A bit of a long read on the BBC, but what a classic!
Hard to realize it was released 50 years ago this month.
An independent British comedy made on a shoestring by a television sketch troupe? It sounds like a film destined to be forgotten within weeks of leaving cinemas – assuming it reaches cinemas in the first place. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still revered as one of the greatest ever big-screen comedies, 50 years on from its release in April 1975...
...the film boasted faux-Swedish subtitles, Gilliam's instantly recognisable animation, a Trojan Rabbit, the Knights Who Say "Ni!", a debate about whether swallows are strong enough to carry coconuts and a modern-day historian who pops up to comment on the action before being brutally slain by a passing knight.
...Palin: "I say to people, 'Led Zeppelin gave us £50,000 – and look where they are now.'"
Gilliam: "Thank God for rock'n'roll is all I can say."
...They couldn't afford to have knights riding on horseback ...so King Arthur (Chapman) and his men trot along on foot, with servants behind them tapping halved coconut shells together to make the clip-clop noise of horses' hooves.
Members of Monty Python say that the creative solutions they came up with to deal with budget constraints, became some of the film's most beloved gags (Credit: Alamy)
...Apparently Elvis Presley liked watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail near to the end of his life. I don't know if he was taking it in, but just the idea of Elvis Presley saying 'Ni' gives me happiness during dark times."
Hard to realize it was released 50 years ago this month.
An independent British comedy made on a shoestring by a television sketch troupe? It sounds like a film destined to be forgotten within weeks of leaving cinemas – assuming it reaches cinemas in the first place. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still revered as one of the greatest ever big-screen comedies, 50 years on from its release in April 1975...
...the film boasted faux-Swedish subtitles, Gilliam's instantly recognisable animation, a Trojan Rabbit, the Knights Who Say "Ni!", a debate about whether swallows are strong enough to carry coconuts and a modern-day historian who pops up to comment on the action before being brutally slain by a passing knight.
...Palin: "I say to people, 'Led Zeppelin gave us £50,000 – and look where they are now.'"
Gilliam: "Thank God for rock'n'roll is all I can say."
...They couldn't afford to have knights riding on horseback ...so King Arthur (Chapman) and his men trot along on foot, with servants behind them tapping halved coconut shells together to make the clip-clop noise of horses' hooves.
Members of Monty Python say that the creative solutions they came up with to deal with budget constraints, became some of the film's most beloved gags (Credit: Alamy)
...Apparently Elvis Presley liked watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail near to the end of his life. I don't know if he was taking it in, but just the idea of Elvis Presley saying 'Ni' gives me happiness during dark times."
