The cast singing the “Knights of the Round Table” song
Wow, I feel old! Fifty years has passed since this cheeky film was released in 1975.
It’s hard to explain, now, the effect this movie had on late Baby Boomer and Gen X geeks. It wasn’t apparent at the time of its release, which I remember was quick and quiet and certainly didn’t stick around the theaters all summer like Steven Spielberg’s Jaws did. It accrued over time. In the U.S., it was periodically broadcast on public TV as a fundraiser, broken up by donation pleas; this is where I first saw it. It was during the knights who say ‘nih’ sketch or the three-headed giant one. Either way, I tolerated those pledge breaks for the rest of it. I already knew PBS showed Monty Python episodes late at night on weekends, and there was also a movie of their best skits re-created for film. But an original film was a different beast. It clicked perfectly into place with the irreverancy of the 1970s and growing SFF and gaming fandoms, particularly Dungeons & Dragons whose settings, at the time, were exclusively English Medieval. Oh, and the growing popularity of Ren Faires throughout the 1980s and 90s, not to mention the nascent phenomena of comicons.
You can think of it like a Head (that Monkees/Jack Nicholson 1968 psychedelic comedy) for the junior geek set.
I’m sure entire college dorms at the time were speaking in English accents and making silly-sounding commentary on everyday objects as if they were knights and peasants. “Oi! A utility knife! You can’t get very far in life if you don’t have a utility knife!”
What has struck me now, whenever I view it, is how varied it is, a patchwork of differing styles, skits, and approaches to comedy, and how eerie some of the cinematography is between each sketch, all winter trees, gray stone castles, and mists and moors, adding a creepy, overarching, mythical character. I used to think that these bits were included only for the cast to skew them; but with time, I think the mythical bits hold up, cliched as they are. They say to me, legend, history and awe still exist even as you mock them, and they will always be here while those who make light of them come and go. It’s a melancholy message considering some of the cast has since passed (Graham Chapman, Terry Jones) and the others are long past their physical comedy days.
On a more light-hearted note, my favorite bit is the song-and-dance Camelot number where the knights soft-shoe on a table where a feast has been set up, as peasants ignore them; you can hear the squeaks and crunches of their armor (the sound design in this film is really, really good) and at one time a knight steps on a stray chicken which goes, “Urrck!” The manic intensity of this bit, coupled with the realism of filming in a historic castle, takes it to a level beyond mere absurd humor: it’s history standing up to, and defying, its mockers. Its Monty Python vs. The Whole of Existence.
My least favorite bit is the man-eating rabbit. That was just stupid. And the Castle Anthrax bits haven’t held up well either.
But, on the whole, I could watch it again and again, even as it wasn’t made to be watched that way; VCRs, cable TV, subscription services didn’t exist back then, and likely the makers thought they’d be lucky if it showed up at film festivals every once in a while. How wrong they were!
But how nice for us.
