Film

Help!

Name: Help!
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Music
Released: 1965
Cast: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Leo McKern

"Help!" is the Beatles' second film, a Bond-spoofing chase across London, the Alps and the Bahamas fuelled by a cursed ring, a fanatical cult and two dotty scientists. It's less a story than an excuse to watch four impossibly charming young men mug for the camera between songs. Bright, silly, and gorgeously shot — watch it for the music videos disguised as plot, not the plot.

TMDb rating

6.9

If you liked this

A Hard Day's Night1964

The film that got there first — tighter, funnier, and closer to a real Beatlemania fever dream, with Lennon's wit sharper and the band still finding their screen selves. It's arguably the purer high.

But Less colour, less chaos, no cult subplot — if you came for Help!'s zaniness, this feels comparatively restrained and grounded.

Yellow Submarine1968

The Beatles' cartoon selves let loose in pure psychedelic imagination — trippy animation, a gorgeous soundtrack, and a plot even looser than Help!'s. Watching them back to back charts how far the visuals evolved in three years.

But The band barely appears (they're voiced by actors), and the whimsy goes fully surreal — a different pleasure from watching their actual faces mug for the camera.

Casino Royale1967

A big-budget spy spoof from the same moment, stuffed with absurd gadgets, mod design and a plot that gives up trying to make sense — proof Help!'s comic anarchy was very much in the water.

But Sprawling, overlong, and famously chaotic behind the scenes — the messiness here is confusing rather than charming.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Duck Soup1933

Lennon and the Beatles openly modelled Help!'s structure — nonsense plot, wall-to-wall gags, total disregard for logic — on the Marx Brothers; this is where that anarchic engine was first built.

The Marx Brothers doing what Help! would later steal wholesale — plot as a clothesline for gags, dignity as the first casualty, anarchy as the entire point. Faster, meaner, and somehow still funnier than almost anything made since.

But Black and white, stage-bound, and built on 90-year-old vaudeville rhythms that some modern viewers find hard to settle into.

Batman1966

Same primary-colour, straight-faced camp energy, with heroes bumbling through an absurd plot with total sincerity. If Help!'s po-faced silliness delighted you, this delivers the same joke in a cape.

But No music, no Beatles charisma — just deadpan actors selling ludicrous dialogue, which is its own pleasure but a very different one.

The Party1968no page yet

Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers turn a single disastrous evening into pure visual slapstick with barely any dialogue — the same appetite for gag-making over story that drives Help!'s best chase sequences.

But Sellers' brownface performance as an Indian actor is a genuine, dated problem that rightly puts off some viewers.

A Shot in the Dark1964

Peter Sellers at his most gloriously incompetent, wrapped in a mystery plot nobody — including the film — takes seriously, the same commitment to bit over story that makes Help! work.

But A straight comedy-mystery with no music and no pop stars — the appeal is entirely Sellers' clowning, not star charisma.

Magical Mystery Tour1967no page yet

The Beatles' own stranger follow-up experiment — made for television, entirely unscripted, and considerably weirder. For the curious, it's the moment their film ambitions went fully off the rails.

But By most accounts a genuine mess — meandering and self-indulgent, lacking Help!'s professional polish and gags.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery1997

Takes the exact 60s spy-spoof furniture — mod fashion, cartoon villains, groovy soundtrack — and plays it for a modern audience in on the joke, a direct descendant of Help!'s send-up spirit.

But Broader, cruder humour built on innuendo and gross-out rather than Help!'s more absurdist, deadpan wit.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery poster

Spice World1997no page yet

The 90s answer to the pop-band-comedy-vehicle formula — thin plot, constant mugging, wall-to-wall hits, a bus instead of a submarine. A cheerful, unashamed descendant of exactly what Help! invented.

But It knows it's disposable and doesn't try to be more — go in expecting a fun trifle, not a classic.

This Is Spinal Tap1984

Same engine — a band comedy built on the absurdity of pop fame — but where Help! embraces the Beatlemania machine wholeheartedly, Spinal Tap turns the camera to mock the exact mythology Help! helped create.

A mockumentary about a fictional band that's somehow more truthful about rock stardom than most real footage — the same absurdity Help! plays as farce, here delivered completely straight-faced and much funnier for it.

But Dry, deadpan, mockumentary-paced comedy rather than musical brightness — a very different rhythm from Help!'s cheerful chaos.

The Hours and Times1991no page yet

Strips away every joke and costume to look straight at the real man underneath the Fab Four persona Help! turns into a running gag — same figure, utterly different register.

A quiet, black-and-white drama imagining a real 1963 holiday between John Lennon and manager Brian Epstein — tender, ambiguous, and the lonely human flipside of the cartoon Beatles you've just watched.

But Almost nothing happens by design — a slow, intimate two-hander, the total opposite of Help!'s wall-to-wall gags and colour.