Directed by rock doc specialist Patrick Montgomery, 1982's The Compleat Beatles still represents the only real attempt at a feature length documentary covering their whole career, and was a huge success in the early days of the home VHS market. It was released at a time when there was renewed interest in the band after John Lennon's murder, and in the 20-year anniversary of Love Me Do, alongside a lot of other Beatles products.

It's a different beast to The Beatles Anthology, but how does it measure up? We talk about whether it was the original source for some of the best known Beatle stories, how its narration by Malcolm McDowell gives it gravitas, or tries to, and what the impact is of featuring ancillary characters from the Beatles' early story, like Allan Williams, Tony Sheridan and Horst Facher. And the film's content is very much led by its talking heads, in particular George Martin, so we examine what effect that has.

• Watch The Compleat Beatles: https://archive.org/details/the-compleat-beatles-1982
• Ed wrongly calls the publishers of Love Me Do and PS I Love You "Ardwood & Beechmore"; yes, they were of course Ardmore & Beechwood. Don't write in.
• Here's the screaming girl Ed mentions, from the Washington Coliseum gig, 11 February 1964: https://youtu.be/W3QG37K3h94

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

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