Monty Python
and the Holy Grail
There have been many attempts to tell the King Arthur legend over the years. John Boorman gave it a go with the blood-soaked Excalibur in 1981 and Jerry Zucker toned down the bloodshed for a Disneyland-style fantasy with First Knight in 1995.
However, one of the greatest versions takes a few liberties with the tale of Excalibur and the king of the Britons.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail was the the second feature from those naughty college lads, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. Made for next to nothing — £460,000 in case you were wondering — it is still one of their best looking movies with an irreverence sorely lacking in most expensive comedies these days.
The budget was raised by a host of rich rock stars such as Led Zeppelin, Elton John and Pink Floyd, all keen to spend their money on something rather than have it snaffled by the tax man.
Directed by the two Terrys — the Pythons believed that anyone in their merry band called Terry could be a director — it was not an easy shoot by any means. The camera broke down on the first shot.
Gilliam was dressed up to the nines as a bridge keeper for one of the final scenes. The team were in Glencoe miles from anywhere and Gilliam admits he could have handled things better with the benefit of hind sight.
“Did we shoot the wide shot? No, we panicked and did close-ups which could have been done anywhere in the world. It seemed like chaos but in fact we were working fast and learning on the job.”
Gilliam and Jones pulled in opposite directions during the five week shoot while the far from happy cast moaned about the conditions.
John Cleese was well miffed when he had to hang around for hours in the cold while Gilliam waited for the sun to set. The Fawlty Towers star believed they should just shoot the film and get out of there but Gilliam wanted to give his movie the look of a painting by Bruegel or Bosch.
It’s 25 years since the movie was released and for many of us, we’ve had to put up with a quarter century of party bores trying to impress us with impersonations of the Knights who say “Ni!” — probably the world’s easiest impression — and countless other snippets of dialogue from the movie.
One of the film’s many strengths is its lack of cash. The cast and crew couldn’t afford horses so they had the leads running along knocking coconut shells together.
Aside from being far funnier than anything Mel Brooks could have done in a multi-million dollar spoof like Robin Hood: Men in Tights, it also proved that necessity really is the mother of invention.
The team, of course, went on to bigger and better things in the years that followed with Gilliam returning to the genre with his flawed fairy tale Jabberwocky in 1977 and shot another Grail-related legend with The Fisher King in 1991. He is currently trying to save his long cherished lottery funded project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, from going belly up in Spain.
Terry Jones went on to direct the ultra-controversial Python flick Life of Brian four years after this and then delivered disappointing offerings in the Eighties such as Personal Services and Erik the Viking.
The latter had a huge budget but sadly none of the chemistry on display here.
A pity the ending of MPATHG proves to be such a cop-out. As with other cult classics from the era, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Vanishing Point, the abrupt ending (clearly a sign of the cash running out) made many yearn for more.
ends
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