is a 1965 British musical comedy-adventure film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill.

sees the group struggle to protect Ringo Starr from a sinister eastern cult and a pair of mad scientists, all of whom are obsessed with obtaining a sacrificial ring sent to him by a fan.

Determined to retrieve the ring and sacrifice the girl, the chief priest, Clang, several cult members, and high priestess Ahme leave for London.

Once Paul returns to his normal size, the band runs to the Austrian Alps and narrowly escapes a trap there, thanks to Ahme, who is secretly aiding them.

According to interviews conducted with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr for The Beatles Anthology, director Richard Lester was given a larger budget for this film than he had for A Hard Day's Night, thanks to the commercial success of the latter.

It was also given a more extensive musical score than A Hard Day's Night, provided by a full orchestra, and included excerpts of well known classical music: Wagner's Lohengrin, Act III prelude, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and, during the end credits and with the Beatles' own comic vocalisations, Rossini's Barber of Seville overture, as well as orchestral arrangements of Beatles songs, among them "A Hard Day's Night" and "She's a Woman."

[4] As such, Capitol Records' original pressings of the "Ticket to Ride" single have the subheading: From the United Artists release "Eight Arms to Hold You.

According to The Beatles Anthology, during the restaurant sequence filmed in early April, Harrison began to discover Indian-style music, which would be a key element in future songs such as "Norwegian Wood".

Most of the crew were based in the hotel Marieta, where one night the Beatles gave an impromptu concert on the occasion of a director's assistant's birthday.

[11] At the time of the original release of Help!, its distributor, United Artists, also held the rights to the Bond series.

[17][18][19] Because of this, the phrase has been used as a title for an album by Veruca Salt, and for songs by Goon Squad for the Goonies movie, and by the Brittles, a Beatles-pastiche band.

Aside from Eight Arms to Hold You, this title won over suggestions from Harrison (Who's Been Sleeping in My Porridge) and United Artists producer Walter Shenson (The Day the Clowns Collapsed).

During the digitisation of the Michael Peto Collection, which is held by Archive Services, University of Dundee, in 2002, 500 previously unpublished photographs of the Beatles taken during the making of Help!

An exhibition of the photographs to mark the book's launch was held at Hoopers Gallery, Clerkenwell, in January 2006.

[26] In 2011, the photographs were exhibited in Dundee, as part of the Scottish Beatles Weekend, and at the Proud Gallery in Camden.

The US album, released by Capitol Records, includes the seven film tracks along with instrumental soundtrack songs orchestrated by Ken Thorne.

relied too heavily on "the likeable vacant grin of John Lennon, the smooth charm of Paul, the long-haired good looks of George, and the darkly villainous looks of the Long-Nosed One [Ringo Starr]", and that these qualities were insufficient to carry a film.

to compare with that wild ballet of the Beatles racing across a playground in "A Hard Day's Night", nothing as wistful as the ramble of Ringo around London all alone ...

"[28] In a retrospective review, Leslie Halliwell describes the film as an "[e]xhausting attempt to outdo A Hard Day's Night in lunatic frenzy, which goes to show that some talents work best on low budgets.

The humour is a frantic cross between Hellzapoppin', The Goons, Goofy, Mr. Magoo and the shade of Monty Python to come.

's pop art style influenced the Batman TV series and the direction of the contemporary advertising industry.

[30] In his book 1965: The Year Modern Britain Was Born, cultural commentator Christopher Bray views Help!

as "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, and the film that best captures the "magical weirdness" of London before the commercialisation that accompanied its international recognition as the world's "Swinging City".

as a "forerunner to music videos", adding: "Lester seemed to find the right tone for Help!, creating an enjoyable portrait of the Beatles and never allowing the film to take itself too seriously.

His style would later be co-opted by Bob Rafelson for the Monkees' television series in the '60s and has continued to influence rock musicals like 1998's Spice World.

A sequence featuring Frankie Howerd and Wendy Richard was filmed but left out of final editing owing to its length.

The supplemental section, which, with few exceptions, has never been available on any other home video release, contains the following: In June 2007, a version of Help!, sub-titled in Korean, became available on Amazon.com.

The rights issues were eventually resolved and Apple Corps/EMI/Capitol released a new double DVD version with a fully restored image and newly remixed in 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround sound of the film.

This came in standard 2xDVD packaging and 2xDVD deluxe edition box set on 30 October 2007 in the UK and 6 November 2007 in America.

[35] This latest release contains new featurettes, three trailers (one of which is in Spanish), and the aforementioned radio ads carried over from the Criterion LaserDisc issue.