"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.  

 

Help!

 

 I can't write about Help! (1965) without addressing the elephant in the room.  Leo McKern was a marvelous actor and a literal national treasure (appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for service to the performing arts), but he is not an appropriate choice to play the leader of a sinister Asian cult based on pulp fiction interpretations of the Indian Thuggee; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom leaned even further into a cartoonish portrayal of Indian religion, but at least Speilberg had the good sense to cast Amrish Puri.  You could try to argue that the cult in Help! is an international organization rather than India-specific, but McKern is doing the accent.  It hasn't aged well, and it was already problematic back in 1965.

McKern plays Clang, the high priest of a murderous cult dedicated to the goddess Kaili.  (And the name is indeed pronounced Kaili rather than Kali, so I have to assume that despite the temple decor and the linear nature of time, the cult is actually dedicated to Kylie Minogue.) 

 Clang and the cult are preparing their latest human sacrifice when they discover that the chosen victim (Vivianne Ventura) is not wearing the sacrificial ring; she is a Beatles fan, and she sent the ring to Ringo.  (Payed by Ringo Starr.  The Beatles play themselves.)  Clang heads for England, accompanied by fellow cultists Bhuta (John Bluthal) and Ahme (Eleanor Bron.)

The Beatles apparently live in a connected row of flats, but said flats are actually a disguised wacky mansion filled with sight gags, and the Beatles perform a lot of comedy bits, occasionally interrupted by the cultists attempting to steal the ring.  Fortunately, Ahme is secretly on the Beatles' side, helping them for reasons that are never explained.  (It's possible she just thinks that Paul is dishy.)  

The Beatles attempt to find out more about the ring by . . . visiting an Indian restaurant.  The cultists pick off and replace the staff one by one, but Ahme manages to warn Paul before they can chop off Ringo's hand.  The band's next stop is to visit mad scientist Foot (Victor Spinetti) and his assistant Algernon (Roy Kinnear), but once Foot discovers that the ring is made of an unknown and indestructible metal, he decides to claim it for himself, because you cannot have a mid-Sixties farce with only one set of villains chasing the heroes.

Finally the band goes to the police for help, and the Superintendent (Patrick Cargill) offers protection.  This leads to pretty much the same comedic hijinks as before, but in different locations, as the Beatles perform in an army base, at an Alpine ski resort, and at various locations in the Bahamas.  Wackiness ensues, on a grand scale.

Unlike the other Beatles movies we've looked at, the plot is not there just to string the songs together.  It's not a deep plot, but the movie does care about it and events actually get resolved.  The film also juggles a few different aspects; it's a straightforward farce, but it's also a James Bond parody, complete with exotic locations and nifty gadgets.  Though the movie feels more like the Bond knock-offs that were popular at the time; it's closer to Secret Agent Super Dragon than Goldfinger.

But what the movie really feels like is the Monkees TV show, and that is clearly not a coincidence; the TV show premiered in 1966, with a band of four musicians with distinctive personalities and similar haircuts and the same sense of absurdist humor.

It's a shame that so much of the movie relies on lazy ethnic stereotypes, though.  More authentic casting would help.  1965 was too early for Amrish Puri, but Pran was mixing comedy with villainy on the big screen at the time, and Mumtaz was starring in B-movies with the wrestler Dara Singh.  (See my review of Samson for a typical example.)  The Beatles were already a known quantity in India - in 1965 Shammi Kapoor was wearing a Beatles mop-top and shimmying to the tune of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", so I believe they could have found somebody.  Not just anybody.

 

 

Meet the Beat Alls.

 The Powerpuff Girls was a popular show on Cartoon Network about a trio of super-powered children, Blossom (Cathy Cavadi), Buttercup (E. G. Daily) and Bubbles (Tara Strong).  The trio were created by the kindly Professor Utonium (Tom Kane) and charged with protecting the city of Townsville.  (But not the town of Cityville; that's somewhere else.)  But we're not looking at the entire series, we're looking at one episode, which places the villains front and center.  So let's "Meet the Beat Alls."

 

 Mojo Jojo (Roger L. Jackson) is an angry simian, frustrated by his repeated failure to defeat the Powerpuff Girls.  He's not the only one; fashion-forward eldritch horror Him (also Tom Kane), bratty "Little Orphan Annie" knock-off Princess (Jennifer Hale), and strong but not silent Fuzzy Lumpkin (Jim Cummings) all want to defeat the Girls as well, and they all pick the same night to attack Professor Utonium's house.  The villains argue, but when the girls fly out to tell them to be quiet they attack, and by working together they manage to . . . win?  So a new supervillain group is formed.

The Beat Alls set out on a crime spree, and they just keep winning; the four of them combined are all too much for the Powerpuff Girls to handle, and the girls finally stop fighting and let them keep at it.  The Townsville police are also helpless, and it looks like nothing can stop the Beat Alls.

 

And then she appears.  Moko Jono, a chimpanzee performance criminal.  Mojo is immediately smitten, and forces the group to participate in Moko's "conceptual crimes," leading to tension in the group and an eventual bitter breakup.

 

The entire episode is a solid wall of Beatles-related puns, quotes, and sight gags, and it is delightful.   

 

And then there's the Moko Jono thing.  For the record, Yoko Ono is not responsible for breaking up the Beatles.  The Fab Four were grown men, evolving in wildly different directions creatively, and they did not need a femme fatale to give them a push.  I suppose it's fitting that a cartoon should riff on the most cartoonish version of the end of the band, but but on the other hand, the Beat Alls aren't actually the Beatles, and the criminal band breaking up is not such a bad thing.  Also Moko Jono isn't what she seems, and is there mostly to set up a shaggy dog joke with a great punchline that I'm not going to spoil. 

 

This is a very silly episode of a silly show. But there's a real affection for the band there, mixed in with all the ribbing.

 

I thought you might like to know . . .

 I started a special month long look at Beatles-related movies, and forgot to mention that that's what I'm doing.  Normal Bollywood content will resume in a couple of weeks

Rupert and the Frog Song

 Rupert Bear is a British icon, a character who first appeared in a newspaper comic strip in 1920.  So why am I talking about Rupert and the Frog Song (1984) in the middle of my Beatles binge?

 

That's why.  Paul McCartney acquired the film rights to the character the day after he announced he was leaving the Beatles, and he wrote, produced and starred in Rupert and the Frog Song.  The short was released in theaters to accompany Give My Regards to Broad Street, and unlike the feature film it was actually well received.

 The plot is not only there to string the songs together, mostly because there's only one song. It's a beautiful day, and Rupert (McCartney) decides to go for a walk.  He chats with his friends Bill and Edward, stands under a tree covered with butterflies, and finally discovers frogs in a pond.

Rupert walks some more, and discovers a secret cave with a sign warning "Frogs Only Beyond This Point."   That does not deter him, and nor do the frog guards stationed in the cave.  Rupert sneaks in and discovers the frogs preparing for a special ceremony that happens every couple of hundred years, so it's good timing.  But what Rupert doesn't know is that he's been followed by an owl and a pair of black cats.

 

 Rupert watches as the frogs sing "We All Stand Together," a psychedelic Busby Berkely dance routine breaks out, the Kinga nd Queen of Frogs make a brief appearance, and the owl and cats interrupt the ceremony, though thankls to a quick warning from Rupert no harm is done to the frogs.  Then Rupert goes home and tells his mother about what he's seen.

 

 I've seen Give My Regards to Broad Street, so I know that Paul McCartney was in a nostalgic mood in 1984.  On the other hand, there's a strand of nostalgia running through all his work, showing up in Beatles songs like "Penny Lane" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."  But I think there's more to it than that - this short film isn't just celebrating a beloved character from Paul's childhood, it's creating wonder.  The key scene for me comes before the frog song, when Rupert discovers that the tree he's standing under isn't covered in leaves, it's covered in butterflies.

 It's a moment devoted entirely to wonder, the kind of scene you see in My Neighbor Totoro or 1982's The Snowman.  (And given the timing,  I suspect The Snowman was a direct influence.)  It's a very short film, and it's not deep, but it is lovely.

Give My Regards to Broad Street

 Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) was written and produced by Paul McCartney, so it's a good opportunity to see how much he's learned about film-making since Magical Mystery Tour.  The results are mixed.

 

The plot of Broad Street (and it does actually have one!) is remarkably straightforward: Paul McCartney falls asleep in a limousine.  Okay, it's a little more complicated than that.  Paul dreams that he is driving in a flashier car, on his way to a business meeting.  The bright red car phone rings, and it's bad news. Harry (Ian Hastings) is missing, and he has the master tapes for the new album; since Harry is an ex-con whom Paul gave a second chance to, so everyone assumes that he's taken the tapes.  Worse yet, if the master tapes aren't recovered by midnight, the Paul McCartney music empire will fall into the hands of sinister financier Mr. Rath (John Bennett) for complicated business reasons.

And Paul McCartney is a lot of things, but he is not a detective, so he lets the police do their jobs and goes about his day, rehearsing and filming videos with his band, including wife Linda (Linda McCartney) and drummer Ringo (Ringo Starr), though Ringo spends a great deal of the film flirting with a beautiful journalist (Barbara Bach, Ringo's real life wife), and quite successfully, too.  Ringo's got rizz, as the kids will probably stop saying any minute now.

 That doesn't mean that Paul isn't worried about Harry, though; he keeps drifting in and out of elaborate daydreams about what might have happened to him, including a lengthy chase through the foggy streets of Victorian London.  And he also finds time to try and comfort Sandra (Tracy Ullman), Harry's . . . partner?  The relationship is never made clear.  Still, Paul handles the music, his right hand man Steve (Bryan Brown) handles the business, and the police are theoretically handling the investigation.

 But the plot is only there to string the songs together.  There are a lot of songs, a generous mix of Beatles songs and songs from Wings and Paul's solo albums, and while the movie flopped, the soundtrack was a big success.  

The movie definitely makes more sense than Magical Mystery Tour, but it's a very sedate affair, lacking the frenetic energy of the earlier film.  On the other hand, there's an actual story, and Paul's character has an actual arc, grappling with the question of whether he was right to trust Harry.  (He was right, because there's no way that Paul McCartney of all people is going to make a movie where cynicism is the right choice; sunny optimism is his brand!) 

More than that, Give My Regards to Broad Street has an actual theme!   Paul isn't just promoting a new album, he's trying to protect his legacy, and the "Greatest Hits" nature of the soundtrack helps with that.  The threat is that Paul will lose control of the music that he's created.  Fortunately the threat is averted, and now I will take a big sip of coffee while reading about what happened to the Beatles' catalog in 1985.

On the other hand, while the plot is more substantial than the plot of Magical Mystery Tour, it's still not very substantial.  The movie is very slight, more like a concert video with a framing device, and it doesn't help that the plot turns out to be all a dream.  There is an actual movie here, but it's really just an excuse for silly love songs.  And what's wrong with that?

 

Magical Mystery Tour

 

 After watching something particularly baffling, I will sometimes shake my head and say "That was definitely a movie."  After watching Magical Mystery Tour (1967), though, I'm honesty not so sure.

Here's the thing. In Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the plot is only there to string the songs together.  In Magical Mystery Tour, the plot (such as it is) is mostly there to kill time between songs.  It's really more of a vague premise than a narrative experience, but here is what I can gather.

Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) and his Aunt Jessie (Jessie Robins) book tickets for "The Magical Mystery Tour," a bus trip managed by Jolly Jimmy Johnson (Derek Royle) and Miss Wendy Winters (Miranda Forbes), joined by Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler), who doesn't actually work for the company but seems to like the uniform.  The other Beatles are also passengers; John and George are sitting together and practicing comedy bits, while Paul is flirting with the starlet (Maggie Wright) sitting next to them.  The bus drives from one destination to another, while in a magical high school science lab above the clouds, four or five magicians (the Beatles and their road manager and personal assistant Mal Evans) follow the progress of the bus and use their magical powers to do vague things.  Aunt Jessie is looking for a new husband and has her eye on Bloodvessel, and that's as close as anyone gets to a tangible motivation.

It's definitely a strange and ambling film, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  At its best it's an example of the sort of British surrealist humor that Monty Python would start doing in 1969, and that the future Pythons were already doing on TV shows like At Last the 1948 Show (featuring Graham Chapman and John Cleese, along with Marty Feldman and the lovely Aimi MacDonald) and Do Not Adjust Your Set (featuring Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, along with Denise Coffey and David Jason.  Music provided by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who also perform "Death Cab For Cutie" in Magical Mystery Tour's strip club scene.)  At it's worst the script is incoherent nonsense; nobody changes, nobody learns anything, and Aunt Jessie never manages to land Bloodvessel, at least as far as we can tell.

Of course, people probably watch the movie for the songs.  Whether you like the music or not will depend on whether you like the Beatles, but the songs are presented in a variety of striking visual styles, including the funny animal costumes for "I Am The Walrus," extreme closeups of Paul's eyes for "The Fool on a Hill," and George playing a keyboard drawn with sidewalk chalk for "Blue Jay Way."  Perhaps it's better to think of this as a collection of music videos with bonus sketch comedy bits rather than a movie.

 

The other Beatles tend to blame Paul for Magical Mystery Tour.  This will be important later.