Ram Jaane

 

 Shah Rukh Khan may be the King of Romance, but he's played plenty of baddies over the years, including his fair share of brutal but charming gangsters.  Ram Jaane (1995) is an early example of Khan-as-gangster, and it's remarkable just how much it feels like a commentary on Khan's role in the Don franchise, despite being made more than a decade earlier.

The movie starts with an orphan nicknamed "Footpath" living on the street.  Footpath is even more orphaned than his best friend and fellow orphan Murli; Murli has a name and a shirt, while Footpath just has a nice hat.  The boy asks the village priest (Arun Ali) when he will finally be given a name, and the old man sadly replies "Ram Jaane" - God only knows, in other words.  The kid knows a good name when he hears it.

Murli and the newly christened Ram are friends with neighborhood girl Bela, and by friends I mean that they are both deeply smitten with her. She goes to school, but the boys spend their time committing minor crimes, then graduate to stealing from a train.  They're quickly spotted, though, and while running away Murli falls on the tracks.  Ram saves him, but that slows him down enough that he's caught by the brutal policeman Chewte (Puneet Issar), who is not shy about beating children.  

Ram is sent to reform school, but escapes along the way and makes his way back to Murli, who is now wearing a school uniform.  Murli explains that the priest has given him a chance to go straight, while Bela has been sent away to a hostel to study and become a fine lady who will marry a rich man.  All Ram Jaane can focus on is "Bela will marry a rich man," so he goes to work for the gangster Sameer Sanavla (Tinnu Anand).

Years pass.  Ram is now played by Shah Rukh Khan, and he's become Sanavla's top enforcer, though he still doesn't seem to own a shirt.  He is very good at his job, killing the henchmen of rival gang lord Mirchi (Amritpal) with style and an inordinate number of puns.  there's a problem, though; fellow gangster Pannu (Pankaj Kapur) is upset about being overshadowed by Ram, and possibly also about being nicknamed "Technicolor".  Pannu strikes a deal with Mirchi, arranging for an ambush at the end of Ram's Batman-themed musical number.  Ram manages to kill all of the attacking gangsters as well as Mirchi, but just as the last man falls, Inspector Chewte arrives and shoots Sanalva.  Ram attempts to kill Chewte, but he's overwhelmed by a large number of policemen, arrested, and sent to prison for four years.  

When he gets out Ram is placed in the custody of Murli (Vivek Mushran), who now runs an unlicensed orphanage.  Bela (Juhi Chawla) is a frequent visitor, and has not married a rich man.  She is also clearly in love with Murli, though Ram sees what he wants to see.

When Ram was sent to prison, Pannu promised him money and a share of the business when he got out.  Ram is ready to collect, but Pannu doesn't want to pay, and he is now in business with Bhau (Gulshan Grover) and thinks he'll be safe.  He is not safe.  Ram forces his way into he business by stealing bank records Pannu was responsible for keeping, and manages to cheerfully survive all of Bhau and Pannu's attempts to kill him.  

Meanwhile, Murli wants to save his friend's soul, but he's also worried about how much the boys at the orphanage look up to Ram.  He should be worried, since Ram has started using some of the boys to assist in his crimes.  And Bela just wants Murli to admit his feelings.

Things come to a head when corrupt businessman Baweja (G.P. Singh) hires Bhau to clear out the land the orphanage sits on, and Ram solves the problem by assassinating Baweja.  Everybody knows that Ram is responsible, so Chewte "investigates" by going to the orphanage and threatening childre.  Murli intervenes, and the situation escalates further when the boys start throwing things at the police.  Chewte retailates by shooting a fourteen year old in the head, then walks away.  Murli blames Ram, and Ram leaves, though he does stop long enough to beg Bela to go with him.And that's when Murli comes up with his worst idea ever: he asks, then begs, then emotionally blackmails Bela into agreeing to date Ram, hoping that that will be enough to reform him.  Unfortunately, while he loves Bela, Ram is still an awful person, and it does not solve the problem that he's too damned cool to be around impressionable youth.

Despite the similar career and general bravado, Ram Jaane is a very different character than Don.  Don is smooth, stylish, and always in control, while Ram is a bundle of anger who lives by instinct.  Don is always five steps ahead of the opposition, while Ram is one, maybe two steps ahead and makes up the difference with charm and improvisation.  

However, both characters leverage Khan's effortless charisma, and in fact the central problem in Ram Jaane is that Ram is too damned cool.  That's because this is actually a surprisingly faithful remake of the 1938 movie Angels With Dirty Faces, with Khan in the Jimmy Cagney role.  There's an added focus on the love triangle, but I am never going to say no to more Juhi Chawla.

Bhooth Bangla

 

 There have been more vampires than usual in Bollywood lately, but Bhooth Bangla (2026) is not a vampire movie.  Sure, the villainous Vadhusur skulks in darkness, commands a literal army of bats, owns a castle that the protagonists inherit, and turns one of the comic relief characters into a knockoff Renfield, but he draws the line at drinking blood. Not a vampire, he just stole Orlok's look.

Meanwhile, Arjun (Akshay Kumar) has a problem.  His much younger sister Meera (Mithala Palkar) is engaged to the bland but handsome Rahul (Perin Malde), but Rahul's family astrologer keeps making more and more demands for the ceremony.  Meera has already had to marry a tree, and now Arjun is having trouble finding a wedding venue that will pass astrological muster.

And then a lawyer (Alexx O'Nell) shows up with some good news: Arjun and Meera's grandfather, Dushant Acharya (Rajesh Sharma) is dead!  The siblings didn't know that they had a grandfather, but he has died and left Meera a fortune and a palace in northern India.  The money's nice, but a palace is a wedding venue that they don't have to pay for, so Arjun leaves their London home and flies to India to check the place out.

When Arjun arrives he meets the palace caretaker, Shantaram (Asrani), who explains that the palace is haunted and cursed, complete with the requisite mysterious locked room that must never be opened under any circumstances.  In fact the entire village of Mangalpur is cursed, as the demon Vadhusur won't permit any brides in the area; he carries away newlywed women and kills any other members of the wedding party he can catch.  (Vadhusur has a complicated backstory to explain his actions; the short version is that he's half god, half demon, cast into darkness because of his mixed heritage, and his war against the gods ended when a divine nymph with lightning powers married him in order to get close enough to stab him.  vadhusur needs to sacrifice thirteen brides to bring him back to full life, and they have collected twelve so far.)

 Arjun doesn't really believe in the curse and it's a free venue, so the wedding is on, and wedding planner Jagdish (Paresh Rawal) arrives to get the palace into shape, bringing a small group of employees including his own nephew Balli (Rajpal Yadav.)  And then mildly spooky stuff starts to happen, but the first half of the film is largely devoted to the comedy part of horror comedy, and far too many of the gags involve Arjun hitting Balli or Jagdish repeatedly burning his backside in a series of improbable accidents.  

Probably the most important thing that happens in this part of the film is that Arjun is electrocuted in another improbable  accident and revived by Priya (Wamiqa Gabbi), a writer who happened to be passing by while researching local legends.  Except that Priya is actually trying to find her missing twin sister Chitra, who vanished on the way to her wedding.  Arjun and Priya hit it off, and she promises to return in time for the wedding.  And the next day he spots Priya, dressed in a sari, and she seems surprised that he can see her.  The flirting intensifies.

The haunting also intensifies, and even Arjun has to admit that something's wrong, especially when a friendly monk who was visiting to check the palace for soirits is killed in by flying debris during a sudden storm. Arjun finally manages ton get in touch with his father  Vasudev (Jisshu Sengupta), who tells him all about the curse.  Arjun tries to cancel the wedding, but Meera arrives, accompanied by Rahul's family.  Rather than explain things to his sister, Arjun decides that the wedding is back on, leading to further shenanigans as he tries to keep his sister's wedding on track while protecting everyone from the ghost.  

 There are some obvious similarities to the Bhool Bhulaiyaa series, including the haunted palace, the forbidden room, and most of the cast.  There are some significant differences, though; the plot is drawn more from old Ramsay Brothers movies than the pure ghost stories you see in the Bhools Bhulaiyaa, and the balance of horror and comedy is different, with incredibly broad physical comedy in the first half followed by some genuinely effective action scenes and real scary moments in the second half.  I kind of get why; the supporting cast are veteran comedians and they are given a chance to trot out some of their classic material, but I just don't find hitting Rajpal Yadav very funny, and it makes Arjun come across as really unlikable.  

The movie picks up considerably when it stops being a comedy, and the scene of Arjun menaced by Vadhusur, with light as his only weapon, is genuinely well done.  And while the plot is very predictable, it's also well crafted and holds together well.  For me movie's real flaw is that Tabu is really underused; she makes a cameo appearance in an extended flashback, and she is always wonderful.  I would have liked more.

 

 

Stupid Vows, the Motion Picture

 

 Legendary Bollywood director Yash Chopra directed twenty three films, including such classics as Chandni, Darr, and Veer Zaara.  Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) was his last film, and it's very Yash Chopra, a grand sweeping tale of love with huge emotions, great performances, and a plot that doesn't quite make sense if you think about it for too long.

Major Samar Anand (Shah Rukh Khan) is "The Man Who Cannot Die," the superstar of the Indian Army's bomb disposal unit.  he doesn't act like a rock star, though - he's surly and gruff, but very considerate of his subordinates.  He also refuses to wear any sort of bomb disposal suit, or any safety gear at all, almost as if he's actively daring God to kill him.  Samar obviously has a backstory,m and after he rescues plucky aspiring filmmaker Akira Rai (Anushka Sharma) from drowning in a lake, he accidentally leaves his diary behind.  Akira opens it, and discovers an extended flashback.

The movie jumps back ten years.  Samar is a street musician in London, but he works a variety of odd jobs in order to support himself and his Pakistani roommate Zain (Sharid Hashmi).   Samar is young and carefree and nothing is ever going to change him, at least until he spots Meera Thappar (Katrina Kaif).  Meera is young, but she's anything but carefree; her wealthy father (Anupam Kher) owns a chain of grocery stores, and she's a key part of his business, a respectable businesswoman who sometimes sneaks off to a nearby church to pray to Jesus.  (I say pray, but it's more like a negotiation - she asks Jesus for a boon, and when the boon is granted she makes a sacrifice, such as giving up smoking or wearing furs.  This will be important later.)  

By the time Samar and Meera properly meet, she's engaged to childhood friend Roger (Jay Conroy), and she is very careful to explain to the handsome musician that she's just met that she is very happy about that.  Really.  

 Meera wants to learn a Punjabi song that she can sing for her father at his birthday party, and she offers Samar money to teach her.  He has a different idea, and asks Meera to help him with his English.  naturally this leads to them falling in love, especially after Samar helps Meera to reconcile with her estranged mother (Neetu Kapoor) and stepfather (Rishi Kapoor).  They plan to make the relationship official, but before Meera can bring up the subject with her father, Samar is hit by a car and seriously injured.  Meera immediately strikes another bargain with Jesus: if He will spare Samar's life, she will give up Samar, the person she loves the most.  

Presumably Jesus accepts the bargain, because Samar makes a full recovery.  But when Meera tells him about her vow, he does not take it well.  He issues his own challenge to God - he will keep risking his life until God either gives up and lets him die, or gives up and lets him have Meera.  And ten years later he's disarming bombs for the Indian army.  

Akira is young and carefree and convinced that nothing will ever change her, so she obtains permission to make a documentary about the Indian Army's bomb disposal unit, and Samar specifically.  Things start off tense, but they soon develop an odd friendship.  While Akira has fallen for Samar, his heart still belongs to Meera.  After two weeks Akira is ready to wrap up the documentary, and it's good enough to get her a job offer from the Discovery Channel, but only if Samar will come to London and confirm his story.  Samar agrees to come, for one day only, just for Akira's sake, and then he's hit by another car.

In the hospital Samar asks for Meera and doesn't recognize Akira at all.  He has amnesia!  A very specific form of amnesia, which causes him to lose all memory of everything after his first car accident.  The only medical solution is for Meera to come to the hospital and help ease him into recovery. And to be fair that's all the doctors ask of her; nobody was expecting her to tell Samar that they're married, requiring an elaborate web of lies.  For a while Samar is happy and Meera is both happy and wracked with guilt, but it's all going to come crashing down sooner or later and Meera and Akira are competing to see who gets to make the big romantic self-sacrifice first.

The movie feels like the filmmakers knew they wanted the amnesia plotline, and then worked backwards to make that happen.  The details never quite line up properly, so the movie throws big emotions at you and hopes that you don't notice.  And to be fair, the big emotions are handled well; all three leads are complicated people, and Kaif, Sharma and Khan all put in great performances.

Normally I would be complaining that this is a problem that could be solved with five minutes of honest conversation, but they have the five minutes of conversation and it doesn't help.   Meera is unusually layered for a romantic heroine, and while she's wrong to give up her love because of a hasty vow, she is the kind of person who would do that,  while Samar is prickly and bitter enough that he has to change as well for the relationship to work.  As always, don't try this at home, and don't think too hard about the plot, but the big sweeping romance will sweep you along if you want it to.

 

Yellow Submarine

 

The Beatles were not directly involved in the production of Yellow Submarine (1968); producer Al Brodax was also responsible for the not-very-good Beatles cartoon series, and they were not expecting anything good.  On the other hand, it was an easy way to complete their three movie deal with United Artists, so contracts were signed, likenesses were lent, and the movie went ahead, with the Beatles contributing a short live action cameo at the very end of the movie after discovering that it was actually good.

The movie begins with Pepperland, an unearthly paradise beneath the waves.  (It's basically Oz with a slight nautical theme.)  Everything is perfect and tranquil and the Pepperlanders enjoy their eternal garden party . . . until the Blue meanies attack!  The Chief Blue Meanie (Paul Angelis) deploys his highly specialized but very blue armies to attack Pepperland, while the Dreadful Flying Glove soars overhead to point at and pound anyone trying to escape.  Only Young Fred (Lance Percival) manages to escape, sailing the flying Yellow Submarine to the far off land of Liverpool.

Liverpool can be a lonely place in a Saturday night, and Ringo (also Paul Angelis) is feeling gloomy, complaining that "nothing ever happens to me."  (Which is silly - there was the time he was targeted by an evil cult because of a ring he got in the mail, and the time that Paul's other grandfather convinced him to run away from a TV studio.  Everything happens to Ringo.  He can't even take a bus trip with his aunt without four or five magicians causing trouble.)  Ringo cheers up a bit when he realizes that he's being stalked through the streets of Liverpool by a flying submarine.

 Ringo flees to "The Pier", a mansion with a TARDIS-like disregard for consistent dimensions which he shares with John (John Clive), Paul (Geoffrey Hughes) and George (Peter Batten and, once again, Paul Angelis.  It's complicated.)  Young Fred explains about the Blue Meanies, and the band sets off to save Pepperland.

They don't get there immediately, of course.  First they have surreal misadventures in the Sea of Time and Sea of Science, have to rescue Ringo from the Sea of Monsters, and meet the enigmatic Nowhere man, Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. (Dick Emery.)  Jeremy repairs the submarine's broken propeller, causing it to fly away with Young Fred, then as the group explore the Sea of Holes he's kidnapped by a Blue Meanie, so the band have to make their own way through the foothills of the headlands to reach Pepperland.

And of course they do.  They rescue the Mayor (Dick Emery) and are reunited with Young Fred, who delivers vital exposition and points out that the Beatles look exactly like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; if they can just find some instruments they should be able to rally the people and overthrow the music-hating Meanies, and that's kind of what happens?  There's a happy ending, anyway.

 Yellow Submarine has the same surreal sense of humor as the other Beatles movies, though because it's animated rather than live action it's able to be even more surreal.  Like the other movies it also has a surprisingly complicated script full of puns and references.  Paying attention is rewarding.

The movie also has a tremendous sense of visual style, thanks largely to art director Heinz Edelmann.   It's a movie that doesn't really look like anything else, though there are other projects that try to look like Yellow Submarine.  The soundtrack is less unique (there are other Beatles movies, after all) but still magnificent.

And to top it all off, it's a rollicking fantasy adventure.  The plot is honestly a little thin, but the early string of song-driven  incidents means that it's structured very much like one of the Oz books, with Ringo as Dorothy Gale.  The group wander from one oddity to another before stumbling back into the plot, and the whole endeavor is focused on character and tone rather than incident.  

 A Hard Day's Night is probably a better movie, but Yellow Submarine is better than it had any right to be, a perfect piece of cinematic serendipity that is defiantly itself.

 

Strawberry Fields

 Al Brodax was a prolific TV and film producer who worked on, among many other things, the terrible 1960s Beatles cartoon series and the splendid Yellow Submarine.  In the late eighties he decided to try again, spearheading another animated film with a Beatles soundtrack, which was promoted as a sort of spiritual sequel to Yellow Submarine, but was never released.  So pull up a chair and let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

The project made sense on paper - the Beatles' song catalog is extensive, and plenty of songs didn't make it into Yellow Submarine.  The movie would feature original characters rather than the band, and would be made with cutting edge computer animation.  The trouble started soon.  The movie used cutting edge computer animation of the late Eighties, which was notoriously bad at rendering human characters.  Rather than make the movie with traditional 2D animation, they animated the characters in 2D and then layered them onto the 3D CGI work.  More seriously, it quickly became clear that Brodax's partners didn't have the rights to the original recordings of the songs, and the Beatles wanted nothing to do with the project, so all of the songs in the movie would have to be covers, making this closer to a spiritual sequel to 1978's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  

 

This movie never came out, but a fair amount of footage survives.  I'm going to be focusing specifically on the 1990 Trailer/Pitch Film, which is eighteen minutes long and lays out the planned storyline in some sort of coherent order, even if it leaves out elements and characters like Rocky Raccoon.

Many years ago, Maxwell the Amiable took the throne of the Kingdom of Rhyde.  Maxwell wanted a hammer to serve as the symbol of his authority, and he invited his people to bring him hammers, but none of them were suitable, until Satan appeared and offered him a bejeweled silver hammer with tremendous cosmic power.  Maxwell immediately went mad with power and destroyed his own kingdom, and the Hammer was lost.

 Centuries later, the Hammer is protected by a wise old sage known as the Fool on the Hill.  (The Fool is also a humanoid goat for some reason.)  The Fool is honor bound to reveal the location of the Hammer to anyone who presents the appropriate magical amulet, but the amulet is also lost.  The Walrus wants the hammer, so he sends his Eggmen through space (Rhyde is on a different planet) to find the amulet.

The Fool dispatches his Blackbird (an actual blackbird) to find the appropriate hero, and it finds Jude, a professional adventurer who likes to pretend to be a film noir detective.  (As far as I know Michael J. Fox was never attached to the project, but Jude is the kind of cartoon character who should be played by Michael J. Fox.)  Jude is quickly approached by shadowy femme fatale Michelle Mabelle, who is beautiful but amoral, and speaks perfect English even though the Michelle from the Beatles song is mostly known for not speaking any English at all.

Jude and Michelle evade the Walrus's henchmen in a high speed limousine chase, and manage to steal the amulet from a museum.  They're on the wrong planet to retrieve the Hammer, though, so they need money and a ticket to Rhyde.   And they get money and a ticket through shenanigans which are poorly explained in the pitch film and not particularly interesting.  They book tickets on a space train called The Magical Mystery Tour, and soon find themselves hurtling across the universe (as sung by Cyndi Lauper.)

In the centuries since King Maxwell's disastrous reign Rhyde has become a Casablanca parody for some reason, and Jude and Michelle meet and befriend a street-smart rickshaw driver named Fiat-top, who speaks in broken English because this is a cartoon from the late Eighties.  (Flat-top doesn't just drive the rickshaw, he also breakdances, and he's got an epic mullet which combines the flat-top hairstyle with hair down to his knee.  Michael Jackson provides a cover of "Come Together," because apparently he hasn't made Paul McCartney angry enough yet.) 

After finding information at Rick's Place (really), Michelle, the tough, brassy, and Han Solo-inflected heroine, is promptly kidnapped by the Walrus's forces, there's a dogfight for some reason, and Michelle is rescued.  Everyone heads to the mystical land known as Strawberry Fields, the Walrus gets the Hammer, and there's a climactic mech battle on the top of the volcanic Mount Prudence.  But, the narrator assures us, the good guys win somehow.  Satan gets his hammer back and plots revenge.

 

Out of all the Beatles-related projects we've looked at so far, this one has the fewest Beatles involved; even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had Billy Preston, one of the many people referred to as the Fifth Beatle.  And Strawberry Fields inverts the usual relationship between plot and songs; the plot is its own thing, and the songs seem to be there mostly for branding purposes

And then there's the animation.  To be fair, this is not a finished film, and the animation would have been refined considerably before it was released to the public, but my goodness it has not aged well.  I actually like early 90s CGI, and I will sometimes sit down and watch compilation videos like The Gate to the Mind's Eye on purpose, even if it's just for the Thomas Dolby soundtrack.  But this is supposed to be a movie, and it feels too much like one of those compilations.,  Why is there a Dimetrodon wandering around Strawberry Fields?  Why do people made of money celebrate the Walrus's victory with a big band performance?  I kind of suspect that it's because they had existing CGI footage that they could recycle.  (In fact, I recognize the money people from The Gate to the Mind's Eye.)   

Again, that's something that could be cleaned up as the film gets closer to release, and there are moments where the visuals actually feel like something out of Yellow Submarine.  But if you set aside the music and the visuals, you're left with the writing, and that falls flat.  This is a very basic quest narrative with Beatles names attached as an afterthought. Nobody really matches the songs they come from; Michelle speaks perfect English, Jude never takes a sad song and makes it better, and the Walrus never sits on a cornflake waiting for the van to come. Maybe if they had time and money and proper licensing agreements it could have worked, but it's all wrong.  That is, I think I disagree.

 

A Hard Day's Night

 A Hard Day's Night (1964) is easily the most grounded of the Beatles movies that we've looked at: there are no cults chasing a sacred ring, no four or five magicians living in a science classroom in the sky, no magical instruments or evil record executives, and definitely no Blue Meanies.  This is a fictionalized day in the life of a fictionalized version of the band, but it is also a perfectly crafted gem of a movie that does exactly what it sets out to do.

John, Paul, George and Ringo play versions of themselves.  As the movie opens, they're on a train traveling to their next gig, accompanied by manager Norm (Norman Rossington) and road manager Shake (John Junkin), as well as John McCartney (Wilfrid Brambell), Paul's "other" grandfather.  McCartney Senior is a troublemaker, with a talent for spotting the weak link in any social group and exploiting their insecurities until the group collapses into bickering and acrimony, but as everyone who meets him points out, he's very clean.

The movie takes place during the height of Beatlemania, so the boys are pursued by crowds of screaming girls pretty much wherever they go.  That means that their movements are sharply curtailed and Norm is keeping a close eye on them all the time, and that frustrates the band and particularly John, who is a bit of a troublemaker himself.

 The band arrive at their hotel, and Norm hands each member a stack of fan mail which they are supposed to answer, but as soon as Norm leaves the band sneaks out to a party, while Paul's grandfather sneaks out to a casino.  Wackiness ensues, but eventually everyone is forced to return to the hotel room and the letters are presumably answered.

The next day the band is scheduled to perform in a televised concert, and most of the day is taken up with interviews, rehearsals, and sneaking away to literally frolic in a field.   But there is trouble; Paul's grandad is working his magic, first on the TV Director (Victor Spinelli) and then the band's psychological weak link, Ringo.  He exploits Ringo's insecurities about his height and his nose and general Ringoness, and convinces him to put down his book and go out "parading" to experience life in the real world.  

When the rest of the band notice that Ringo is missing, they set out to find him, meaning that everyone is missing rather than just Ringo.  Will they make it back in time for the concert?   Yes.  Obviously.  But not until after a lengthy Benny Hill-style chase through the city streets.

While A Hard Day's Night is more grounded than the other Beatles movies, it does have the same sense of absurdist humor.  This is a very funny movie, and the script sparkles in places, particularly the interview scene.  And the lads display an easy chemistry with one another; everybody is young and carefree and nothing is ever going to change them.

But for me the key scene is when George accidentally wanders into an advertising agency, and Dolly (Alison Seebohm), the secretary, mistakes him for an aspiring actor.  George is asked to be enthusiastic about some grotty shirts, with the promise of meeting current "it girl" Susan Campy.  It's a fascinating look into the manufactured nature of celebrity and the corporate forces trying to shape youth culture.  It's a bit of satire that is if anything even more relevant today. 

And at the same time that the movie is commenting on the artificial nature of celebrity, it's also providing a perfect example.  The Fab Four in the film might be inspired by the personalities of the real men, but they still present perfectly crafted public personae.  It's easy to think that you know the Beatles personally after watching the movie, but that's how para-social relationships work.  Still, the Movie Beatles are delightful, and it's nice to spend some time with them.

"The Beatles," now in cartoon form.

 

 In 1965 ABC premiered an exciting new cartoon based on pop culture sensation "The Beatles," and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.  Each episode of The Beatles featured two stories named after Beatles songs, padded out with additional skits and sing-alongs.  And while the show managed to run for thirty nine episodes, we are only looking at the first one, because I am not emotionally prepared to watch the entire series.

The first story, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," opens with the band rehearsing for a gig in Transylvania.  It's difficult, though, because even in Transylvania the Beatles can't go anywhere without running into hordes of adoring fans.  Ringo has a bright idea: they can rehearse in the spooky abandoned castle just outside of town!  They do, but the castle isn't actually abandoned, it's home to a large selection of monsters, including a ghost, an executioner, a witch, the Wolfman, Dracula, and Frankenstein's Monster.  (The Monster does at least attempt a Boris Karloff impression, though it sounds more like Bobby Pickett.) 

And the monsters chase the Beatles through the castle in a sequence which I would swear was lifted from Scooby-Doo, except that the first episode of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" didn't premiere until 1969.

Finally the monsters reveal that they actually like the music, so the Beatles perform "I Want to Hold Your Hand" for them and then turn green and collapse.  Did they die?  Probably not, because this is just the first episode, but it sort of seems like that. 

The second story takes place on a cruise ship.  The Beatles try to escape their legion of adoring fans, and wind up stealing a yellow submarine and diving under the sea to an octopus's garden in the shade, where they meet an overly affectionate lady octopus.  To escape they perform "I Want to Hold Your Hand," because "Octopus's Garden" hadn't been written yet.

As a cartoon, this is not very good.  The animation is cheap, the writing relies on tired jokes and sub-Ruth Plumly Thompson-tier puns, and the plots are only there to string the songs together.  (The songs are actually good, obviously.)  The cartoon attempts to emulate the quick cuts and frenetic pacing of A Hard Day's Night and Help!, but the episodes are so short that there's nothing to latch onto, and the stories wind up emulating the worst aspects of Help! with several episodes in which the band travel to faraway places and meet ethnic stereotypes.

 As a Beatles product, it's even worse.  The band do not provide their voices, obviously; all of the voices are provided by Paul Frees, Lance Percival, Julie Bennett, and Carol Corbett, and the band just don't sound like themselves; Percival's Ringo does at least sound like a Ringo Starr impression.  Ringo is also treated very much as the dumb one, while John is the smart one and therefore treated as a bossy martinet.  If it weren't for the songs and the haircuts, you wouldn't be able to tell that this was supposed to be about the Beatles at all.

 In short, this cartoon does not treat the concept of "The Beatles Meet Dracula" with the respect it deserves.