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.