The classic Monty Python gag that was almost cut
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Cuts to a Monty Python classic may have left the final film suffering from more than “just a flesh wound”, it has been revealed.
Monty Python’s Black Knight skit was nearly purged from the Holy Grail for being “too bloody”, the film’s editor has said.
Julian Doyle worked on the 1975 comedy and its 1979 follow-up, the Life of Brian, and has revealed that a number of famous scenes were almost left on the cutting room floor.
The duel between King Arthur and the Black Knight, in which the knight’s limbs are liberally severed while he protests that he is barely wounded, is among those the Pythons wanted to jettison.
Doyle has claimed the comedy troupe thought the battle was too “outrageously bloody” to remain in the final cut.
The Black Knight sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) will always be one of the funniest things in the history of humanity.
'Tis but a scratch.' pic.twitter.com/vwACBnOKPI— The Sting (@TSting18) May 12, 2023
He has also claimed the Pythons believed the scene in which guards titter at the name “Biggus Dickus” to be “too silly” to be kept in the mock biblical epic Life of Brian.
He said: “The Monty Python films are known today as comedic masterpieces, and rightly so.
“But what no one knows, and has never known until now, is that several scenes that would go on to become iconic, side-splitting institutions in their own right, were in fact destined to suffer a brutal edit.
“The Pythons were sticklers for perfection, and thought some of these skits were too silly, too offensive or too dull.
“They and the producers wanted to cut the Black Knight sketch because they thought the scene was so outrageously bloody that it would kill the rest of the film.”
The scene involves fountains of fake blood spurting from the wounds of the knight, played by John Cleese, which are inflicted by the late Graham Chapman’s King Arthur.
The knight neither dies nor acknowledges that he has been particularly badly injured, protesting that his severed arm is “just a flesh wound”.
Doyle, speaking to promote his new book The Jericho Manuscript, has said that Life of Brian was also on the cusp of being radically different, with key scenes almost lost.
He said: “In the Biggus Dickus scene in Life of Brian, John Cleese believed that after he, as the centurion, left the scene it became too silly for words with Michael Palin teasing the soldiers to make them laugh.
“He originally felt Michael was moving out of character. And although John was probably right, when we ran the finished film the audience were in such hysterics as the scene progressed that they did not care about the finer details, they just wanted it to go on and on.”
Doyle also revealed that Eric Idle’s character of Harry the Haggler, who insists Brian barter for a fake beard he is happy to buy at face value, was also nearly cut as the gag was thought “too slow”.
Similarly, the three-headed giant in the Holy Grail, which bickers over snoring and who is to kill who, was also thought to be lacking in comedic pace to remain in the final film.
Both scenes were ultimately retained, with Doyle saying: “Thankfully, they changed their minds and the rest, as they say, is history.”
It has previously been revealed there were concerns that the “Judean People’s Front Crack Suicide Squad”, led by a man called Otto who resembles Hitler, could offend Jewish audiences. Doyle said Idle had asked for Otto to be removed.
The squad’s suicide was included in the final cut, but other scenes with them were dropped, along with other gags from early drafts of the script, including Christ trying to arrange a table for the Last Supper, and Joseph attempting to explain the Virgin Birth to his friends.
The Pythons have said in the past that their intention was never to blaspheme, but to send up religion more generally, and they therefore steered clear of direct references to the life of Jesus.
