Most people think they’ve seen this band’s movies. They’ve seen maybe three, and two of them were the wrong versions.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: this particular filmography is one of the strangest in music history, and the rights situation is a mess that has kept genuinely great films out of circulation for decades. Some of it streams. Some of it exists only on a 30-year-old disc that sells for stupid money. One of them aired once on television in 1967 and then vanished for about 25 years.
So here’s the real viewing list — what exists, what’s worth your time, what order to watch it in, and how to spot a trash copy before you waste an evening on it.
The Honest Count
Strip out the TV appearances, the promotional clips, and the endless “authorized” repackages, and you’re left with roughly a dozen things that count as actual films. They break down like this:
- Five core features — two scripted comedies, one animated feature, one TV musical special, and one studio documentary.
- Concert and tour films — a handful, mostly short, mostly cut from footage shot on the road.
- Documentaries and docuseries — the retrospective stuff, which is where most modern fans actually start.
- The grey zone — compilations, fan reconstructions, and versions that only ever existed on a specific disc in a specific region.
Everyone argues about the exact number. Nobody argues about which five matter.
The Five You Actually Have to Watch
1. The black-and-white one (1964)
Four guys get chased around a train, a hotel, and a TV studio between song performances. That’s the plot. It shouldn’t work, and it works perfectly, mostly because the dialogue is genuinely funny and the whole thing has this loose, sarcastic energy that every music film since has tried and failed to copy.
Watch it first. It’s the easiest one to find, and it sets the tone for everything else.
2. The color caper (1965)
Bigger budget, worse plot, better songs. The band runs around three continents being chased by a cult while getting progressively more bored with the whole exercise. If you want the exact moment where the fun visibly drains out of the operation, it’s here — and that’s actually why it’s interesting.
3. The TV special (1967)
A surreal, plotless, made-for-television bus trip that aired once, got savaged by critics, and then disappeared for decades. It’s the hardest of the five to see legally and the one fans defend hardest. Go in expecting a dream, not a story.
4. The animated one (1968)
The band licensed their likenesses and never actually appears. Psychedelic, pun-heavy, and aged shockingly well. It’s also the one with the cleanest ownership history, so it’s cheap and easy to find.
5. The studio documentary (1970)
Forty-odd minutes of four people failing to get along while recording what turned out to be their last album, capped by a rooftop performance that is the best footage anyone ever shot of them. It won major awards, then sat in a vault for over 50 years because everyone involved hated it. It’s finally out properly. Watch it last.
The Second Tier — Worth It, Not Urgent
- The 1966 stadium concert film. Shot at a huge outdoor show, later given a theatrical release. Historically important, sonically rough.
- The mid-90s anthology series. Six or so hours of interviews, archive footage, and context. Still the single best overview of the whole story, even if it’s more TV documentary than film.
- The 2016 touring-years documentary. Covers the period when they played live and then stopped. Clean, well-edited, easy to sit through.
- The 2021 restored studio docuseries. Nearly eight hours built from footage nobody had seen before. This one genuinely changed how people understand the final months.
- The 2023 short piece. Basically an extended music video built around a rescued old demo. Worth twelve minutes.
Do Not Watch Them Chronologically
Chronological order kills the fun, because the first two are lightweight and the last one is a funeral. Try this instead:
- The black-and-white comedy — get the vibe.
- The animated feature — get the weirdness.
- The restored studio docuseries — get the context and the pain.
- The studio documentary from the same sessions — now it lands hard.
- The color caper — palate cleanser.
- The TV special — save it for last, when you can appreciate a mess made by people who’d stopped caring what anyone thought.
What’s Easy vs. What Isn’t
Easy: the 1964 comedy, the 1965 comedy, the animated feature, the modern documentaries. All streaming or cheap on disc.
Medium: the 1970 studio documentary. It’s available now, but different releases use different aspect ratios and audio mixes, so pay attention to which one you’re getting.
Annoying: the 1966 concert film and the mid-90s anthology. Region-locked, out of print, or both.
Basically fan-archive only: the 1967 TV special, in its original broadcast form. There is no clean official release of the version that actually aired.
How Fans Actually Get the Hard Ones
Here’s the part that never gets explained clearly. Rights to these films are split across different companies, and several of those companies have zero incentive to restore or re-release anything. So preservation has been done by fans, quietly, for about thirty years.
- Disc rips. Someone bought the out-of-print disc in 1993, ripped it, and it’s been passed around ever since. A region-free player is genuinely worth owning.
- Fan restorations. Enthusiast groups take the best available sources — multiple prints, multiple audio mixes — and reconstruct a version closer to the original than any commercial release managed.
- Public archives. Broadcast copies, interviews, and promotional footage sit in public media archives and library collections. Most people never think to look there.
- Reconstruction projects. The 1967 TV special originally included segments that were cut from every later release. Fans have rebuilt the broadcast version shot by shot.
How to Spot a Trash Copy
- “4K” that was upscaled by a machine. If the source was tape, no amount of processing makes it 4K. Look for waxy faces and smeared grain.
- Wrong speed. Old transfers made for one TV standard run about 4% fast, which pushes the vocals slightly sharp. Compare against an official release to check.
- Cropped framing. Several of these were shot in a squarer ratio and later “converted” to widescreen by chopping off the top and bottom. You lose performers’ heads. Look for it in the opening scene.
- Redone audio. Some reissues swapped in later re-recordings over the original vocals and instruments. Purists want the original mono mix.
- Missing intros and outros. TV-sourced copies often chop the original title cards and sponsor tags. Those are part of the artifact, not filler.
The Version Question
For almost every film on this list there are at least two cuts: the original release and some later restored or remixed edition. Fans argue about this constantly and never settle it. The short answer: watch the original mono mix when you can, and treat remixes as a separate curiosity rather than a replacement.
One-Night Marathon
If you’ve got six hours and a pizza:
- The black-and-white comedy.
- The animated feature.
- Episode one of the restored final-sessions docuseries.
- The rooftop sequence from the studio documentary.
- The TV special, if you can find a copy that isn’t garbage.
Bottom Line
The official story is that this is a short filmography — a couple of comedies and some concert footage. That’s the version the rights holders are happy for you to believe, because it means they never have to do any work.
In reality there’s a real body of film here. Some of it is buried by legal disputes, some of it was buried by the people who made it, and a surprising amount has been kept alive by fans with a disc drive and too much free time.
Watch the five core films. Watch them in the right order. And when something is officially “unavailable,” don’t assume it’s gone — somebody has a copy, and somebody has almost certainly already cleaned it up.