Monty Python and the Holy Grail

King Arthur and his knights embark on a low-budget search for the Grail, encountering many very silly obstacles.

• Directors:Terry Gilliam
  Terry Jones
• Genre:Adventure | Comedy
• Runtime:91 minutes

Cast

Graham Chapman : King Arthur / Voice of God / Middle Head / Hiccoughing Guard
John Cleese : Second Swallow-Savvy Guard / The Black Knight / Peasant 3 / Sir Lancelot, the Brave / Taunting French Guard / Tim the Enchanter
Eric Idle : Dead Collector / Peasant 1 / Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Launcelot / First Swamp Castle Guard / Concorde / Roger the Shrubber / Brother Maynard
Terry Gilliam : Patsy / Green Knight / Old Man from scene 24 (Bridgekeeper) / Sir Bors / Animator / Gorrilla Hand
Terry Jones : Dennis’s Mother / Sir Bedevere / Left Head / Voice of Cartoon Scribe / Prince Herbert

King Arthur (Chapman), along with his faithful servant Patsy (Gilliam), is recruiting his Knights of the Round Table throughout England. He is frustrated at every turn by such obstacles as anarcho-syndicalist peasants, a Black Knight who refuses to give up in a fight despite having his arms and legs lopped off, and guards who are more concerned with the flight patterns of swallows than their lord and master. Finally he meets up with Sir Bedevere the Wise (Jones), Sir Lancelot the Brave (Cleese), Sir Galahad the Pure (also called “the Chaste”) (Palin), Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot (Idle), “and the aptly-named Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film” (a picture of Palin’s infant son, shown in a doctored photo of the child wearing adult-sized knight’s armor). They declare themselves the Knights of the Round Table. When “riding” to Camelot (by strutting while their squires bang coconut halves together), they are given a quest by God (represented by an animated photograph of legendary cricket figure W. G. Grace) to find the Holy Grail.

They reach a castle and speak to a Frenchman who randomly taunts and insults them in mangled Franglais. The knights attack, then retreat from a barrage of livestock. An attempt to sneak into the castle using a crudely built giant wooden Trojan Rabbit fails; the French catapult it back at the knights.

Arthur decides that he and his knights should search for the Grail individually. After they split up, Sir Robin travels through the dark Forest of Ewing with his minstrels, and encounters a Three-Headed Giant (from which he flees), Galahad follows a Grail-shaped light to the perils of Castle Anthrax (whose comely female residents are very interested in being spanked and having oral sex with him), Sir Lancelot massacres a wedding party at Swamp Castle, and Arthur and Bedevere encounter the dreaded Knights who say Ni, who demand a shrubbery as tribute. They each overcome or avoid their individual perils, then reunite to face a bleak and terrible winter, the happenings of which are told in the form of a Gilliam animation. Next they meet a pyromaniacal enchanter named Tim, who leads them to a cave guarded by a killer rabbit. The rabbit slays all the remaining unnamed knights before they kill it with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Read more

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