Help! on the other hand, held me glued to my seat, with its mix of great Beatles tunes, and way cool plot which (at the far more mature age of eight) reminded me of the great secret agent shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I liked to watch on TV. Even some of the non-Beatles music on the soundtrack had that sort of secret agent thing about it. By the time I saw my first James Bond movie as a pre-teen, I was finally able to fully connect those dots.
Anyway, after I saw Help!, when the rest of my boyhood chums wanted to play "Army" or something, all I wanted to do was play Help!.
Which involved running around on the grass in my parents' yard like we we're being chased by a religious cult and a mad scientist, and then going down into my parents' basement and bashing away at my toy drum set. In retrospect, I guess I can see why I wasn't able to drum up much interest amongst my boyhood chums.
So let's get the quibbles out of the way first about this new DVD release.
Unlike some of my fellow Blogcritics, I have to say for starters, that I am perfectly satisfied with the standard release. The main thing that separates it from the much pricier deluxe version — outside of things like a bigger and nicer box, a bigger book, a poster, and director Richard Lester's original annotated script — is that the deluxe version comes in the original 1:75 aspect ratio.
Personally, I'm completely satisfied with the 1:33 (fullscreen) ratio offered here. And like I said, watching this DVD tonight, the memories came flooding back. What also comes from the benefit of a few decades of life experience, is the realization of just how smart a movie Help! really was.
There are the obvious things of course. Like the way this movie, made in 1965, pretty much wrote the original book for the way MTV-styled videos would be made two decades later. There are also the less obvious references you pick up on in the actual dialog when you see Help! today.
There are all kinds of weird little things you pick up on watching Help! today. Like the references to things like the Freemasons in the original script (and who would have ever pegged the then ever-innocent moptops as conspiracy theorists?).
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. ;-)