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 Fascher. And the film's content is very much led by its talking heads, in particular George Martin, so we examine what effect that has.