Monty Python and the Holy Grail is 50 today. Also a Moose bit my Sister

I saw it at the Exeter Street Theater in Boston, which had newly been cleaned so that its stones shone in their original hues – an appropriate place to watch it. To advertise the film, they had a troop of guys dressed as King Arthur and the knights walking through the streets of Boston, dragging a rabbit “Trojan Horse” after them on wheels. It was tiny – no like the one in the film. I later saw a similar advertising bunch in New Yotk City, also dragging the Trojan Rabbit.

They gave out flyers advertising the film “Makes Ben Hur Look like an Epic”, and so on.

Great flick, although I never did like the ending.

Wow, she likes to live dangerously! If someone asked me for a list of the top five animals I would not want to piss off, a moose would definitely be on it.

What about Ralph the Wonder Llama ?

Nah. We’re friends. I met him hiking the mountainous region of Peru and, since I love hiking, I walked instead of riding him. He really appreciated it.

I think the first time I saw it was on TV a few years after it was released. Likely edited by the broadcasters within an inch of its life it paled beside any episode of Flying Circus which I was already versed in. A few years later (c1980) I saw it several times at midnight on a screen next door to one showing The Song Remains the Same. Wafts of weed smoke poured out of the Zeppelin auditorium but it was the Python fans who seemed the most stoned. I never figured out what (if anything) they were using.

She must have died of boredom while carving it!

Anther vote for “didn’t like the ending”. There’s clever meta-commentary*, and there’s lazy. I think MP&tHG is the latter.

*I didn’t think it worked in Blazing Saddles either.

To be fair, they had run out of money. John Cleese doesn’t and didn’t like their ending either, but reality struck.

As it was, the film was partially funded by Led Zep, George Harrison, Pink Floyd and I think The Who. Not your normal funding method.

ETA: Not The Who, but Jethro Tull.

We have tickets to the Fandango theater showing for next week. Dates are today, 4/29, and next week on 5/4 and 5/7. Can’t wait to see it in a theater. We’re trying to convince the 13-year-old granddaughter in going; she probably won’t go.

TCM had a Monty Python mini-marathon a while ago, broadcasting Holy Grail and Life of Brian for the first time for TCM, along with some of the live concert shows and interviews. It helped to turn on captioning!

To be fair, the list of things John Cleese doesn’t and didn’t like is pretty long.

This is true.

A Moose bit my Sister

Only once in 50 years is statistically none.

My family would watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus together, so I had some sense of what the film would be like. I saw it with friends in maybe 1977 or 1978. I was really into the many versions of the Arthur legend, so I’d have loved it for that alone. Swamp Castle is still my favorite scene, and I love the way the film’s action ends.

No whoosh. The issue was I’d apparently loaded the thread before you’d completed posting the link. I sure see it now.

If you don’t think the ending of Blazing Saddles worked, I don’t know what to tell you, man.

It wasn’t the best ending, but it worked for them. Many of their sketches just ended.

Not putting any care into the end of sketches is kinda Python’s thing. Not surprising that the habit carried over into the films. The glorious ending of The Life of Brian was just a happy afterthought.

That is completely true. To my mind, The Life of Brian is the only Monty Python movie with an actual ending.

[Arrow lands on servant] “Message for you, Sir!”

It is available now for free (with ads) on YouTube.

Saw it in theaters today.

Very funny, they had a 5 minute intro by the surviving cast which was pretty entertaining talking about things deleted from the movie. John Cleese however now sounded awful, though I already knew that because I watched a film with him in it 10 years ago and he sounded awful then too.

My only complaint with the movie is that the part with castle anthrax is the most unnecessary part of the movie, this entire 5 minute scene seems to be entirely a setup for the joke about oral sex.

I saw it in theater in HS. Then at college a couple of years later, I saw it at least 15x at cheapo fri/sat night movies. I’m sure more than I’ve seen any other movie.

Yesterday my wife wanted to watch it. Yeah, the funniest bits still hold up - my fave is the “Old woman” bit early on. “Just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me!”

But, as I feared, I started getting bored about 1/2 way through. It really bums me out the way no film/TV I used to think hilarious still gets me today.

We are taking a trip to Europe soon, so tonight we are going to watch a fave from my youth, “If it’s Tuesday, It Must be Belgium.” I’m sure I’ll be disappointed! ;(