Python film's dodgy debut

Monty Python and the Holy Grail was so badly received when it first previewed that the team thought they had a flop on their hands.

Investors who saw the 1975 comedy sat in silence when they first saw the film they had spend their money on, Terry Jones has revealed.

"They laughed right at the beginning, then they stopped. From then on, nothing. Nobody laughed the whole way through," he told the New York Daily News.

The response at test screenings was so poor that they almost cut a line in which a character asks the audience if they were enjoying themselves because it was "asking for trouble," he said.

Jones was in New York to promote the film's re-release there.

Published: 18 Jun 2001