Monty Python and The Holy Grail - Production

Production

The film was mostly shot on location in Scotland, particularly around Doune Castle, Glen Coe, and the privately owned Castle Stalker. The many castles seen throughout the film were either Doune Castle shot from different angles or hanging miniatures. There are several exceptions to this: the very first exterior shot of a castle at the beginning of the film is Kidwelly Castle in South Wales and the single exterior shot of the Swamp King castle during "Tale of Sir Lancelot" is Bodiam Castle in East Sussex – all subsequent shots of the exterior and interior of those scenes were filmed at Doune Castle. King Arthur was the only character whose chain mail armour was authentic. The "armour" worn by his various knights was silver-painted wool, which absorbed moisture in the cold and wet conditions.

The film was co-directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, the first major project for both and the first project where any members of the Pythons were behind the camera. This proved to be troublesome on the set as Jones and Gilliam had different directing styles and it often was not clear who was in charge. The other Pythons evidently preferred Jones, who as an acting member of the group was focused more on performance, as opposed to Gilliam, whose visual sense they admired but whom they sometimes thought too fussy: on the DVD audio commentary, Cleese expresses irritation at a scene set in Castle Anthrax, where he says the focus was on technical aspects rather than comedy. The two later Python feature films, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, both have Jones as the sole director.

In the scene where the knights were combatting the Killer Rabbit, a real white rabbit was used. He was dyed with what was assumed to be a washable red colouring liquid in the shots after the battle. When filming wrapped the rabbit's owner was dismayed to learn the dye could not be rinsed off. Gilliam described in an audio commentary that the owner of the rabbit was present and shooting was abruptly halted while the cast desperately attempted to clean the rabbit before the owner found out, an unsuccessful attempt. He also stated that he thought that, had they been more experienced in film-making, the crew would have just purchased a rabbit instead. Otherwise the rabbit himself was unharmed. Also, the rabbit-bite effects were done by special puppetry by both Terry Gilliam and SFX technician John Horton.

As chronicled in The Life of Python, The First 20X Years of Monty Python, and The Pythons' Autobiography it was revealed that Graham Chapman was suffering from acrophobia, trembling, and bouts of forgetfulness during filming. These were the results of Chapman's long-standing alcohol addiction, and he decided from that moment on to remain "on an even keel" while the production continued. Nearly three years after Holy Grail, Chapman vowed to quit drinking altogether (which he successfully achieved in December 1977).

Originally the knight characters were going to ride real horses, but after it became clear that the film's small budget precluded real horses the Pythons decided that their characters would mime horse-riding while their porters trotted behind them banging coconut shells together. The joke was derived from the old-fashioned sound effect used by radio shows to convey the sound of hooves clattering. This was later referred to in the German release of the film, which translated the title as Die Ritter der Kokosnuß ("The Knights of the Coconut").