"RUN AWAY!!!" Celebrating 50 years of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

I just attended Fathom Events' 50th anniversary screening of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975), the film I have seen countless times since discovering it at age ten. I went With dear old friend Matt Snow, whom I met nearly a half century ago, and one of the many things our adolescent sensibilities bonded over was our love of all things Monty Python. Some things you never outgrow.

Me representing as Tim the Enchanter, and Matt, wielding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

If I had to guesstimate, it was an audience of perhaps thirty people, many of whom were under-16s who had been brought by parents.I wonder how they processed the film, and Python in general, because Python's bizarre style has been well-absorbed into the global language of comedy over the past 55 years, so does their flavor have the same kind of seismic impact on today's youth as it did on my generation? I kinda doubt it, and it saddens me to think that works such as this may now reside in the "you had to be there" category. Nonetheless, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL remains my personal pick as the funniest film ever made. Definitely not for all tastes, but its utter absurdity has always resonated with me.

Representing with a female Sir Bedevere cosplayer, Note her bag: a duck. If you know the movie, you get it.

A LONG-OVERDUE CONNECTION

While preparing dinner, I listened to a YouTube piece on forgotten one-hit wonders of 1977, and for the first time since the late 1970's I heard a snippet of the song "Heaven on the 7th Floor" by Paul Nicholas, a hit that was never a favorite of mine, but it was certainly memorable. When Nicholas's name was mentioned, it rang a bell in my memory, and upon mulling it over I went "Nooooo..." and ran to the internet to check on what was jogging my brain. 

The films of director Ken Russell are among my favorites for their sheer madness, and my search revealed that my memory of Nicholas's name was correct. He has prominent roles in two of my favorite Russell films, specifically TOMMY and LISZTOMANIA (both 1975). I saw TOMMY in during its theatrical run with my parents — notably, TOMMY was the final film we saw together as a family unit — but that was two years before "Heaven on the 7th Floor," and I did not see LISZTOMANIA until I obtained a VHS copy during the late 1980's, and when viewing both of those for the first time, I did not not any of the actors' names, as situation that changed once I had both films on home video and went on to study them in depth over the next three decades.

 

Paul Nicolas has a brief-but-unforgettable role in TOMMY as the gleefully sadistic Cousin Kevin, complete with his own musical number that drags the audience along as Kevin spends a day torturing the deaf/dumb/blind titular character. 

 

Tormenting Roger Daltrey in TOMMY (1975).

 

But my favorite of his Russell performances is in LISZTOMANIA, where he has an ogoing and significant part throughout the film as composer/German nationalist Richard Wagner. It's an incredibly loopy and cartoonish portrayal that finds Wagner undergoing numerous visual changes to indicate his growing fascistic nationalism, among which are him becoming a vampire to leech off of composer Franz Liszt's music, only to be reborn in the 20th Century as a literal chimera of Frankenstein's monster and Adolph Hitler. 

 

 As Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler in LISZTOMANIA (1975).

 

The insane sight of a Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler leading female children clad in cheesy Superman costumes (symbolizing the indoctrination of the German youth into the ideology of the Aryan superman) as he stiffly marches through a town, blasting fleeing orthodox Jews with an electric guitar machine gun made my jaw hit the floor when I first saw the film, and that image's audacity and sheer lunacy cracks me up to this day.

 

So, yeah, that was the guy who sang "Heaven on the 7th Floor."

 

WICKED (2024)

Defying gravity.

I just finished watching WICKED (2024), and when "To Be Continued" flashed across the screen at the end, I said aloud "That was excellent."

I went into WICKED cold. I read the source novel when it came out — Mildred gave me the hardcover first edition for Christmas in 1995 — but I gave it a miss during its Broadway run, thanks to it being hyped to death, so I knew nothing of how the story would be handled when translated from the page, and the only songs from it that I had heard were "Popular" and "Defying Gravity," the latter of which I recall being partially heard in the commercial for the Broadway production. Now I regret missing the original production, because I love Idina Menzel — Hot Jewish chick alert!!! RRRROWR!!! — Kristin Chenoweth, but what's done is done. Anyway, the movie adaptation...I initially intended to give the film a miss until next year, when the second half is released, but I was granted the opportunity to watch it at home, so I took it.

Upon seeing a considerable amount of the promotional lead-up to the film's release, I was concerned that casting a Black actress in the role of Elphaba might be too on the nose, considering some of the plot's themes, but short of time-traveling back to 2003 and press-ganging Idina Menzel to the present, I could not have asked for a more perfect Elphaba than Cynthia Erivo. She was tremendous, simply tremendous in the role. She has an incredibly expressive face, and she can belt out a showstopper like nobody's business. She perfectly conveyed Elphaba's loneliness and anger, and arch villain though she is destined to become, I totally rooted for her from the moment of her birth. And do not get me started on "Defying Gravity." That song is a modern classic for a reason, and when she took to the skies during it, I felt the same thrill that hit me when Christopher Reeve's Superman swung into action for the helicopter rescue back in 1978. In short, Elphaba is in no uncertain terms completely fucking awesome — and I do mean AWESOME — and I will be there on opening weekend for the second half of this story.

My new favorite anti-hero.

Everything else about the film is superb across the board, and though I now regret missing the original Broadway production, I'm glad I waited for the movie, because no matter how much the stage design may have rocked live, I personally needed cinematic special effects to properly bring the vistas of the land of Oz to vivid believable life, and not make all of it look like, well, a stage musical. The realization of Oz and its denizens is terrific, and the voice casting of my man Peter Dinklage as Professor Dillamond was inspired. (When the character first spoke, a spark of recognition ignited in my brain, but it took maybe a minute before I twigged to it being The Dinklage.) I was initially leery of the casting of Ariana Grande as Galinda, but she sold the vapid rich and popular girl seemingly effortlessly. She made me hate the character instantly, and I only hated her just a tad less after Galinda and Elphaba became besties. But the real surprise was Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. I have always enjoyed his work, but for what seems like close to thirty years he's pretty much played his roles with a quirky delivery a la Ian Malcolm in the JURASSIC PARK franchise, and frankly that schtick has worn out its welcome with me. (Though he does get a pass as the Collector in THOR: RAGNAROK.) And of course the always welcome Michelle Yeoh completely slew as the elegant Madame Morrible.

So, yeah, I loved WICKED, and it immediately joins my roster of favorite movie musicals. If they stick the landing with the second half, we're looking at a timeless classic. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

                                                          Poster for the theatrical release.