DVD details
Monty Python and the Holy GrailCollector's Edition
Columbia/Tristar 01293Color - 91 min
Released 16 September 2003
Available
List Price: $24.95
2-Disc Keep Case
Aspect Ratio / Regional Information / Disc Details
1.85 : 1
Anamorphic Widescreen /
1 : USA / NTSC /
Closed Captioning: CC
Master format: Film
Sides: 2 (SS-RSDL)
Chapter stops: 28
Macrovision copyprotection
Sound: / English
2.0
Subtitles: / English, French, Spanish
SUPPLEMENTS
· Audio commentary by Terry Gilliam & 'Terry Jones' plus general complaints and back-biting by John Cleese, Eric Idle & Michael Palin
· Subtitles for People Who Don't Like the Film (taken from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II)
· On-Screen Screenplay: Read the screenplay while you watch the film
· Extraordinary Animated Menus with very loud 5.1 Dolby Digital sound
· Fascinating Scene Selection feature: all-moving, all-singing, all-tax-avoidance!
· Exciting "follow The Killer Rabbit" Feature!
· A special feature for the Hard of Hearing!
· A glorious extra 24 seconds absolutely free!
· Mono soundtrack in glorious old-fashioned mono!
· Three Mindless Sing-Alongs!
· Join Michael Palin and Terry Jones in their special feature documentary: The Quest for the Holy Grail Locations!
· A paperback of the script
· Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Japanese! (With English subtitles)
· Exclusive film cel senitype
· On Location with the Pythons: genuine 18 min. location report made in 1974 by BBC Film Night (broadcast 19th Dec., 1974)
· An Interactive Cast Directory: discover just how many roles Michael Palin plays!
Movie Review
April 28, 1975
'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'
A foolish constancy is the hobgoblin of little minds and of some movie critics (who may or may not have little minds) when writing about the films of comedians.
In his own day, poor old W. C. Fields was always being rapped for not making movies that were as funny, from start to finish, as his adoring critics found bits of them to be. I'm afraid that once or twice I've gone so far as to suggest that a certain film by Woody Allen or Mel Brooks hasn't been consistently funny, that is, that there were some parts that weren't as funny as other parts. However, as any surveyor of anything will tell you, you can't have a high spot unless you have a low one from which to survey it.
All of which is a round about way of saying that "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" has some low spots but that anyone at all fond of the members of this brilliant British comedy group—which more or less justifies Sunday night television in New York—shouldn't care less.
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail," which opened yesterday at the Cinema 2, is a marvelously particular kind of lunatic endeavor. It's been collectively written by the Python troupe and jointly directed by two of them (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones) so effectively that I'm beginning to suspect that there really aren't six of them but only one, a fellow with several dozen faces who knows a great deal about trick photography.
Unlike "And Now for Something Completely Different," which was a collection of sketches from "Monty Python's Flying Circus," television show, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is what is known on Broadway as a "book show."
It has a story with an approximate beginning, an approximate middle and it ends, or perhaps I should say that it stops after a while. To be more specific, it's the Python troupe's version of the legend of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail, with no apologies at all to Malory though it manages to send up the legend, courtly love, fidelity, bravery, costume movies, movie violence and ornithology.
Graham Chapman plays Arthur, the film's major continuing character, with the earnest optimism of a 19th-century missionary, who's doomed to fail but refuses to acknowledge the fact. The other members of the Python team turn up in a variety of roles—Round Table knights, snobbish French aristocrats, irritable serfs, mythical monsters and, in one case, as a noble son named Alice who tries to turn the film into an operetta.
The gags are nonstop, occasionally inspired and should not be divulged, though it's not giving away too much to say that I particularly liked a sequence in which the knights, to gain access to an enemy castle, come up with the idea of building a Trojan rabbit. When Arthur calls retreat, he simply yells: "Run away!" And the morale of Sir Robin, the least successful of the Round Table knights, isn't helped by a retinue of minstrels who insist on singing about his most embarrassing defeats.
I have no idea whether Mr. Gilliam and Mr. Jones have seen Robert Bresson's rather more austere film, "Lancelot of the Lake," which was shown at last year's New York Film Festival, but there are times when "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" seems to be putting on Mr. Bresson unmercifully. The dour lighting and landscapes that are so important in the Bresson film are tossed into this comedy without apparent thought for the havoc they do "Lancelot." Mr. Bresson's emphasis on what you might call the sound of knighthood (clanking armor, horses' hoofs) is also hilariously parodied, as well as the violence of the age, on which the Python people have the last bleeding word.
Everyone interested in Mr. Bresson would do well to stay away from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" until after they see "Lancelot." The comparison, which may never have been intended, is nevertheless lethal to the work of the great French director.
Box Office Information
Budget
£229,575 (estimated)
$250,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend
$45,487 (USA) (17 June 2001) (4 Screens)
Movie Trivia
· The Pythons were barred from filming in most castles in Scotland for various reasons and the external shot of Camelot is a model (the trailer shows a cardboard cutout of a castle falling over). The interiors of Camelot and Swamp Castle, and exteriors of Castle Anthrax, French castle and opening castle were all shot at Doune Castle (many rooms were reused many times). The Castle Aarg was Stalker castle. Both of these were privately owned and could be used.
· The Black Knight was first played by John Cleese, but when Arthur cuts off his leg; a real one-legged actor (a local silversmith) was used. When the Black Knight looses his last limb, Cleese is actually standing in a hole with his arms wrapped behind him.
· Many scenes were filmed in a city park beside one of London's busiest junctions.
· Graham Chapman's alcoholism caused problems during the shoot. He forgot his lines constantly and co-director Terry Gilliam says that Chapman was so drunk that he couldn't make it across the bridge for the Bridge of Death sequence at the beginning of the shoot and had to be doubled by the first assistant director. This was the very first day of filming and was plagued with difficulties. Even the close up camera broke on the trip up, so all shots had to be wide angle.
· Some major scenes scripted, but never filmed:
o additional "Knights who say Ni!" scene, they intend to call themselves "the Knights of Nicky-Nicky"
o additional police detective scenes
o several scenes where Arthur and the knights meet "King Brian, the Wild".
o After the Bridgekeeper, they come upon the Boatkeeper. "He who would cross the Sea of Fate Must answer me these questions twenty-eight!"
· The gorilla hand turning the pages was director Terry Gilliam's. The hand turning pages before that is that of Gilliam's wife.
· At the beginning of the "Bring out your dead" scene, two nuns with gigantic mallets can be seen. The original script called for them to be pounding on a man tied to a cart, but the scene was cut and that glimpse is all that remains.
· Many subtle instances of cat abuse: during the "bring out your dead" scene, the old woman the knights say "Ni!" at, etc.
· Additional cat abuse includes a cat being stepped on during the Knights of Camelot Dance scene.
· In the original draft of the script, Arthur and his knights end up finding the Holy Grail at Harrods, a famous London department store.
· Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film is Michael Palin's infant son William.
· During a long pause during the witch scene, Eric Idle starts to laugh and bites his scythe to contain it.
· On the 2001 special edition DVD release, the opening moments of Dentist on the Job (1961) is seen before a voice (probably Terry Jones) mumbles that this is wrong film and scrambles to start the correct one. The alternate title of the film "Dentist on the Job" is "Get On With It!".
· Michael Palin plays the most characters (10).
· Connie Booth, who plays the accused witch, was John Cleese's wife at one point in time. (John Cleese plays, among other characters in the film, Lancelot). The couple would later go on to write "Fawlty Towers" (1975), in which they both starred, as well.
· Unusually for a Monty Python feature, all the female roles (apart from Dennis's mother, played by Terry Jones) are played by women. In the TV series and the two following films, almost all the female roles are played by men.
· "God" is in fact a photograph of the famous 19th Century English Cricketer W.G. Grace.
· In the scene where Sir Launcelot swings from the chandelier to escape from Swamp Castle, one of the "dead" guards can be seen waving to the camera.
· Among the extras is the future writer Iain Banks, who was studying at nearby Stirling University at the time.
· Many of the extras in the film are actually technicians and stagehands, including: the designer and the editor playing policemen; the costume designer, playing one of the minstrels; the wife of the producer of the "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969), playing the dead historian's wife.
· On the 2001 2-disc DVD Region 1 print, the "Swedish" subtitle "Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Gräilen" is missing.
· The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles per hour, beating its wings 7-9 times per second rather than 43. And a 5 ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut.
· Assyria actually had four capitals; they were Ashur (or Qalat Sherqat), Calah (or Nimrud), the short-lived Dur Sharrukin (or Khorsabad), and Nineveh.
· Funds earned by Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon" went towards funding The Holy Grail. The band were such fans of the show they would halt recording sessions just to watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969).
· There are subtle instances of cat abuse because this was set in the time of the bubonic plague. Cats were the friends of witches, who supposedly spread the plague, so as many cats as possible were slaughtered. People began keeping lap dogs because they thought that the plague would reach the animal first and not get to them. This was, in fact, partly true. The fleas that really spread the plague did bite the dogs and not the people.
· The King of Swamp Castle says that Sir Lancelot killed "all those guards - they cost 50 pounds each", meaning that Sir Lancelot killed £300 worth of guards.
· The only character to appear in all 4 Python films (this one, The Meaning of Life (1983) And Now for Something Completely Different (1971) and Life of Brian (1979)) is God.
· The chain mail costumes worn by the knights were simply knitted wool.
· During the shooting of "The Holy Grail", actor Graham Chapman was actually fighting his alcoholism, by taking Antabuse.
· John Cleese's young daughter was on the set during the filming of the Black Knight scene, and after seeing the "fighting", remarked to Connie Booth, "Daddy doesn't like that man, does he?"
· During production, the troupe became increasing irritated by the press, who seemed to always ask the same questions, such as "What will your next project be?" One day, Eric Idle flippantly answered, "Jesus Christ's Lust For Glory". Having discovered that this answer quickly shut up reporters, the group adopted it as their stock answer. After production completed, they did some serious thinking about it, and realized that while satirizing Christ himself was out of the question, they could create a parody of first-century life, later realized in Life of Brian (1979).
> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.
· SPOILER: Despite being set in the medieval period, you only see one horse during the entire movie and that is when a random knight rides in and kills the historian. Everywhere else in the film, horses are represented by the old radio standby of banging two halves of coconut shell together (because it's funny, it's cheap and saved having to teach any of the team to ride).
· SPOILER: Terry Gilliam dies more than any other Python (and any other actor, in fact) in this movie giving him a grand total of 4 deaths. His characters that die are the Green Knight, Sir Bors, the Animator, and the Bridgekeeper/Soothsayer, respectively.
Movie Goofs
· Continuity: During the sword fight between King Arthur and the Black Knight, the lighting repeatedly changes between overcast and a bright sunny day, and the fire in the tent in the background changes from lit to unlit to lit.
· Audio/visual unsynchronized: Monk hits his head with a board before other Monks. The sound is not heard.