of my parents' television set on that night in 1964, there is absolutely no doubt that what I saw forever altered the course of my own life.
What I can also say, is that the first movie I saw in a theater that I remember having a deep — and as profound as it gets at that age — effect on me was Help! I had also seen the first Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night in the theater the year prior. My grandma — who was as ultra-cool as grandmas get — had taken me. But outside of the music, I didn't really get the movie. At seven, I was probably too young.
Article comments
1 - Brad Laidman
To me Help! is also Austin Powers Thirty or so years before the fact.
2 - Colin Ricketts
Thank you for the memories Glen, I penned a couple of words about how I think Help! is very underrated as an album... Yere tis I still stand by what I said about the film though, it hasn't dated well to my eyes (I'm only in my thirties, The Beatles, with whom I have an unhealthy obsession were long gone by the time I saw sunshine), even though I really like quite a lot of those swingin' sixties supercamp spy thangs. I think Help! collapses under the weight of its own ridiculousness.
3 - Tom Johnson
Oh, man, Glen, I think you got me wrong - I thoroughly endorse the regular edition. It's the wallet-gouging of the deluxe that makes me want to vomit. The movie itself is a fun little thing that will be on my Christmas list for sure - I caught it on cable the weekend before this came out and got distracted toward the end and still have yet to see if Ringo managed to escape being sacrificed. ;-)