The Compleat Beatles

The Compleat Beatles, released in 1982, is a twohour documentary chronicling the career of the Beatles. Although it has since been supplanted by the longer and more indepth documentary Beatles Anthology, The Compleat Beatles was for many years largely regarded as the definitive film about the Beatles. The word compleat is a tongueincheek reference to the intentional misspelling of Beetles and a reference to the famous book on fishing, The Compleat Angler.

The film did very well, and in 1984 Delilah Films and MetroGoldwynMayer arranged for it to be released theatrically in the U.S. by a small distributor named Teleculture. This contributed to its continuing to be a best seller on VHS. Some years later, when Paul McCartney was preparing the Beatles Anthology, he bought the negative and all the rights to the film from Delilah to get it off of the market and clear the way for his production. That, according to the films director Patrick Montgomery, is why it is not available on DVD or any newer formats and probably never will be.

Source: Wikipedia