Monty Python and the Holy Grail Page #4

FIRST SOLDIER:

Oh yes! An African swallow maybe ... but not a European

swallow. that's my point.

SECOND SOLDIER:

Oh yes, I agree there ...

ARTHUR:

(losing patience)

Will you ask your master if he wants to join the Knights

of Camelot?!

FIRST SOLDIER:

But then of course African swallows are non-migratory.

SECOND SOLDIER:

Oh yes.

ARTHUR raises his eyes heavenwards and nods to PATSY. They turn

and go off into the mist.

FIRST SOLDIER:

So they wouldn't be able to bring a coconut back anyway.

SECOND SOLDIER:

Wait a minute! Suppose two swallows carried it together?

FIRST SOLDIER:

No, they'd have to have it on a line.

Stillness. Silence again.

2 ANIMATION/LIVE ACTION SEQUENCE - DEATH AND DEVASTATION

CUT TO Terry Gilliam's sequence of Brueghel prints. Sounds of

strange medieval music. Discordant and sparse. Wailings and

groanings. The last picture mixes through into live action.

BIG CLOSE UP of contorted face upside down. A leg falls across

it. Creaking noise. The bodies lurch away from CAMERA to

reveal they are amongst a huge pile of bodies on a swaying cart

that is lumbering away from CAMERA. It is pulled by a couple of

ragged, dirty emaciated WRETCHES. Behind the cart walks another

MAN who looks slightly more prosperous, but only on the scale

of complete and utter impoverishment. He wears a black hood and

looks sinister.

CART DRIVER:

Bring out your dead!

We follow the cart through a wretched, impoverished plague-ridden

village. A few starved mongrels run about in the mud scavenging.

In the open doorway of one house perhaps we jug glimpse a pair of

legs dangling from the ceiling. In another doorway an OLD WOMAN

is beating a cat against a wall rather like one does with a mat.

The cart passes round a dead donkey or cow in the mud. And a MAN

tied to a cart is being hammered to death by four NUNS with

huge mallets.

CART DRIVER:

Bring out your dead!

There are legs stick out of windows and doors. Two MEN are fighting

in the mud - covered from head to foot in it. Another MAN is on his

hands in knees shovelling mud into his mouth. We just catch

sight of a MAN falling into a well.

CART DRIVER:

Bring out your dead!

LARGE MAN:

Here's one!

CART DRIVER:

Ninepence.

BODY:

I'm not dead!

CART DRIVER:

What?

LARGE MAN:

Nothing... There's your ninepence.

BODY:

I'm not dead!

CART DRIVER:

'Ere. He says he's not dead.

LARGE MAN:

Yes he is.

BODY:

I'm not!

CART DRIVER:

He isn't.

LARGE MAN:

He will be soon. He's very ill.

BODY:

I'm getting better!

LARGE MAN:

You're not. You'll be stone dead in a few minutes.

CART DRIVER:

I can't take him like this. It's against regulations.

BODY:

I don't want to go on the cart.

LARGE MAN:

Don't be such a baby.

CART DRIVER:

I can't take him.

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