FILM · 1975 · UK
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Directed by
- Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam
- Runtime
- 91 min
- Studio
- Python (Monty) Pictures, Michael White Productions, National Film Trustee Company
207 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
King Arthur, accompanied by his squire, recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure. On the way, Arthur battles the Black Knight who, despite having had all his limbs chopped off, insists he can still fight. They reach Camelot, but Arthur decides not to enter, as "it is a silly place".
207 Interesting Facts About Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Interesting Facts (28)
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When this film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the audience laughed at the opening sequence. The projector then stopped, and the audience, thinking it was all part of the film, began laughing even harder. It turned out to be a bomb threat, and firefighters came in and evacuated everyone from the cinema.
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At one of the first live-audience screenings of this film, co-writer and assistant director Terry Jones noticed a marked drop in the audience's laughter whenever music played during the jokes. Whenever a punchline was delivered, he went back and rearranged the music. At later screenings he noticed a dramatic increase in the audience's positive reactions to the jokes. From that moment on, whenever he directed, he remembered to stop the music during the funny parts.
- #004
During the witch hunt, Eric Idle shows his teeth and bites the blade of the scythe he is holding. This was not written in the script; Idle was actually about to laugh and was biting his scythe to stifle himself so as not to ruin the take. (He can be seen trembling slightly, trying to keep his laughter under control.) Sir Michael Palin can also be seen concealing laughter, and earlier John Cleese quickly turns his head to one side just before the shot cuts, but not fast enough to hide that he has broken character and is grinning broadly. All three comment on each other's corpses in the DVD commentary.
- #005
Graham Chapman (King Arthur) was the only member of the cast to wear real chain mail. It weighed about twenty-five kilos. The rest of the cast wore wool knits painted to look like metal. Because the weather in Scotland and England was as usual, the cast spent most of the shooting days very cold and wet. Worse still, the hotel they stayed in had a limited number of bathrooms and hot water. At the end of each location shoot there was a queue to see who could get back to the hotel first. The whole Monty Python group seems to agree that they did not much enjoy the experience of shooting this film.
- #006
The French tactic of raining animals down on Arthur and his knights reflects the relatively modern legend about the medieval siege of the fortified southern French city of Carcassonne. The townspeople, said to be on the brink of starvation, used their last food to pelt the besieging army in order to convince them that the equally suffering town was full of food and that the siege was hopeless. The tactic worked and the siege was lifted.
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Terry Jones does not think the Middle Ages were full of filthy people with disgusting black teeth. "I think in the modern twentieth century we like to believe the Middle Ages were like that, so when we showed it many critics said, 'Ah, yes. It really looks authentic.'" Jones points to the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545 and was raised in recent years. Everyone on the ship had perfect teeth. Jones notes that they did not have modern dentistry, but they also did not have sugar industries.
- #010
The Black Knight was first played by John Cleese, but when Arthur cuts off the first leg, a genuinely one-legged actor (a local silversmith) was used. On the DVD, Terry Gilliam reveals that a puppet was used to film the cutting of the second leg. He also jokes that using the one-legged silversmith for the shot of the knight with no legs saved the job, because they only had to dig a hole for one leg (Cleese said he was the one standing in the hole).
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The first day of shooting was plagued with problems: after a long walk toward the Glen Coe hills, the crew's only sync camera broke down, and they could only shoot silent footage involving the crossing of the Bridge of Death. Graham Chapman was suffering from delirium tremens (DTs, a side effect of his alcoholism) and froze while attempting to cross the Bridge of Death, so he had to be doubled by first assistant director Gerry Harrison.
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Terry Gilliam recalls the film's opening at Cinema One in New York City. On the second day of its run, the line was around the block before dawn. This astonished Gilliam and the others, who spent the whole day mingling with the crowd and even went into the theater to watch the film with the audience. Gilliam particularly remembers two people who attended one of the first screenings and came up to the group to tell them how much they had enjoyed the film. Those two people were John Belushi and Gilda Radner, each of whom was just starting their own career.
- #016
In fact, many scenes were shot in quite public locations, with off-camera onlookers observing the filming. In many interviews, John Cleese has spoken about Lancelot's approach run toward the "Swamp Castle", which was shot in Hampstead Heath, a park in London. Cleese said he had to stop on the park's pavement, waiting for a visual cue to start running across the field toward the camera. Completely alone and in full costume, he had random conversations with a few passersby, who understandably had no idea what a man dressed in medieval costume and holding a broadsword was doing there.
- #017
The French taunter's pronunciation of "knights" as "ka-niggits" is not that far from how the word sounded in the 10th century. In Old and Middle English, a "k" at the beginning of a word was never considered silent. The rhythm and meter of Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century poetry point to the same pronunciation.
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Production Story (41)
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As the Wizard Tim, John Cleese actually stood on the summit seen at the beginning of the scene. On one side there was a drop that he said could kill him, and on the other a drop that he said could maim him. Worse still, the wind threatened to push him either way. Between takes he crouched to keep the wind from pushing him. He recalled the whole experience as very frightening, but he did it anyway because he knew what kind of budget and timeline they had to work with.
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Terry Gilliam recalls the film's opening at Cinema One in New York: by the second day, the queue had wrapped around the entire block before dawn. Gilliam and the others wandered through the crowd in astonishment, and even went into the cinema to watch the film with the audience. John Belushi and Gilda Radner, who attended one of the first screenings, came up to the team and told them how much they liked the film; both were just starting their careers.
- #038
- #039
Terry Gilliam was initially planned to play Sir Gawain; the role was to break the fourth wall and show how the special effects were done. In the end the role turned into Patsy, and the medium-awareness jokes were summed up in the line 'It's only a model.' Gawain appears briefly as one of the three knights killed by the rabbit; the actor is unconfirmed.
- #040
Among the scenes written but not filmed: an additional scene in which the Knights who say 'Ni!' plan to call themselves the 'Nicky-Nicky Knights'; police detective scenes; scenes in which Arthur and the knights encounter the 'Wild King Brian'. After the Bridgekeeper they come across the Ferryman: to cross the 'Sea of Fate', one must answer twenty-eight questions! Arthur and the knights finally find the Holy Grail in a Harrods store.
- #041
Terry Gilliam: 'Terry Jones and I, as the ambitious little shits of the group, wanted to direct a film at any cost. We said, if we make this film, let's all be involved, we don't want anyone from outside. We'll do everything ourselves and everyone named Terry will direct.' At that time the whole group was writing sketch ideas; they did not yet know what the film would be about. Jones states that the idea of King Arthur and Patsy using coconuts came from Michael Palin and that this was the starting point for the film.
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The film had its American television premiere in February 1977 as a CBS Late Movie showing. The Monty Pythons were unhappy when they learned that the network had heavily cut the film to remove profanity and graphic elements. In the end the Pythons managed to get the American television rights back and sold them to PBS, leading to largely uncut showings of the film.
- #049
In the commentary track, Terry Gilliam explains that Monty Python can never come together again. He compares them to The Beatles: if one member dies, the group breaks up. Graham Chapman died in 1989. Gilliam says most of the members will work on each other's projects but that 'the group is dead'.
- #050
Terry Gilliam does not remember what was originally planned for the ending, but he knows they cut most of it. He recalls that the original ending was very dreamlike. Gilliam notes how much the ending of Robert Bresson's Lancelot of the Lake resembles that of Holy Grail. Lancelot of the Lake came out in September 1974; Holy Grail in April. Gilliam recalls seeing the Bresson film and the audience bursting into laughter during the dramatic action scene. The projectionist, who had not seen the film, could not understand why the audience reacted that way.
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Terry Gilliam describes Monty Python through a 'right brain/left brain' divide: John Cleese, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman are Cambridge graduates; Michael Palin and Terry Jones went to Oxford; Gilliam is the 'symbolic American'. He also separates them into 'the tall group' (the Cambridge men) and 'people of normal height' (the others). 'Cambridge is interesting because it produces a type of person whose best defence is a strong attack; their minds tend to be more precise, more logical, more systematic and constantly aggressive.' Gilliam adds that the Cambridge group were bullies.
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Immediately after the second encounter with the Knights Who Say 'Ni', the original script had a long section featuring a character named King Brian the Wild. This king enjoyed having people come to his castle, sing in close harmony, and then be killed by his archers. The Knights of the Round Table were to share the same fate, but Sir Robin turned up just in time and unwittingly saved the day, and the archers shot his minstrels instead. King Brian the Wild would most likely have been played by Eric Idle, though there are accounts that the role was written for the Pythons' friend, stage and screen legend Brian Blessed.
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Terry Jones recalls the difficulties Monty Python faced in moving from television to film: their timing had been off from the start. They wanted to put the big jokes as early in the film as possible, but that was not a pleasant pace for a 90-120 minute film. Jones says there was always a drop in their films' third acts, particularly in energy, which he attributes to audience fatigue.
- #061
Terry Gilliam remembers the film's New York opening: because of the Vietnam War, the audience was very liberal and anti-violence. When the Black Knight began to have his limbs cut off, the crowd was disturbed. Gilliam, who says 'In England blood is called Kensington Gore and it is the best blood in the world,' notes that with the severing of the last leg the New York crowd finally laughed. 'It's not the first three limbs that get you; it's the fourth that really brings the laughs.'
- #062
Terry Gilliam considers Mel Brooks the figure closest to Monty Python in the US. He says the Inquisition was so horrifying that it could be portrayed either seriously and gloomily or 'by mocking it'. Gilliam sees comedy as a catharsis in which death can be mocked, and moreover by making it as violent and absurd as possible. 'Humour is a great test and also a great defence,' he says.
- #063
According to producer Michael White, the film's budget was only £175,000, lower than the £250,000 he had hoped for, but a few script revisions and brainstorming sessions with the Pythons made shooting possible. John Cleese later said the budget was $400,000, which came to about £180,000 in 1975.
- #064
According to Terry Gilliam, there were jokes cut from many scenes. The group set out with ambitious ideas but almost always had to reduce the number of jokes in any given scene. 'It was frustrating to try to make a big film and want to cram in as much as possible, when in fact these were just sketches,' he explains.
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In the 1960s and 70s, tax laws in Britain were very harsh; Terry Gilliam recalls that wealthier groups paid taxes of up to 90%. Many pop stars were looking for ways to create tax losses, and much of that money went towards financing Holy Grail. Gilliam notes that many pop groups of the period (such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin) were big Monty Python fans. 'George Harrison always said we were the continuation of the Beatles,' says Gilliam. Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) began the year the Beatles broke up.
- #067
Other Camelot knights written to appear in the film included Urien, Gorlois, Perceval, Tristram, Uther and Alf. Alf may be a nod to football coach Sir Alf Ramsey, who was in the news at the time for controversial game decisions. The others are characters from the traditional King Arthur stories. In the completed film, what these characters did was either transferred to other characters or cut entirely.
- #068
In the commentary track, Terry Gilliam recounts the formation of Monty Python. The comedian David Frost brought together this "cheap university labour" and had them write for his programme. John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman came out of university and wrote for television; they appeared on The Frost Report (1966) and the children's programme Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967). Gilliam was editing a magazine at the time and had met Cleese in the early '60s. He did illustrations for the magazine, and while looking for different work in television he managed to sell some sketch ideas for 'Do Not Adjust Your Set'. This did not please the other members working on that programme, since they saw Gilliam as an outsider. Then most of the Python members began working with Gilliam on the programme We Have Ways of Making You Laugh (1968). Here Gilliam provided illustrations and animation sequences. He worked on 'We Have Ways of Making You Talk' and the second version of 'Do Not Adjust Your Set'. The group came together here, and thanks to his position at the BBC, Cleese was given the opportunity to make his own programme (as Cleese himself admits, this was unique, because the proposal for what the programme would be about was very vague). His idea was what eventually became Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969). Before the group settled on Monty Python, several different names came and went. According to Jones's recollection, some of the rejected titles were 'A Horse, a Spoon, and a Basin' and 'Owl-Stretching Time'. 'The Toad-Elevating Moment' was one of Jones's favourite names that he held on to but was never used. The group decided on the name 'Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot' and used it until they began filming the programme, until the BBC intervened and said they could not use that title (I think because it was too absurd). The BBC was using the name Circus to describe the programme, so the group decided to say 'The Flying Circus'. Cleese wanted Python in the name because he wanted something slimy and slippery. Idle suggested naming it after some kind of slimy agent, and the name Monty came to mind.
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Behind the Scenes (61)
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A real white rabbit was used in the Killer Rabbit scene. In the shots after the battle it was painted with a red coloring liquid that was assumed to be washable. When the film was wrapped, the rabbit's owner was horrified to learn the paint could not be rinsed off. In his audio commentary, Terry Gilliam recounted that the rabbit's owner was present and the shoot was stopped abruptly, while the cast desperately tried to clean the rabbit before the owner found out… an unsuccessful attempt. He also noted that if they had been more experienced at filmmaking, the crew would have bought a rabbit instead. Otherwise, the rabbit was not harmed. The rabbit-bite effects were done through special puppetry by Gilliam and special effects technician John Horton.
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During the duel between the Black and Green Knights, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam performed all their own stunts. Both had to learn to use large, heavy swords and to perform some acrobatic moves while wearing heavy armor and full helmets, though they were never recognizable. They avoided using stunt doubles because, as they also said in the commentaries, they had a lot of fun acting out the duel.
- #073
Graham Chapman's alcoholism (which he tried to suppress with Antabuse) caused problems during the shoot, and not only through his repeatedly forgetting his lines. The first day of shooting required Chapman to cross the Bridge of Death. While working on Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), Chapman had grown used to drinking heavily to calm his nerves. On set he was horrified to discover that the crew drank no alcohol at all and that the nearest town was too far to make a short trip to buy alcohol. As a result, he was visibly stressed throughout the scene, trembling, sweating and moving slowly, even though he was known to be an experienced rock climber. The crew, unaware of his alcoholism, wondered whether Chapman's heavy costume was causing the stress. In fact, these were the DTs caused by alcoholism.
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Terry Jones noticed during one of the first screenings in front of a live audience that when music played during the jokes, the laughter response diminished. He went back and cut the music during the moments with gags. In later screenings, the audience's reaction increased dramatically. From that day on, he never forgot to stop the music during funny scenes.
- #077
A real white rabbit was used in the Killer Rabbit scene. In the post-battle shots, it was painted with red paint that was thought to be washable. When filming ended, the paint would not come off and the rabbit's owner was disappointed. In the audio commentary, Terry Gilliam recounted that when the owner noticed, filming stopped and the actors tried to secretly clean the rabbit but failed. If they had been more experienced, they would have bought a rabbit. The rabbit was not harmed; the biting effects were achieved with puppets made by Gilliam and John Horton.
- #078
Graham Chapman was the only actor to wear real chain mail in the role of King Arthur. The armor weighed about 11 kilograms. The others wore painted wool knits that looked like metal. In the cold and rainy weather of Scotland and England, most of the shooting days were miserable. The hotel had limited baths and hot water; at the end of every location shoot, a race began to be the first to arrive at the hotel. The Monty Python team agrees that the shooting experience of this film was not very enjoyable.
- #079
John Cleese really did stand at the summit in the Tim the Enchanter scene. On one side was a deadly precipice, on the other a cliff that would maim. The wind kept pushing him; between takes he crouched to try to keep his balance. The experience was very frightening, but he had to do it because of budget and time constraints.
- #080
John Cleese and Terry Gilliam did all the stunts themselves in the duel between the Black Knight and the Green Knight. They learned to use heavy swords and do acrobatics, but they were not recognized because of the heavy armor and full helmets. They did not use stunt doubles because they were having too much fun performing the duel.
- #081
The Black Knight was initially played by John Cleese. When Arthur cuts off the first leg, a real one-legged actor (a local silversmith) was used. On the DVD, Terry Gilliam says a puppet was used for the scene where the second leg is cut off. Using the one-legged silversmith in the legless knight scene saved work because they only had to dig a hole for one leg. Cleese, however, claims that he himself stood in the hole.
- #082
Arthur's army at the end of the film consisted of 175 students from the University of Stirling. They were shown as twice that number by being filmed from various angles. Each student was paid two pounds; for a day's work they were provided with free transportation, food and 'plenty of crazy jokes'.
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Graham Chapman's alcoholism (which he was trying to suppress with Antabuse) caused problems during filming. On the first day, he had to cross the Bridge of Death. When he realized there was no alcohol on set and the nearest town was far away, he was disappointed. On screen he was stressed, trembling, sweating and moving slowly, even though he was an experienced rock climber. The crew, who did not know about his alcoholism, thought the heavy costume was causing the stress. In fact, he was suffering from delirium tremens.
- #086
The first day of filming was full of problems: after a long walk to the Glen Coe hills, the gears of the only sync camera broke, and only silent filming could be done. Graham Chapman suffered delirium tremens and froze on the Bridge of Death; first assistant director Gerry Harrison stood in for him.
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Some scenes were shot in public places, with onlookers watching. John Cleese recounted that they did the approach shot of Lancelot running to 'Swamp Castle' at Hampstead Heath in London. Waiting for a visual cue on the park path, he began running toward the camera across the field. In full costume, he chatted randomly with passersby who had no idea what he was doing.
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According to Sir Michael Palin, one day they had crouched in front of the castle far too much. Terry Gilliam asked them to crouch once more because a beautiful beam of sunlight was coming and hitting John's helmet. John went crazy: 'We've been here for four hours, crouching, and the weather is cold. What are you waiting for? The moon and stars to line up around my head?' Gilliam recalled: 'The scene where they were in the trenches and the cow was thrown at them was a matte shot; the only way was to dig a hole in the ground and put them all on their knees. John was going crazy because he was uncomfortable. In the end
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Two weeks before location shooting was due to begin, the Scottish Department of the Environment withdrew the filming permit, saying the script was 'incompatible with the history and fabric of the castles.' The interiors of Camelot and Swamp Castle, along with the exteriors of Castle Anthrax, the French Castle and the opening castle, were shot at Doune Castle (various rooms were redecorated and reused several times). The recently rebuilt Castle Stalker was used for Castle Aaargh. Both were private property. The castle of the Constitutional Peasants and Camelot were ten-metre plywood models (hence Patsy's line), and they tended to topple over on every take; the trailer includes an in-joke in which King Arthur knights a man who has built a great castle, only for Arthur to stab him when the plywood building collapses.
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In a 2020 book-tour interview, John Cleese said his favourite scene was the one with the two guards who fail to properly grasp the instruction to 'stay here and make sure he doesn't leave.' What made the scene work was that it was a simple setup using just two static cameras (a wide and a medium shot). The simplicity of the two angles let the absurdity emerge on its own.
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Terry Gilliam says that because of the film's fast schedule, they had to shoot it like a television episode. In most shots the camera stayed far from the actors and all the faces entered the frame at once; according to Gilliam, this rule works in comedy: seeing all the faces is funnier. This approach was used frequently in Holy Grail.
- #096
The Black Knight is played by John Cleese; Terry Gilliam, in a Green Knight costume, fights by stabbing himself in the head. The pair learned sword fighting and did their own stunts. Gilliam notes that the hardest part was seeing through the small slit in the enormous helmet. According to Terry Jones, this scene was shot towards the end of production, when the money had almost run out, and it took a week. The Black Knight is always played by Cleese until he loses his first leg; then a one-legged actor takes over, and at the very end an armless, legless puppet is used. Jones explains that the scene was not originally written with a silent Black Knight, and that when it did not work in the edit they added three or four takes in which Cleese does not answer the questions. They had also not planned to use Cleese's voice, but when nobody else worked for the dubbing, they used the original recording.
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The first scene shot was King Arthur crossing the Bridge of Death. The last scene was Launcelot's endless run towards the castle; it was done in London as a last-minute additional shoot. Launcelot's small shot had been filmed on location earlier, but John Cleese's run was reshot because it was found 'too silly' and ruined the joke.
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In a 2018 interview, John Cleese said this film was the most miserable shooting experience he has endured. Most of the production was shot on location in Scotland and, as Cleese jokes, Scotland gets only two weeks of warm, dry weather every September. It rained constantly and they had only three umbrellas.
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Terry Gilliam is not sure whether the Swedish translations in the opening credits are correct. According to Terry Jones, the Swedish subtitles came about because the production had run out of money; they could only afford black-and-white credits. It was Michael Palin's idea to add Swedish subtitles as if the audience were watching an Ingmar Bergman film.
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Some of the cast and crew's frustration with Terry Gilliam's direction stemmed from his technical precision about the actors' positions in the frame (the perfectionism of Gilliam's later film 12 Monkeys earned such a bad reputation that it was called the 'Hamster Factor'). For the Pythons' television show, Gilliam made animation sequences using small cut-out figures and sets. When it came time to set up a scene, he treated the actors like the same little figures he had been using for years.
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In the DVD audio commentary, John Cleese voices his frustration that the Castle Anthrax scene focused on technical details rather than comedy. He claims the funniest take was not used because a modern coat was visible in the frame. Initially, the castle girls were planned to be naked, but costume designer Hazel Pethig objected.
- #110
The rabbit's owner (not the one with the huge fangs) did not want the rabbit to be harmed. Terry Gilliam recalls what was done to distract the woman while the rabbit was smeared with red paint. Gilliam notes that the rabbit was happy, but the paint did not come off as quickly as expected. 'Why didn't we just go and buy a rabbit from a shop instead of taking a rabbit from a woman? Maybe we were trying to be professional,' says Gilliam. According to him, animal handlers are the most irritable people you can find on a film set.
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Terry Gilliam recalls that the BBC was a good training ground for technical crew, cameramen and effects teams. Many people who worked on Monty Python's Flying Circus moved over to the Holy Grail crew. Gilliam says they were all well trained because at the BBC they had to work across a wide variety of genres.
- #113
The only knights who manage to cross the Bridge of Death are Sir Launcelot, King Arthur and Sir Bedevere. The bridge was built by a Scottish mountaineer and, although it was terrifying, it was completely safe. Graham Chapman suffered from dizziness that day because he had not drunk alcohol before filming began, so the assistant director took his place. Terry Jones is the only Python to cross the bridge in character.
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Michael Palin was unhappy with his role in the 'Bring out your dead' scene; he is the man crawling under the yoke at the bottom of the screen. Terry Gilliam says Palin will never forgive him or Terry Jones for making him eat mud in this scene. Naturally, the take in which he actually ate mud was cut from the film. Gilliam also notes that most of the 'mud' in the scene was 'pig filth and urine.' According to him, the cast and crew spent a great deal of time at this location getting tetanus shots.
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The 'Bring out your dead' village and the place where Arthur and Bedevere buy a shrub appear to be the same village. This might suggest that Arthur is going in circles throughout his journey, but most likely the producers built the village once and used it twice due to budget constraints.
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The Bridge of Death scene is the first scene shot for the film. Terry Jones recalls that while preparing for the first shoot, the camera's gears were scraping. Because only one camera had sync sound, they began doing silent shoots. The bridge that was built was so shaky that no one wanted to cross it. Terry Gilliam notes that he crossed it several times and was very frightened, and that the mountaineer Graham Chapman was equally frightened. Gilliam says he was drunk on the day the scene of Arthur and Bedevere crossing the bridge was shot.
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Terry Gilliam had difficulty with directing because he was primarily doing animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) and never joined the other members when they went to rehearsals. He notes that if he appeared on the show, it was only on the day he would be filming. He admits that he was more of an outsider to the Monty Python process than Terry Jones, and that the communication problems between Gilliam and the other members became frustrating for everyone. 'I think they thought I cared more about visuals than performance, which wasn't true. It was just that it had to be fought for because the others weren't interested in it, or it wasn't good, or whatever. In theory they were interested, but in practice armour is uncomfortable,' he recalls.
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Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones had selected many locations to shoot in Scotland. However, just two weeks before filming was due to begin, the Scottish Environment Department refused permission to use any castle in the country, citing concerns about damage. The only castles they were able to use for close-ups were Doune Castle and Castle Stalker, both privately owned. Apart from a wide shot of Kidwelly Castle in South Wales (seen in the opening scene) and a wide shot of Bodiam Castle near London (used as the establishing shot of Swamp Castle), almost all the castle interiors and exteriors seen in the film are Doune Castle, shot from different angles and distances; Castle Stalker served as the castle on the island used in the finale. Some other castles are in fact cardboard cutouts placed at close range; Camelot, for instance, as Gilliam has noted, is only 30 feet away from the actors. Ironically, the Scottish tourist board later set up websites to direct tourists to all the locations seen in the film.
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In the commentary, Terry Gilliam introduces the film and himself. He then introduces the film's co-director, Terry Jones, and Jones replies, "Many interesting furry animals." Gilliam introduces Jones as "with an English accent" (even though Jones is Welsh). He also explains that Jones wears women's clothing, that he himself is fully dressed but could change clothes during the commentary, and that Jones will eventually turn into a cow costume. "As the back end of a cow, he is always at his happiest," Gilliam says.
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Characters & Cast (37)
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Unusually for a Monty Python feature, all the female roles (except Dennis's mother, played by Terry Jones) were played by women. In Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), almost all female roles were played by men.
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In the witch-hunt scene, Eric Idle grits his teeth and bites the blade of the scythe. This was not in the script; Idle was about to burst out laughing and bit the scythe to hold himself back so as not to ruin the take. He can be seen trembling slightly as he tries to keep his laughter under control. Sir Michael Palin also tries to hide his laughter at the same moment; John Cleese, just before the shot is cut, quickly turns his head to the side, but cannot hide that he has broken character and is grinning broadly. All three comment on each other's corpsing in the DVD commentary.
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According to Sir Michael Palin, casting was largely determined by who wrote what. Anthrax Castle was a Galahad piece and Terry and I wrote it, so I was cast as Galahad; Terry Jones had written Bedevere; Launcelot was a mixture of things we had written, but John Cleese suited it very well; Eric Idle had written Brave Sir Robin, so he got the Sir Robin roles, and the rest were supporting roles, which I think were also largely about who wrote what.
- #137
Unusually for a Monty Python film, all the female roles (except Dennis's mother, played by Terry Jones) were played by women. In Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), almost all female roles had been played by men.
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Terry Gilliam dies more times than any other actor in the film, with four deaths in total: the Green Knight, stabbed through the face; Sir Bors, decapitated by the Killer Rabbit; the Animator, who suffers a heart attack; and the Bridgekeeper, who falls into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. By contrast, John Cleese and Terry Jones have no death scenes in the film, although Cleese plays the Black Knight, who presumably bleeds to death after his arms are cut off.
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Sir Michael Palin wrote in his diary: "Graham Chapman was seduced by an elderly Aberdeen gentleman on the fishing holiday. Graham apparently resisted but was very drunk and woke me by knocking on my door at around 1 o'clock, saying he was Ethel the Kaiser. On Monday night he woke me again and, just after I had dozed off, I heard him in his room saying very loudly and in various silly ways that he was Betty Marsden. On Tuesday night, however, he was kind enough merely to slip a note under my door reading 'Best wishes, Betty Marsden'."
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In the Anthrax Castle sketch, Galahad suspects that Launcelot is homosexual and Launcelot firmly denies it. In the Swamp Castle sketch, Launcelot meets the effeminate 'lady' Prince Herbert ('Alice'); Herbert appears to be homosexual, but this is never stated explicitly. In the 2006 stage show 'Spamalot!', Herbert is explicitly stated to be homosexual and helps Launcelot come out of the closet.
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Mark Zycon was a fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) who came to the set one day. Terry Gilliam remembers that he arrived by taxi. At that point they needed a double for Eric Idle. Zycon was the right height, so they gave him the job. They soon learned that Zycon was willing to do stunts and began doing things 'no stuntman would do', says Gilliam. Zycon is briefly seen as a prisoner hanging on the wall in the Camelot musical sequence.
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Many unverified sources give her year of birth as 1941, 1942 or 1944, and her birthday as 31 January. However, information at Companies House UK (provided by Booth herself) shows that she was born on 2 December 1940. Booth's Indiana birth certificate has also come to light, confirming that the 1940 date is correct.
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Deeper Meaning (40)
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The French tactic of throwing animals at Arthur and his knights reflects a legend about the siege of Carcassonne in southern France. According to the tale, the townspeople, starving, threw their last remaining food at the besieging army to make them think they were in the same situation, and the siege was lifted.
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Terry Jones does not share the idea that the Middle Ages were full of dirty people with black teeth. "We want to believe in the 20th century that the Middle Ages were like that, so when we showed the film many critics said 'It really looks authentic.'" Jones cites the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545: the teeth of those on board were perfect, because there was no sugar industry.
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The shields and armour of the prominent knights bear fitting symbols: the emblem of the cowardly Sir Robin is a chicken, that of Bedevere, a man of science and nature, a tree, that of the over-eager Launcelot an attacking griffin, that of King Arthur the sun, that of the pure Galahad the holy cross, and that of the Black Knight a wild boar, representing his stubbornness.
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The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is based on the Sovereign's Orb of 1661, part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The orb was made by royal goldsmith Robert Viner for the coronation of Charles II. An example of a 'globus cruciger', the orb is a hollow gold sphere with bands forming three halves, set with clusters of emeralds, pearls, rubies and sapphires. These halves symbolize the three continents known at the time of its commission. The cross on top is made of rose-cut diamonds and symbolizes the Christian world on which it stands. The orb is held in the sovereign's right hand during the coronation, but carried in the left hand when leaving Westminster Abbey.
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At the climax, Arthur frequently confuses the numbers 3 and 5. First, before throwing the grenade, he counts 1, 2, 5. Then he says the Bridge Keeper asks 5 questions. Yet the Keeper always chooses one of five questions: 1. Name 2. Quest 3. Favorite color 4. Capital of Assyria 5. Airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
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The word the 'Knights Who Say Ni' cannot bear to hear is 'it'; yet Arthur used the word without issue in the previous scene ('Well, what do you want?') and the Leader of the Knights Who Say Ni used it twice just before that ('A good shrubbery' and 'Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here beside this shrubbery'). As soon as the knights state the 'word they cannot bear', the Leader tries to avoid using it ('Saying it is one of the words the Knights Who Say Ni cannot hear!'), but he is not very successful.
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Lancelot, Galahad and Bedevere are the names of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table in traditional literature; so are Bors, Gawain and Ector (who appear only in the Cave of Caerbannog scene). Sir Robin is the only knight not based on any of the knights in King Arthur's court; he was invented entirely for this film.
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Coincidentally (or perhaps by the writers' design), this film was released in 1975; that year is the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac. One of the film's antagonists is the Rabbit of Caerbannog (the killer rabbit). Another rabbit connection is that John Cleese was born in 1939; that year also corresponds to the same animal's sign.
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