What Is the Air-Speed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow and Other Facts About “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”

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John Summers • Contributor
Sep 6, 2024 8:00 PM EDT

Monty Python are, without a doubt, the funniest group of people to have ever lived. And even if you think I am wrong, I can prove it to you - Whoever you say is funnier - weather it's Seinfeld, The Simpsons (when they were good), South Park, The Office (either the American or the original), Friends, Arrested Development or The Mighty Boosh (I'm old Greg!) all of them were influenced directly by the humor that Monty Python created. In fact, pretty much every comedian will tell you that this group of six brits were a major influence on their sense of humor. 

Before Monty Python it was all Knock Knock jokes and "Who's on first" sketches, Until these guys came along and showed the world the power of pure nonsense. They invented a new form of comedy that the entire world later studied and then copied and evolved. And now for something completely different - 22 interesting facts about "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

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  • 01
    GRAHAM JOHN TERRY ERIC TERRY MICHAEL CHAPMAN CLEESE GILLIAM IDLE JONES PALIN MONTY PYTHON and the Holy Grail During one of the first screenings of the film in front of a live audience, director Terry Jones noticed that when music was played during the jokes, there was a marked reduction of laughter from the audience. He went back and edited the music out whenever a punchline was delivered. At subsequent screenings he noticed a dramatic increase in the audiences positive reactions to the jokes. F
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  • 02
    @poppingremlins 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?"
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  • 03
    33 @poppingremlins Graham Chapman's alcoholism (which he tried to suppress with Antabuse) caused problems during filming, and not just through his repeatedly forgetting his lines. The first day of shooting required Chapman to cross the Bridge of Death. When working on Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), Chapman had been used to drinking heavily to calm his nerves. He quickly discovered to his dismay that the crew had no alcohol on the set, and the nearest town was too far away for a quick trip
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  • 04
    @poppingremins As part of their stained glass and interior decoration, several medieval cathedrals included illustrations of virtues and vices. The vice of cowardice was depicted as a knight running away from a rabbit. Notre Dame in Paris has no fewer than three such medallions of the "Killer Rabbit".
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  • 05
    @poppingremlins The film's abrupt ending came about because it didn't have the budget for a large-scale battle sequence.
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  • 06
    Together they formed a band bose names and accds were to be The gorilla hand turning the pages was director Terry Gilliam's. The hand turning pages before that is that of Gilliam's wife. @poppingremlins
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  • 07
    @poppingremlins Many of the extras in the film are actually technicians and stagehands, including the designer and the editor playing policemen, the film's musician playing the bearer killed by the Trojan Rabbit, the costume designer playing one of the minstrels and the wife of the producer of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) playing the historian's wife.
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  • 08
    @poppingremlins Both John Cleese and Terry Gilliam performed all their stunts during the duel between Black and Green Knight. They both had to learn to manage big and heavy swords and to do some acrobatics, though never being recognizable, wearing both heavy armors and full helmets. They both avoided use of stunt-men because, as they said in commentaries, they had a lot of fun in enacting the duel.
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  • 09
    @poppingremlins Graham Chapman (as King Arthur) was the only member of the cast to wear real chain mail armor. It weighed about 25 pounds. The rest of the cast wore knitted wool, painted to look like metal.
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  • 10
    The theatrical release contains 527 jokes, including 42 in the opening credits, for an average of one joke every 10.5 seconds. @poppingremlins
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  • 11
    @poppingremlins Though he was renowned as the most restrained and unflappable of the Pythons, when Michael Palin was asked to do a seventh take of the scene where he crawls through mud, he had, in his own words, "A jolly good blow-up." John Cleese and Graham Chapman were so astonished that they gave him a round of applause.
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  • 12
    @poppingremlins During the witch hunt, Eric Idle bares his teeth and bites down on the blade of the scythe he is holding. This was not scripted; Idle was actually about to burst out laughing and bit his scythe to stifle himself so as not to spoil the take. (If you look closely, you can see him shaking slightly, trying to keep his laughing under control.)
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  • 13
    @poppingremlins The French tactic of pelting Arthur and his knights with livestock echoes the relatively modern legend of a medieval siege of the fortified southern French town of Carcassonne. Said to have been near starvation, the townspeople used the last of their food to pelt the besieging army to convince them, suffering likewise, that the town was well stocked with food and that the siege was hopeless. The tactic was successful, and the siege was lifted.
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  • 14
    @poppingremlins "God" is in fact a photograph of the famous 19th-century English cricketer W.G. Grace.
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  • 15
    poppingremlins Since the armour the Knights wore was really made of wool, and the weather conditions in Scotland and England being what they normally are, the actors spent most of the shooting days being very cold and wet. To make matters worse, the hotel where they were staying only had a limited number of baths and hot water. At the end of shooting each day, there was a mad dash to see who could get back to the hotel first, and into some hot water. The Monty Python troupe all seem to agree tha
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  • 16
    @poppingremlins Funds earned by Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon" went towards funding Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The band were such fans of the show they would halt recording sessions just to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969).
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  • 17
    @poppingremlins The famous depiction of galloping horses by using coconut shells (a traditional radio-show sound effect) came about from the purely practical reason that the production simply could not afford real horses.
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  • 18
    In the Killer Rabbit scene, a real white rabbit was used. He was dyed with what was assumed to be a washable red coloring liquid in the shots after the battle. When filming wrapped the rabbit's owner was dismayed to learn the dye could not be rinsed off. Terry Gilliam described in an audio commentary that the owner of the rabbit was present and shooting was abruptly halted while the cast desperately attempted to clean the rabbit before the owner found out, an unsuccessful attempt. He also stated
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  • 19
    @poppingremlins The Enchanter's name is Tim because John Cleese forgot the character's original name. He ad-libbed the line, "There are some who call me...Tim".
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  • 20
    poppitigremlins The Black Knight was first played by John Cleese, but when Arthur cuts off the first leg a real one-legged actor (a local silversmith) was used. On the DVD Terry Gilliam reveals that a marionette was used to film the shot of the second leg being cut off, he also jokes that using the one-legged silversmith for the shot of the knight with no legs saved work, since they only had to dig a hole for one leg (Cleese has said that it was himself standing in the hole).
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  • 21
    @poppingremlins John Cleese as Tim the Enchanter actually stood on the pinnacle seen at the beginning of his scene. On one side was a drop he said could have killed him, and on the other was a drop he said could have maimed him. To make matters worse, the wind kept threatening to push him over either side. Between takes, he would crouch down to avoid being pushed over by the wind. The whole experience was one he remembers as being very frightening, but he did it anyway, because he knew what kind
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  • 22
    According to Michael Palin, "casting was largely determined mainly by who'd written what. Castle Anthrax was a Galahad thing and I'd written that with Terry, so I was cast as Galahad; Terry had written Bedevere; Lancelot was a mixture of stuff we'd written, but John seemed to fit that well; Eric had written Brave Sir Robin, so he got the Sir Robin parts, and the rest were subsidiary parts, which again I think were probably largely to do originally with who wrote what". @poppingremlins MONTY PYTH
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