Product Description

The Beatles DVD Collector's Set includes:

Help!
Nominated for two British Academy Awards, this 1965 theatrical feature takes the Beatles on a worldwide comedy adventure. After a magical ring gets stuck on Ringo's finger, a group of oriental mystics and a mad scientist stop at nothing to try to get it back. Special features include a fully restored print from the film's original negative, a digitally remastered soundtrack, 15 minutes of bonus footage, Spanish and French audio tracks, and English, Spanish, and French subtitles. Songs include "Help!", "You're Gonna Lose That Girl," and "Ticket to Ride."
Color, approx. 90 minutes, Dolby Digital

Magical Mystery Tour
A musical film fantasy that follows the Beatles on a psychedelic bus tour along the English countryside. It made its British debut on Christmas day 1967. Special DVD features include a fully restored print, a digitally remastered soundtrack, bonus newsreels, a history of the project, and English, Spanish, and French subtitles. Songs include "Magical Mystery Tour," "I Am the Walrus," and "Fool on the Hill."
Color, approx. 54 minutes, Dolby Digital

The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit
An historic, musical ride back in time as the Beatles come to America for the first time on February 7, 1964 and appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. Special features include 13 Beatles performances, a fully restored print, a digitally remastered soundtrack, a Beatles chronology, discography, and other statistics, and English, Spanish, and French subtitles. Songs include "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," "Till There Was You," and "Twist and Shout."
Black and white, approx. 83 minutes, Dolby Digital

You Can't Do That: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night"
The extraordinary evolution of the Academy Award-nominated film that convinced the world that the Beatles could be as influential and memorable as the music they sang. Hosted by Phil Collins. Special features include cast profiles, A Hard Day's Night trivia quiz, biography and discography for Phil Collins, and English, Spanish, and French subtitles.
Color and black and white, approx. 65 minutes, Dolby Digital

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37510 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-08-08
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 283 minutes

Amazon.com
This four-disc set includes two feature films and two documentaries (all previously available on DVD). Help! (1965), in which a religious sect is in pursuit of a sacrificial ring stuck on Ringo's finger, is a broad spoof of the spy flicks of the time, with James Bond-like themes and locales. Songs include "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "Ticket to Ride." Only two years later but strikingly different in mood and tone, Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is chiefly a series of psychedelic music videos, including "Fool on the Hill," "I Am the Walrus," and "Blue Jay Way," loosely organized around a plot of a bus trip through the English countryside.

The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit is an 83-minute black-and-white documentary by acclaimed directing brothers Albert and David Maysles that captures the group's trip to the U.S. in February 1964. It includes plenty of songs as performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, of course, as well as footage of the band riding the train or sitting in their hotel room watching television coverage of themselves. A subsequent performance in Washington, D.C., suffers from grainier footage and spotty microphones, but still captures the frenzy of the fans.

You Can't Do That!: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night" is an hourlong documentary that traces the creation of the historic 1964 film. Hosted by Phil Collins, who appeared in the original among a crowd of screaming teenagers, the film features extensive clips and interviews with those involved with the movie (though George Harrison is the only Beatle whose voice is heard). A highlight is "You Can't Do That," a performance that was cut from the original film. Obviously, a perfect DVD set would include A Hard Day's Night itself, but rights issues have kept it out of circulation. --David Horiuchi

Additional features
The DVD of Help! includes a text description of the 1996 restoration, plus 2 minutes of newsreels and 4.5 minutes of promotional footage (including black-and-white footage from the film set and from the royal world premiere, and color and black-and-white stills from the set with Beatle voice-overs). The DVD of Magical Mystery Tour includes 3 minutes of black-and-white newsreels featuring the Baker Street psychedelic shop and Maharishi Mahash Yogi's meditation retreat. Each of the above DVDs includes trailers from the other three films included in the set, plus A Hard Day's Night. Help! also includes its own trailer, but curiously Magical Mystery Tour does not. The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit and You Can't Do That: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night" include trivia quizzes on, respectively, the Beatles' 1964 U.S. trip and A Hard Day's Night.

Customer Reviews

Help, indeed! Spare us this lame marketing ploy.
With the "A Hard Day's Night" DVD currently out of print, Bealtes fans have had to make due with the DVDs presented in this dubious "Collector's Set." All are available separately, so save you dollars! As much as I love the group, I see little reason to own "Magical Mystery Tour" on DVD. The "documentary" of the making of AHDN isn't bad, but my VHS copy will suffice. Which leaves "Help!" and "...Their First US Visit." Personally, I'm holding out for the deluxe editions of the feature films. Hello Criterion? You did a nice laser disc of AHDN, where's the DVD? And how about a proper "making of" documentary, with more Lester and less Phil Collins? "Help!" is a great film, but would also benefit from similar additional first-hand recollections. Which leaves "The Beatles: Their First US Visit." Of this foursome (pending the arrival of an expanded "Help!" DVD), this is the only true must-have disc: a cinema verite look at Beatlemania from the boys' perspectives (...a car, a room, a car, a room...), beautifully observed by the Maysles brothers in 1964. The Ed Sullivan show bits are wonderful, but my favorite moment is John noodling on the melodica, playing what you'll recognize as the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever." This documentary is a rare, amazing glimpse into a world we'll never see again. I'm saving my money for the Anthology DVDs slated for late 2000/early 2001.

I had no idea
I had no idea I was so lucky to have a DVD copy of Hard Day's Night.
This is just another repackaging of stuff already released. Most
Beatle fans know too much about that.

As for the individual titles,
Help is an excellent movie. The big buget sequel to A Hard Day's
Night.

Magical Mystery Tour is really, really sad. When it was
released origially for TV in Britian it was supposed to air twice but
after poor ratings was not rerun. It was only run on American TV once
in black and white. The one good thing about Magical Mystery Tour is
that it was digitally restored from the original film stock and the
soundtrack was remastered in digital stereo. I had a copy of Magical
Mystery Tour released in the 80's by Media Home Entertainment, and it
was pretty much bootleg quality.

The First U.S. Visit is an
excellent documentary. It begins with the Beatles landing at JFK
airport for their fist U.S. Tour. Then they are off for their first
appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. It has footage from their first
live concert in America in Washington D.C. It then follows them on
the historic train ride to Miami for their second appearance on the Ed
Sullivan Show. One of the best sequences is on the train when John
and Paul are very tired of mugging for the cameras but George is going
crazy. Little did they know at the time that they would be under the
microscope from then on!!

The making of Hard Day's Night is just ok.
Like someone else said, "less Phil Collins, more
info..."

I need to see Let It Be on DVD and the making of Let
It Be. Let It be is over two weeks of informal jamming boiled down to
about an hour and a half.

Bottom line is buy this release if you
don't have any of the titles in it. It makes a fair starter
collection of Beatle DVDs.

Another gripe; and where is 'Compleat Beatles?'
Add mine to the list of Beatlemaniacs underwhlemed by the selections in this set. (Consider my rating an average of five stars for the films and one star for this box itself.)

Like pbfey, despite my fanaticism, I see no need to own 'MMT' on disc until somebody cleans up the video further and makes a "What the heck were they thinking?" making-of featurette to go with it. (Cue Ringo: "Yeah, it sooked, but Brian was gone, and we were all so wasted...") I already have 'AHDN' on DVD (thanks to eBay), as well as 'Help!' And when 'AHDN' is finally back in print, folding in the 'You Can't Do That!' making-of would be the egalitarian thing to do.

I hope you're right about the 'Anthology' coming to DVD by early '01, pbfey, but you know what I'm really hankering for? The modest 1982 MGM documentary 'The Compleat Beatles.' This PBS pledge-drive staple is, at two hours, the tightest, most all-around entertaining Fabs documentary ever -- a much easier watch than the essential but bloated 'Anthology.' (Many a rainy day at home has been rejuvenated by my umpteenth watching of 'Compleat.') It's now completely out of print, even on VHS, so I must continue to rely on my mossy tape copy. Crazy as this sounds, I'd take a DVD of that little flick over almost anything else Beatles-related at this point. But I suspect it's not an MGM or an MPI priority, so I'm not holding my breath.