Bring Out Your Dead Again: ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ Is Headed Back to Theaters
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There’s no more appropriate reason to put Monty Python and the Holy Grail back in theaters than the celebration of a comically off-year anniversary. That is exactly what’ll happen this December, when the 1975 comedy classic returns to the big screen to celebrate its 48th-and-a-half anniversary.
The film will screen in select theaters across the country on Dec. 3, with additional showings scheduled for Dec. 6. For those who simply cannot help themselves, select theaters will be showing a special “Quote-A-Long” version of the film, while offering a safe space for fans to shout along to their favorite bits and/or sing along to their favorite songs. (It’s unclear if this also means you can bring along your own coconuts to make horse clopping noises.)
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Fans can peruse participating theaters, and purchase tickets, via the Holy Grail re-release website.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail marked the titular comedy troupe’s first proper foray into feature-length filmmaking, following their famed Flying Circus sketch show. It was technically the Python’s second movie overall, though 1971’s And Now for Something Completely Different comprised reshot sketches that originally aired on Flying Circus.
Holy Grail was a famously low-budget affair, with Monty Python doing their best to scrounge up funding wherever they could that included — as Eric Idle revealed in a series of tweets back in 2021 — getting money from some major rock musicians, such as Led Zeppelin (who contributed £31,500), Pink Floyd (£21,000), and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (£6,300).
In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Idle spoke about some of the initial reactions to the film during an initial run of test screenings. “We’d have little screenings for about 100 people in Soho, and the first time we did, it was an absolute disaster. It was awful, all over the place. You couldn’t hear anything. The soundtrack was dreadful. We pulled that off and put on campy, swashbuckling music off [of] records. We just listened to where the audiences stopped laughing and connected the dots. We even shot some bits again. I think the Black Knight was reshot on Hampstead Heath. We found the bits that worked and extended them, so we could keep them laughing. It was a good process. I don’t think anybody does that.”
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