The First Time I Thought I’d Die Laughing Watching a Film

How I feared for my life during my first viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In the very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, there’s a hilarious sketch involving a man who writes the funniest joke in the world, and as a consequence dies laughing. When I discovered Monty Python around the age of twelve or so, I ought to have realised this was a harbinger of things to come. Sure enough, a few years later, during my first viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I laughed so much, I began to genuinely wonder if it really was possible to die laughing.

I knew I was in trouble the moment the opening credits started rolling. The faux-Swedish subtitles gradually degenerated into spectacularly silly ramblings about “the majestic moose, “suggestive moose poses”, “moose trained to mix concrete and fill out complicated insurance forms”, and many other ludicrous moose related credits. The disclaimer is signed Richard Nixon, then subtitles appear apologising for the fault in the subtitles, saying those responsible have been sacked. This happens a couple of times, as moose credits keep recurring. Then after increasingly ridiculous apologies, (“The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.”), the credits conclude with a weird Latin American flourish, informing us the film was directed by:

“40 specially trained Ecuadorian mountain llamas, 142 Mexican whooping llamas, 14 North Chilean guanacos (closely related to the llama), Reg Llama of Brixton, 76,000 Battery llamas from “Llama Fresh” Farms Ltd near Paraguay, and Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones.”

At this point, I had fallen off the sofa in helpless mirth. The film hadn’t even properly started yet, and my sides were aching. This was merely the appetiser. The real laughs were yet to come.

The opening shot reveals an eerie landscape swirling in mist. Horse hooves are heard offscreen. King Arthur and his “trusty servant Patsy” ride into view… Except they aren’t riding. Arthur is pretending to, and his servant is banging together two empty halves of coconut to simulate horse hooves. (Apparently, this superb running gag was caused by budgetary constraints.) I started laughing again before we’d even got to any conversation. When it finally arrived, the dialogue — soldiers refuse to summon the owner of the castle to speak to the King, and instead insist on an absurd tangential discussion concerning whether a swallow could carry a coconut — had me guffawing even more.

Over the next twenty minutes, I don’t think I stopped laughing for more than a few seconds. Between the hysterical witch-burning mob being treated like a dense secondary school science class by the local Lord, or the King’s hair-clutching interactions with members of an anarcho-syndicalist commune (“Strange women lying in ponds is no basis for a system of government!”), the laughter induced by John Cleese, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, and of course animator/future auteur Terry Gilliam, began to get painful.

Speaking of Gilliam, his animated interludes were always inspired in the TV series, but here their lunacy reached an all-time high, especially in the surreal moment where the sudden heart attack of the animator (Gilliam) means Arthur and company manage to escape a pursuing monster. Not for the first time whilst watching, I fell off the sofa laughing.

As for the rest of the film, the sheer consistency of the gags and set pieces left no time for my poor sides to recover. I laughed and laughed and laughed again, until tears ran down my cheeks. Somewhere around the mid-point, where the Knights who say “Ni” tell Arthur he must “cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with… a herring”, I became hoarse. Hardly surprising, having endured the hilarity of the aptly named Sir-Not-Appearing-in-This-Film, the Knights of the Round table song, Brave Sir Robin’s minstrels, Launcelot’s wedding-crashing shenanigans, and Castle Anthrax’s spanking-obsessed nymphomaniacs. (“I suppose I could stay a bit longer…”)

Somewhere around the scene with the killer rabbit and the holy hand grenade of Antioch, a strange thing happened. Scenes of my life to that point began to pass through my mind. Was my life flashing past my eyes? Was I about to die laughing? By that point, my insides hurt so much I seriously considered halting the film in order to try and recover. But I soldiered on, to the bridge scene with the three questions. Once again, I was doubled up in laughter — and in serious pain.

By the time the film reached its surreal climax, I lay on the floor gasping. My chest was in agony from having laughed so much. I had barely survived my first viewing of what I still consider to be the funniest film ever made. I imagined those ridiculous French knights staring down at me in my helpless state, taunting me. But with an effort, I rose, wiped tears of laughter from my eyes, and like the limbless Black Knight, addressed the now rewinding videotape with defiance.

“Tis but a scratch!”

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