Trivia for
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) More at IMDbPro »

• Two weeks before location shooting was scheduled to begin, the Scottish Department of the Environment withdrew permission for the Pythons to shoot within their castles, saying that the film's script would be "incompatible with the history and fabric" of the castles. The interiors of Camelot and Swamp Castle, and exteriors of Castle Anthrax, French Castle and the opening castle were all shot at Doune Castle (with various rooms redecorated and reused many times). Recently-rebuilt Castle Stalker was used for the Castle Aarrgg. Both of these were privately owned and could be used. The Constitutional Peasants' castle and Camelot are each 10ft high plywood models (hence Patsy's comment) which had a tendency to blow over in the middle of each take; hence the trailer shows another in-joke, with King Arthur knighting someone who just built a large castle but when the plywood building falls over Arthur stabs him.
  
  
• Scenes such as Arthur approaching the first castle and Lancelot's running dash to Swamp Castle were filmed on Hampstead Heath, a London park beside one of the city's busiest road junctions.
  
  
• Day one of filming was plagued with problems: after an extended trek into the Glen Coe hills the crew's only sync camera sheared its gears and the team could only shoot mute shots that involved crossing the Bridge of Death. Graham Chapman suffered from delirium tremens (a side-effect of his alcoholism) and froze when trying to cross the Bridge of Death, thus having to be doubled by the first assistant director.
  
  
• Some major scenes scripted, but never filmed: - additional "Knights who say Ni!" scene, they intend to call themselves "the Knights of Nicky-Nicky" - additional police detective scenes - several scenes where Arthur and the knights meet "King Brian, the Wild". - After the Bridgekeeper, they come upon the Boatkeeper. "He who would cross the Sea of Fate Must answer me these questions twenty-eight!"
  
  
• The gorilla hand turning the pages was director Terry Gilliam's. The hand turning pages before that is that of Gilliam's wife.
  
  
• At the beginning of the "Bring out your dead" scene, two nuns with gigantic mallets can be seen. The original script called for them to be pounding on a man tied to a cart, but the scene was cut and that glimpse is all that remains.
  
  
• Additional cat abuse includes a cat being stepped on during the Knights of Camelot Dance scene.
  
  
• In the original draft of the script, Arthur and his knights end up finding the Holy Grail at Harrods, a famous London department store.
  
  
• Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film is Michael Palin's infant son Tom.
  
  
• Michael Palin plays the most characters (12).
  
  
• Unusually for a Monty Python feature, all the female roles (apart from Dennis's mother, played by Terry Jones) are played by women. In the TV series and the two following films, almost all the female roles are played by men.
  
  
• Among the extras is the future writer Iain Banks, who was studying at nearby Stirling University at the time.
  
  
• On the 2001 Region 1, 2-disc DVD, the mock-Scandinavian subtitle "Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Gräilen" is missing. This subtitle is restored on the 2006 Region 1 "Extraordinary Deluxe Edition".
  
  
• The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles per hour, beating its wings 7-9 times per second rather than 43. And a 5 ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut.
  
  
• Assyria actually had four capitals; they were Ashur (or Qalat Sherqat), Calah (or Nimrud), the short-lived Dur Sharrukin (or Khorsabad), and Nineveh. Each are now located in modern-day Iraq.
  
  
• Funds earned by Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon" went towards funding The Holy Grail. The band were such fans of the show they would halt recording sessions just to watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969).
  
  
• The King of Swamp Castle says that Sir Lancelot killed "all those guards - they cost 50 pounds each", meaning that Sir Lancelot killed £300 worth of guards.
  
  
• 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?"
  
  
• During production, the troupe became increasing irritated by the press, who seemed to always ask the same questions, such as "What will your next project be?" One day, Eric Idle flippantly answered, "Jesus Christ's Lust For Glory". Having discovered that this answer quickly shut up reporters, the group adopted it as their stock answer. After production completed, they did some serious thinking about it, and realized that while satirizing Christ himself was out of the question, they could create a parody of first-century life, later realized in Life of Brian (1979).
  
  
• The establishing shot showing the "forest of Ewing" is actually stock footage of Yosemite Valley.
  
  
• The "restored" DVD version of the film includes a grand total of 23 seconds cut from the original release. Dingo, just before explaining the punishment of lighting the Grail Beacon, turns to the audience and asks "Do you think this scene should have been cut?" and then 'debating' the issue with the Constitutional Peasants and the 3-Headed Knight. Finally the Old Man from Scene 24, Tim the Enchanter, God and Arthur's army scream "Get on with it!"; the directors feared that this line would invoke a scathing response from critics and so dropped it. When the intact film was shown to a paying audience, however, it received one of the biggest laughs of the film and the directors tried to rescind the cutting order, but it was too late.
  
  
• The scene referred to in the film as Scene 24 is actually Scene 13. The Bridge of Death scene (where the Old Man From Scene 24 makes his second appearance) is the real scene 24.
  
  
• 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".
  
  
• 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 that they did not enjoy much of the filming experience for this movie.
  
  
• 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 of budget and time-lines they had to work with.
  
  
• Sir Lancelot's "horse", Concord, was represented by his servant, also named Concord, banging two coconuts together. This is cameo of sorts for the horse named "Concord," who originally appeared, as a real horse, in Episode 37 of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969). He was the mount for the episode's title character, Dennis Moore, who happened to be played by John Cleese.
  
  
• In several scenes the monks chant in Latin: "Pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem". The translation of this is: "Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest." It's part of the standard Latin funeral rite.
  
  
• The German heavy metal band Blind Guardian sampled the Monk's chant on the opening track of their album "Follow the Blind".
  
  
• Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
  
  
• When King Arthur and his knights reach Camelot,the trumpet fanfare is the identification fanfare for Rediffusion Television. Rediffusion produced "Do Not Adjust Your Set" (1967) and "At Last the 1948 Show" (1967), two programs featuring the members of Monty Python before teaming up.
  
  
• In the elaborately illustrated pages that proceed various scenes, "Lancelot" is spelled two different ways - "Launcelot" and "Lancelot".
  
  
• 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 dead historian's wife.
  
  
• During shooting, Graham Chapman was actually fighting his alcoholism by taking Antabuse.
  
  
• Throughout the movie, the knights galloped - with their "bearers" clapping coconut halves together to simulate the noises of the horses' hooves - to pretend they were on horses. This was not, however, part of the original concept. Before filming began the budget was cut, and there was no money for renting horses.
  
  
• 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).
  
  
• On the 2001 special edition DVD release, the opening moments of Dentist on the Job (1961) is seen before a voice (probably Terry Jones) mumbles that this is the wrong film and scrambles to start the correct one. The alternate title of the film "Dentist on the Job" is "Get On With It!".
  
  
• Connie Booth, who plays the accused witch, was John Cleese's wife at one point in time (Cleese plays, among other characters, Lancelot). The couple would later go on to write "Fawlty Towers" (1975), in which they both starred as well.
  
  
• Terry Gilliam was supposed to direct the film, but during filming he became exasperated with the actors, and they with him. At one point he gave up directing altogether and took a nap under a nearby tree. At this point Terry Jones took up directing in his stead, which is why they are both credited as directors.
  
  
• Terry Gilliam designed the boat used in the finale. When they first saw it, the rest of the Monty Python troupe were greatly impressed by it.
  
  
• 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. From that point on, whenever he directed, he remembered to stop the music for the funny parts.
  
  
• In an auction of movie costumes in March 2007, the helmet worm by Sir Bedevere (Terry Jones) sold for $29,000, more than ten times the original estimate.
  
  
• Graham Chapman's alcoholism 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 to purchase any. Consequently, he was visibly stressed, shaking, sweating and moving slowly throughout the scene, yet he was known to be an experienced rock climber. Not knowing about his alcoholism, the crew wondered if Chapman's heavy costume caused the stress; it was actually alcoholism-induced DTs.
  
  
• "God" is in fact a photograph of the famous 19th-century English cricketer W.G. Grace.
  
  
• Movie was adapted as a Broadway musical in 2006 called “Spamalot”.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• For the Japanese release, "Holy Grail" is translated "Holy Sake Cup."
  
  
• Bee Duffell (Old Crone) died before the cinema release.
  
  
• 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.
  
  

• SPOILER: Despite being set in the medieval period, you only see one horse during the entire movie and that is when a random knight rides in and kills the historian. Everywhere else in the film, horses are represented by the old radio standby of banging two halves of coconut shell together (because it's funny, it's cheap and saved having to teach any of the team to ride).
  
  
• SPOILER: Terry Gilliam dies more than any other Python (and any other actor, in fact) in this movie giving him a grand total of 4 deaths. His characters that die are the Green Knight (sword through the face), Sir Bors (decapitated by the Killer Rabbit), the Animator (major heart attack), and the Bridgekeeper/Soothsayer (cast into the "Gorge of Eternal Peril"), respectively.
  
  
• SPOILER: In the final scene of the movie, when the police arrests the knights, two shots before the end you can see a policeman taking a shield away from an extra who is strangely dressed very much like Fred Flintstone
  
  
• SPOILER: The only 2 Python members to not die in this film are John Cleese and 'Terry Jones' (gv).
  
  

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