Movie Quote of the Day (‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail,’ With the End of the Black Knight-Arthur Encounter)

 

[The Black Knight continues to threaten Arthur despite getting both his arms and one of his legs cut off.]

Black Knight [played by John Cleese]:” Right, I'll do you for that!”

King Arthur [played by Graham Chapman]: “You'll what?”

Black Knight: “Come here!”

King Arthur: “What are you gonna do, bleed on me?”

Black Knight: “I'm invincible!”

King Arthur: “You're a loony!”— Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), screenplay by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, based EXTREMELY loosely on Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory, directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones

Fifty years ago today, Monty Python and the Holy Grail opened in New York City, on its way to earning $5 million in international gross and elevating the Monty Python franchise from the small to the large screen.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table had never been like this. I don’t think Sir Thomas Malory, in his wildest burst of creativity, would ever have imagined evoking galloping horses using coconut shells; a “killer rabbit” that causes unexpected mayhem; or “Galahad the Chaste” meeting “the maidens of Castle Anthrax.”

That hilarity and that robust box-office performance represented meager consolation to cast member who have grumbled in the half-century since about the miserable conditions for shooting on location, on a budget that could only please a skinflint, in Scotland. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Genesis felt so sorry for all who labored through this that the rock bands all contributed to this movie's budget.

Bad enough that they were filming in wet, damp April. But the producers also couldn’t afford decent hotel rooms for cast members, according to Jim Beckerman’s article in yesterday’s Bergen Record. The actors rushed back to the hotel each day in a mad competition to commandeer the limited number of baths and hot water.

Several years ago, John Cleese’s appearance at BergenPAC, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, included clips from the movie, as well as other highlights of his career. But I didn’t need that to recall the uproarious Black Knight-King Arthur confrontation that climaxes with the knight, with several bodily appendages progressively removed, continues to protest his readiness to continue: “’Tis only a flesh wound.’”

In case you were wondering: Graham Chapman was the only cast member to wear real chain armor. The rest made do with knitted wool, painted to look like metal.