There’s a reason why I put the word Documentary is scare quotes when I titled this review.

Yes, 2010’s Paul McCartney Really Is Dead is listed as a documentary on Tubi, Prime, and probably every other streaming site in which it has appeared.

Yes, the film is full of archival footage of the Beatles and it opens with a lengthy discussion about the time that John Lennon said that group was bigger than Jesus.

And yes, the film does present itself as being a documentary.

That said, I don’t believe any of the claims made in this film and I doubt the filmmakers do either.  Much like that time travel documentary that I reviewed a few years ago, this film is obviously a mockumentary, a hoax that a few people online have taken seriously.  Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that as many people have taken this film seriously as they did with that Man From 3036 film.  I guess that counts as progress.

(I should note that, after writing the paragraph above, I looked up Joel Gilbert’s YouTube profile and saw that he has specifically stated that the film is a mockumentary.  So, good for Gilbert!)

As for Paul McCartney Is Really Dead, it opens with director Joel Gilbert explaining that his production company received several mysterious cassette tapes.  They were mailed from the UK.  The man on the tapes claims to be George Harrison and says that he’s recording the tapes on his death bed.  He explains that, in 1966, Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash.  A fake Paul (nicknamed Faul) was brought into the group and, for the next four years, the Beatles recorded with this imposter.  John Lennon, fearing that the fans would turn on the band if they ever learned of the deception, inserted clues throughout the Beatles’s album covers and in their songs.  A lot of those clues were only evident to those who played the song backwards.  Turn me on, dead man!

The conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was decapitated in a car accident and was replaced by a man named William Campbell has been around for a while.  It’s generally agreed that the rumor first started to circulate way back in 1966 and it’s been theorized that the Beatles themselves were aware of the rumor and they occasionally made references to it as a private joke.  Of course, it’s just as possible that the Beatles knew nothing of the rumor and all of the “clues’ were actually just coincidences that were overanalyzed by conspiracy theorists with too much free time on their hands.  For instance, one widely cited clue was a picture of Paul McCartney wearing a patch that apparently said “OPD.”  The theorists decided that OPD stood for “Officially Pronounced Dead,” whereas the patch was actually one worn by members of the Ontario Provincial Police and it actually read “OPP.”

Paul McCartney Is Really Dead features someone pretending to be George Harrison going over all of the clues on the album covers and in the songs.  He hits all the major points, including the famous Abbey Road cover.  However, the faux Harrison goes on to claim that the Beatles were forced to pretend that Paul was alive by a sinister MI5 agent named Maxwell.  Maxwell explained that word of Paul’s death would lead to a suicide epidemic amongst young British woman and it would also leave the UK vulnerable to the communists.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Of course, as unbelievable as that sounds, it’s really not that much different from a lot of “real” conspiracy theories that can currently find circulating online.  A spoof works best when its credible.  While the theory that Paul is dead may not be credible, the fact that people will believe the dumbest things is.

It’s easy to laugh at first, largely because the guy doing George Harrison’s voice doesn’t even seem to have a British accent.  While the Beatles looked at the dead Paul, Maxwell commented that the injuries Paul had sustained in the car crash had left him looking like a walrus.  “I AM THE WALRUS!” John supposedly shouted at Maxwell.  If you can’t smile at that, what can you smile at?  But then, towards the end of the documentary, it’s suggested that John’s assassination and the near fatal attack that George Harrison suffered in 1999 were actually due to John and George threatening to reveal the truth about Faul.  At that point, the whole thing gets rather offensive.  This could have been an enjoyably daft hoax if the filmmakers hadn’t tried to pass the tapes off as being from George Harrison.  (Personally, I would have used either Maxwell or Rita, the girl in blue who was supposedly with Paul at the time of the accident, as the narrator.)

As for myself, I love conspiracy theories but I don’t believe 99% of them.