Yellow Submarine (DVD)

Whether or not you are a Beatles fan, the impact they had on society and music is undeniable. They set many records in the music industry which are now being broken by individual bands or singers here and there, however no other musical group has ever broken, or indeed is likely to, All of the records set by this extraordinary group. In 1968 a film was created especially for children using a cameo as well as animations of the Fab Four and a pure Beatles soundtrack. Written by Erich Segal, Lee Minoff, Jack Mendelsohn, and Al Brodax, directd by George Dunning, the Beatles themselves actually had very little to do with the making of this film. Nevertheless, Yellow Submarine ...  Read the complete review

The Beatles' film Yellow Submarine came out in 1968. It was completely different from their previous films, A Hard Days Night, and Help! and also quite different from the 1967 TV special, the Magical Mystery Tour. Yellow Submarine was an animated full length feature, which set out to be, and turned out to be, a landmark film. It was directed by George Dunning, and in effect followed on from the animated Beatles TV series, which ran for 39 episodes. (when do we get to see that again, I wonder? Not that I ever saw it the first time around, and I don?t see it mentioned very often either). The film was based around drawings by Heinz Edelmann, a ...  Read the complete review

In the town where I was born? I don?t know when I first noticed The Beatles. I know that they were No. 1 for the last time on the day I was born and they must have been part of the soundtrack of my infancy in the years immediately following the breakup. I know that in December of 1980 I was sufficiently aware of John Lennon being shot to tape Help! when they showed it on TV as a tribute. It was our first video recorder and it used square one-hour tapes and the machine had buttons that you had to push down like an audio tape player and it had an analogue clock. When we upgraded ...  Read the complete review

Yellow Submarine is a strange movie. I will tell you that off the bat. It features the Beatles travelling to Pepperland to save the citizens from the Blue Meanies. Well I say it Features the Beatles but it features people playing the Beatles - the film is an animation but the voices of the characters are done by someone else. The Beatles do appear in a cameo but I don't want to give too much away about that as it does happen close to the end of the film so I don't want to ruin it. The film has some Beatles songs (performed by the Beatles of course and not the people who were doing the voicework - although that could have been a fun and surreal twist) in it and some ...  Read the complete review

This is an excellent restoration of a classic bit of 60's psychedelia. This was unavailable in the UK for many years, in fact I had a bootleg copy I bought in Cyprus for years, but here it has been fully restored to it's original glory. The plot is as threadbare as you might expect, but the visuals & music is what you really watch this for, the animation may be dated in part, but this film still works as a curio of the 60's. The renderings of the Beatles are impressive & while the characters aren't voiced by the actual Beatles, that doesn't take away from the enjoyment. There is Alan Aldridge esque colour to be seen everywhere in this, ...  Read the complete review