Updated May 6, 2025 at 10:38 AM MDT
Before the 1975 release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the British comedy troupe Monty Python was barely known overseas.
People in Britain knew the group, made up of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, for its absurd, anarchic sketch comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the BBC.
After the series ended, Palin came up with the idea of doing a medieval film. He and Jones were especially interested in studying the Middle Ages, according to Kim Howard Johnson, author of The First 28 Years of Monty Python and other Monty Python history books. The Pythons, as the cast came to be known, said their budget – partially funded by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd – was only around $400,000.
Despite the small budget, the film went on to become a comedy classic that influenced Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons and countless other comedies. Now 50 years after its release, it continues to serve as inspiration for new generations of comedians and writers – and holds a special place in the hearts and minds of fans around the world.
How the limited budget played a role in the humor
A lot of the creative decisions in the film were made due to the production's small budget.
"They talked about using knights on horseback, and they realized this is going to be very difficult to film. This is going to be very difficult to wrangle these horses…so what can we do that can save us money?" Johnson said. "They realized 'we can just use coconuts.' So they saved a fortune, they got great visual laughs from the get go."
According to Johnson, the Pythons spent very little money on amenities while filming. They filmed in one castle and made it look like three. Producers also asked if the Pythons could share a hotel room at the beginning of the shoot.
"At the end of the day they would say 'it's a wrap for today'. There was a huge rush for all the buses and vans to go back to the hotel, because only the first 60% of the people that made it back to the hotel got hot water. It was a rough shoot," Johnson said.
Budget limits also affected the film's ending. The Pythons wanted to have a huge battle scene, but they ran out of money. Instead, it ends with the cast getting arrested by modern day police before the battle begins. Both Idle and Cleese have said they don't like the ending. In an interview at Indiana University in 2017, Cleese said "it ends the way it does because we couldn't think of any other way."
When the film was released, it was a moderate success in the U.S. and UK. Though it made back its budget, it received mixed reviews from critics.
One NPR listener, Donald Dryer remembers attending one of the first showings of the movie in Grand Rapids, Mich. An advertisement for the movie said the first few hundred people would get a free gift.
"Before we got to the exit doors, everyone who was leaving was handed two halves of a hollowed out coconut. The faces of the people in line to enter the theater for the next showing were priceless as a few hundred of us leaving were all banging the coconut halves together like we were riding horses," Dryer said.
The film's impact on comedy
Absurd humor existed before Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The writing was heavily inspired by The Goon Show, a British radio comedy show that aired through the 1950s, but Monty Python is credited with bringing this kind of humor to the mainstream.
"You see the Pythons bring it to the masses…as opposed to an esoteric thing… suddenly we all like it," said Anne Libera, director of Comedy Studies at Columbia College Chicago and The Second City, the Chicago-based comedy troupe.
"It's impossible to think of modern comedy without the Pythons as an influence because it shows up everywhere."
Libera was inspired to go into comedy because of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
"Unlike some of the other television comedy I was watching at the time, this is smart. This requires that I was a big reader," Libera said. "It's both funny to everybody and ridiculous, but also just a motherlode for nerds."
Libera said a classic Second City method is to play to the top of your intelligence, which is something drawn directly from Monty Python. Use the things you know, and your audience will follow.
"They are Oxford and Cambridge. They are at the top level of education in Great Britain. But while being incredibly smart, they're just brilliantly silly," Libera said. "And that's part of what makes them even more enjoyable and aspirational, because they're using what they know in service of something that is sometimes really, really dumb."
Libera said her students appreciate a lot of comedies, but Monty Python feels fresh and like something someone could have made today.
"They look at the absurdity of human beings, of power… all of those things are truisms throughout the entirety of history," said Libera. "Part of what's so interesting about their work is because they draw on this much larger world. A world of history and literature and philosophy and art, but also really basic human things, that combination is in many ways timeless."
What the film has meant to NPR listeners
We asked you to share your Monty Python and the Holy Grail memories, and a lot of you did. Here are some of your submissions:
Robert Lloyd-Charles from Canandaigua, N.Y.: "When I started college at a small town in West Texas, I was unsure I would find my people, especially since it was a very conservative Christian university. One day at lunch in the cafeteria, I was sitting next to a new friend when I suddenly hear the sound of familiar chanting in Latin. I look up and a line of five young men are walking towards my table with empty food trays in their hands and every time they finished a line of Gregorian verse, they smack themselves in the forehead with their trays. Then they sat down next to me and introduced themselves, and I let out a sigh of relief - MY PEOPLE. They are still some of my dearest friends to this day. "
Jonathan Graves from Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: "As an expat Brit living in California for many years and now New York, Python has always been a means for me to hang onto my essential Britishness. The Holy Grail has over the last 50 years, assumed the mantle as a Holy Grail of British humor. The film has been a way to connect me, my American wife, and two American daughters, to that unique thread of British humor, stretching back to Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and others, an aspect of my culture I hold dear."
Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen:
"I graduated high school in 2000, in Emmetsburg, Iowa. My friend group was nerdy, and so naturally we loved this movie. I remember on a school choir/band bus trip back from Orlando, Florida they commandeered the video player and played this movie on repeat the whole way back. Florida to Iowa, Holy Grail over and over and over. I still have most of it memorized."
John Wood from East Grinstead, England: "My wife, Gemma, and I are MAJOR Python fans. I set up a dating site for Python fans, and that's how I met Gemma. In 2017, I proposed to her in front of Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, and on 5th Oct 2019 (the 50th anniversary of Monty Python to the day), we got married, and among the guests was the "7th Python", Carol Cleveland! It was a heavily Python-themed wedding!
On display, there was also a basket full of coconut shells, labelled "Horse Rides"; a rabbit with blood all over it (the Killer Rabbit); a signpost pointing to Camelot in one direction and Certain Death in the other; and a shrubbery. The wine glasses at the meal were Grail-shaped, and the wedding rings were kept in the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch."
Cyndi Rood:
"When my husband and I were first dating in 1990, we were attending the University of Kansas. One of our early dates was when he took me to a midnight showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the student union. I loved British culture and films, but had never seen this one. I think it sealed the deal! I laughed so hard, and was thrilled I had found someone who appreciated the absurd and could laugh with me. We have been married for 33 years and are still laughing together today."
Adria Bogart from San Diego, Calif.:
"It has become a way to quickly identify my tribe. I will insert a line from the movie into everyday conversation when I'm meeting someone for the first time. If they catch on, we are friends for life."
Lindsay Totty contributed reporting and edited the audio version of the story. Obed Manuel edited the digital version of the story.
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