Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - film review

England, 932 AD.  Accompanied by his faithful servant Patsy, King Arthur of the Britons is busy recruiting his Knights of the Round Table - not an easy task when most of the population appear to be peasants with aggressively militant anarchic tendencies.   Finally, however, Arthur manages to gather together a band of men who will join in him in his court at Camelot.  These are: Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Galahad the Pure, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-quite-so-brave and the aptly named Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film.  As Arthur and his trusty knights are making their way to Camelot, God appears to them in the form of a Terry Gilliam animation and commands that they find the sacred relic known as the Holy Grail.  What could be easier!  At the first castle they come to, the proprietor (an English-hating Frenchman) declares that he has the Grail in his possession.  He then proceeds to pelt Arthur and his chums with cows, geese and other assorted farm animals.  When a bid to seize the castle with a Trojan Rabbit fails, the knights go their separate ways, believing this will increase their chances of success.  Whilst Sir Robin tackles a three-headed giant and then goes off to change his underwear, Sir Galahad comes close to losing all that he holds dear when he falls prey to a desperate hoard of nubile young women.  Meanwhile, Sir Lancelot proves his valour by rescuing the unwilling heir of Swamp Castle, massacring a wedding party in the process.  Arthur and Bedevere get off lightly – all they have to do is find a nice little shrubbery to appease the Knights Who Say Ni.  Having survived these various horrific ordeals, Arthur and his knights are reunited to face their greatest threat: a homicidal rabbit.  Actually, strictly speaking, that should be "second greatest threat", because, assuming they aren’t bitten to death by this psychopathic bunny, there is an even more formidable foe to deal with: the Black Beast of Aaaaargh.  And even then, their adventures are far from over...

Despite being made on a shoestring budget by a team that had never directed a full-length film before, Monty Python and the Holy Grail manages to be one of the all time great British film comedies, and one that seems to get funnier as the years pass.  The Python team had made an earlier film, And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), but this was just a rehash of sketches taken from their popular BBC television series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  The Holy Grail was their first "proper" film and was conceived in 1974, in the interval between the third and fourth seasons of the Python series – just before John Cleese went off with his wife Connie Booth to engender another landmark TV series, Fawlty Towers.

The tight budget (estimated to be in the region of £150,000) and some atrocious weather conditions during the location filming in Scotland made this a particularly difficult production for all concerned.  Graham Chapman’s acute drink problem added to the backstage tensions, with the actor having difficulty remembering his lines.  There were further problems arising from the differing directorial styles of Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones – the former was more interested in the look of the film, the latter preferred to focus on the comedy.  This merely added to the fiction.

Given how fraught the making of this film was, it is incredible that it was ever completed, and a miracle that it holds together as well as it does.  The Python team were not the first (or last) to translate their small screen series to the big screen, but they were by far the most successful.  You only have to consider the travesties that are the film versions of On the Buses, Rising Damp and George and Mildred (to name just three offenders) to appreciate how badly things could have gone for the Pythons.   

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is almost unique in that it is relentlessly funny from start to finish (and that includes the opening captions).  The jokes just keep coming, an endless volley of mirth missiles that include some of the team’s best visual gags: the Black Knight who continues to taunt his opponents even after having had all of his limbs hacked off; the barrage of farm animals that rain down on Arthur when he antagonises a French knight; and, best of all, the deadly bunny rabbit which makes Spielberg’s Jaws look like a pet goldfish.  

The comic dialogue is just as good as, if not better than, anything in the TV series, and includes such memorable nonsense one-liners as "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" (which is precisely the kind of thing an irate xenophobic Frenchman would say to a Briton).   In fact, so absorbing is the comedy that you have next to no time to appreciate the film’s impressive production values.  The attention to period detail in the sets and costumes is not what you would expect for a low budget British comedy and are a testament to the commitment and skill that went into this film.  Was this the high point for the Python team?  Certainly not!  They would go on to even better things with their next film, the unmissable (and ever so slightly heretical) Life of Brian (1979).

© James Travers 2009

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