MovieChat Forums > Help! (1965) Discussion > Foreshadowing the Beatles Evolution

Foreshadowing the Beatles Evolution


Several threads mention the way they were dressed at the airport matched how they'd actually come to look in a few years.

Additionally, when they're in the Austrian Alps, at one point they're dressed up like a marching band playing brass instruments. I wonder if this was the first spark that eventually led to Sgt. Pepper's.

And though this movie isn't psychedelic, some parts are proto-psychedelic. For instance, when they're surrounded by tanks at Salisbury Plain, there are some sideways camera angles thrown in and the shots move quickly. The idea for the Magical Mystery Tour TV special may have been drawn from this.

Did the film influence the Beatles to try new things, or was this film indicative of new things soon to come?

Also, filming this movie exposed George Harrison to Indian music, which would lead to a life-long interest. Also, the blue button down shirt he wears on the beach in Bahamas looks the same as the one he'd come to wear 4 years later on the cover of Abbey Road.

Amazing how filming Help! could have inadvertently yet profoundly changed the Beatles.

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As for me, though I didn't get into this movie when I first saw it at fourteen, on future viewings I grew to appreciate the style of humor...which seemed to foreshadow that of Monty Python. Just tell me there isn't something Pythonesque in some of those lines!

Which makes it all the more interesting that George became a major backer of Monty Python when it was formed.

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I've always thought that Monty Python were, in a weird way, the spiritual successors of the Beatles.

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