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| The pantomime blood looks more real than real blood. |
"Just remember your announcer training-- Deep breaths, and try not to think about what you're saying." - Michael Palin as Announcer Dick
I sincerely regret my absence over the last few weeks, and my abject apologies to anyone who noticed.
Yes, it's the holiday season, and this aptly named episode, recorded near Christmas in 1971 and not aired until the following November, seems especially appropriate. It has pantomime animals, nuns, and a man soliciting funds for orphans-- England's version of the Salvation Army Santas. In the full bloom of their third season, and with a cult following in England, the lads are feeling their pantomime oats, and this episode is yet another example of their brain twisting comedy in free-fall style.
What is fun about this particular outing is how on board the audience is. I look back fondly on the old episodes, where timid stabs at zaniness elicited the most pallid of laughs. But in these heady times, the lads can't seem to set a foot wrong, as every concept, almost every line, is greeted with enthusiastic, almost eager, laughter. Maybe the crowd was all doped up on eggnog. Let's check it out.
Remember, 'tis the season. Give yourself the gift of giving royalties to the surviving members of Monty Python by
buying the box set! You'll get a little something out of it, too.
Archival footage starts the show, and smashing footage it is. Literally. Trains smashing into each other, car crashes, volcanoes, collapsing bridges. The words "blood", "death", "war" and "horror" come at us in red. (I guess "devastation" was too hard to read in such fast cuts.) But soon, jingly music overtakes the sounds of destruction under these horribly violent yet archivally nonthreatening images, and we fade to a flat with the show's title splayed across it, red letters in a variety of frantic fonts, bordered by potted greens. Smarmy host Palin has made a talk show out of these horrible things, which apparently include gardening. (I agree!) But in true Palin fashion, the guest on this show that promises gore, guts and grue, is Idle, a man who speaks in anagrams. Idle astonishes with his fast-paced recital of these strange words, and Palin doesn't miss a beat, translating them easily. But when Palin accuses him of speaking in a spoonerism, Idle, insulted, "pisses off" leaving the perplexed Palin in a jarring zoom close-up. "Piss off" ignites the audience into explosions of glee.
It feels like a Palin sketch. It feels like an Idle sketch. Have these two "insane in the membrane"s created their own mad child? It feels like the lads are increasingly comfortable working with each other, that the hard delineation between their individual styles no longer applies, which adds to an effortless fluidity.
The nude organist takes us into the credits-- only this time he's not on film! He's on the set, right in front of the audience and everything! Butt crack live! Cleese's "And Now..." Palin's "It's", and the credits roll. The credits manage to get solid laughs as well, and when the show title appears, it's in an anagram. Cleese deliriously voices it over; "Tony M. Nyphot's Flying Riscuu!"
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| Kloo tou orf het remham! |
Anagram fun continues with a filmed "Beat the clock" segment. Jones, as Mrs. Scum, must unscramble "Chamran Knebt" (in only twelve hours!) with dizzying game show music in the background. Having accomplished the task and linked us to the "Merchant Bank" sketch, she gets struck on the head with a giant hammer, reminiscent of last season's game show prize. Jones seems to anticipate the giant hammer, looking off right in her celebratory spasms.
Cleese takes over, and surprise-- he's behind a desk! It starts off a little slow as Cleese laboriously establishes the character, a soulless money grubber who only cares about grubbing money. Over the phone, he outlines the draconian collateral list that a Mr. Victim will need to secure a business loan from Slater Nazi, including 51% of his wife and dog. While searching the dictionary for a definition of "inner life", Mr. Ford (Jones) steps in, carrying a jangly tray. (We catch a quick glimpse of Cleese's nameplate, in anagram form.)
The sketch is pretty simple-- Jones tries to convince Cleese to give money to widows and orphans, and Cleese is mystified by the whole concept."I don't want to seem stupid, but it looks to me I'm a pound down on the whole deal." Cleese is always good in these sorts of roles, and Jones' downtrodden bleeding heart is also funny. Cleese makes a joke that doesn't quite land about how the firm is eager to "get into" orphans, as a developing market that reminds me of the more successful Steve Martin version. "I do a lot of work with unwed mothers... just helping them get their start." Cleese also throws in an awkward bit of foreshadowing about the soon to be seen pantomime horse. Finally, the scales fall from Cleese's eyes, and he understands. This man asks people for money, and they just give it to him. Cleese sees it as a bold new business idea, and having wrested it from Jones, he pulls a lever and Jones falls through the floor. Poor guy-- he's having a rough episode.
After Njorl makes a brief cameo, ("Anyway.") we launch into a bit of silliness involving two (four?) employees of Cleese's merchant bank who function as the bank's-- wait for it-- pantomime horses. What the hell is a heartless bank doing employing pantomime horses? Because it's Monty Python. After elaborate fanfare and pantomime boogie, which tries even Cleese's patience, we get to the point. The bank has decided it only needs one pantomime horse, (Cleese is surprised it needs even one,) and they must now fight to the death to see which one it will be. This bit is silly, goofy, but not tremendously funny-- maybe you have to be British to really enjoy the humor behind pantomime characters. I often wonder if the British ever got Ernest. There's a nice bit with one of the horses crying, reminiscent of the fountain of blood coming out of the dead penguin in "Scott of the Antarctic." But for the most part, this whole second appendage of the sketch is one vast link to the next bit-- and in fact, to the running gag of the entire show.
The horses fight to the death, and very awkwardly. While fighting, we hear Cleese in voice over, doing a German intellectual nasal voice. "Ze ceasless struggle for survival continues," the narrator tells us, and once the fight is over (Spoiler alert! Champion is a wimp!) we cut to more archive footage, this time of nature. A colony of sea lions starts us off, with Cleese hilariously accenting words like "intruder" and "bull". "Zis example of aggressive behavior is typical of zese documentaries." But when we see two limpids fighting (Spoiler alert! The left limpid is a wimp!) the joke becomes clear. A series of increasingly silly "life or death struggles" follows, including a rematch of the pantomime horses with a cameo by the 16 Ton Weight, a pantomime Princess Margaret killing her breakfast tray ("Ping! Right in the toast!") and nature documentarians wrestling over foreign rights to their films. (My favorite-- Ant vs. Wolf.) All of these are fun, although the Terrence Rattigan joke went over my head. Maybe the Pythonites just don't like middle-class drama.
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| In the belly of the beast |
We cut to animation when a gunshot takes out the narrator. A pantomime flea (unseen) carries the dead announcer off, past a couple sitting in their barren sitting room. Both have dark circles around their eyes, and soon we see why. Their house is a rapacious, hungry beast, clamoring for their flesh-- but in a funny way. Both of them go to feed their separate rooms with resigned British good humor. The postman is next, and as sad as Palin's fate was in Season 1, this guy has it much worse. Soon, the house, semi-attached, unattaches and roams the countryside in a hilarious horror spoof/reign of death. But all of this is prologue to the central conceit-- this is a show about men who hunt these monsters, called-- "The House Hunters!". Well done, Mr. Gilliam. The hunters find the house in the woods, pooping and sleeping off its slaughter. They sneak up to it, throw a "condemned" sign on its side, and soon, instead of a house,
there's a miniscule parking lot with seven cars stacked on it. Gilliam pulls a strange twist, though-- when the house is condemned, the cheers of the hunters fade off into the echo-ey distance, and the sound of flies (film lanuage for "decay") buzzes in as the house collapses. It feels a bit depressing. The dig at NCP Car Parks feels a bit angry. Leave it to Gilliam to toss in a batch of emotional ambiguity in a short animated bit.
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| "Shove off!" |
The credits to House Hunters link us to the name "Mary" (which merits a raspberry-- I'm not sure why.) A sign reads "Mary Recruitment Office". (Yes, it's more fun with anagrams!) Chapman makes his first real appearance in the show, stepping out as the erect and proper uniformed colonel and hanging a sign on the door. "Sketch just started-- Actor wanted." Idle sees the sign and steps in. After a brief interruption, with Chapman rearranging "Mary" to spell "Army" and chasing off a long line of nuns, the sketch gets underway.
Idle, soft-spoken and effeminate, asks to join the woman's army, or an effeminate branch of the Scots Guard. Chapman admits that there isn't one. "Apart from the Marines, they're all dead butch!" (Big laugh on that, after quite a slow start.) But when Idle finally gets specific about what he wants-- working with fabric and interior design-- it turns out there's an infantry for that. Chapman waxes rhapsodic about the bold, dynamic work the Durham Light Infantry is doing with interior design, leaving Idle in the dust. It's okay, though... it's all part of the sketch.
Idle complains about being the straight man, and Chapman agrees to switch the sketch so that Idle can be a funny bus passenger. But once the setting abruptly shifts, it's clear that Chapman isn't giving up the reins, as he tosses out one cheesy gag after another. Idle (there's no pleasing some people!) complains that his one line wasn't funny. "Nobody can say 'five penny please' and make it funny!"
But Jones proves him wrong. In a Jones classic, he plays a sad man who, just by saying "Five Penny, please", forces everyone to dissolve into hysterics. Jones is exquisite as this wounded, lonely man who only wants love and only gets howls of laughter. We follow him to work on a dark, rainy morning, leaving helpless hilarity in his wake. Much of the humor derives from the insane reactions of everyone to his most casual utterance, like the "funniest
joke" sketch in episode 1. There's an inspired gag with the elevator. The sketch, when it finally comes, is a bit anti-climactic, as Palin, Jones' boss, fires him for being too distracting to work with. Jones weepy appeal for help only drives Palin to fits of hysterics. Palin's attempts to hold back the dam of laughter are great, but we get it, and we got it two minutes ago.
The laughter that Jones' threat of suicide elicits brings us back to Chapman and Idle, as Chapman debases Idle in numerous vaudevillian ways, assuring him that "They're your laughs, mate, not mine! The fish is down your trousers. That's your laugh." Idle plays the straight man beautifully. Archival laughter and applause take us to--
"The Bols Story", which is basically yet another excuse for Palin to have a talk show. This time, he's a pleasantly crazy person who can't help but deviate from his planned message with discursions into unimportant details, such as when he is paused and when he has stopped, having not started yet. He finally works out a little pantomime hand gesture to indicate a pause, as opposed to a stop. Just as he gets started, the BBC globe spins in, just "to annoy you and make things generally irritating." By the time we get back to Palin, he's in the middle of a baffling process involving sailors.
The BBC announcer and spinning globe returns, this time just "to provide work for one of our announcers." A completely voiced over melodrama ensues, as Announcer Cleese tries to work back up the confidence to announce again, with the help of his announcer wife Jo-Jums (Carol Cleveland!) and announcer friend Palin. His success is cause for a party, that drowns out the following newscast. A real news announcer, Rick Baker, uses Palin's "pause" hand gesture, as well as others, as well as calling back to Palin's baffling sailor process,as well as signing of with anagram. They got a lot of value out of this Baker guy. I hope they paid him well. We also get a brief shot of the exploding Scotsman, coming soon to a blog near you!
This section, from the "Mary Recruitment Office" to now, recalls Monty Python from last season, layering and weaving sketches together. But now we lurch into the big finale, as Rick Baker announces tonight's "flim". It's an action film spoof, reminiscent equally of James Bond and last season's "The Bishop". The star? Pantomime Horse! The film is even called "The Pantomime Horse is a Secret Agent Film". Gilliam works his usual magic with the credits, although it's a bit more prosaic than his work on "The Bishop". Still, very evocative. We begin in a lush, pastoral setting, with Pantomime Horse (voiced stiffly by Cleese) sharing a rowboat with his girlfriend-- Carol Cleveland! (Now, there's a sex tape I'd download!) They whisper sweet nothings to one another
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| Lucky pony! |
before their tryst is interrupted by P.H. killing a would-be pantomime horse assassin, up in a tree. Another pantomime horse (it's a herd!) runs away, and the chase is on. (Chapman makes a quick insertion as a Roman. Now no one can say they didn't do anything for us.) Clambering clumsily out of the rowboat, P.H. chases his enemy in a variety of gags-- in a car, a bicycle built for two, a horse! Finally, as P.H. closes the gap, with race announcer Cleese breathlessly describing the chase, he is waylaid by pantomime goose and pantomime Princess Margaret, and the documentarians, and as the anagrammed credits roll over the
crazy brawl, Cleese's German narrator (was Cleese the only one that got the memo to come to the dubbing studio?) sums up with "Und here, you see some British comic actors engaged in a life or death struggle with a rather weak ending." Can't say I disagree, but it's still fun to see the lads going at it. Cleese sums up the Pantomime Horse's sad tail (get it? Tail?) and we cut out with a "Eth Ned".
Although this episode is funny, it lacks the bite of the previous three. The lads seem no longer concerned with making a point and instead just put goofy things in there. Despite truly inspired moments and bits, in the end there is no end, just a massive jumble, much like many of the anagrams featured in the show. I recall from the Smothers Brothers that whenever they couldn't figure out a good ending for their sketches, they
would just have a midget bite someone. The Python version of this is chaos, like with the Spam episode. Nothing says chaos like bringing all your characters back and letting them slug it out. It's the Achilles heel of random, stream of consciousness humor-- if you don't stay on the path, or any path, you're not really going anywhere. It becomes a bit of a trademark for the group. They used this same conceit at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I guess they figured if it worked for the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, it would work for them.
Still, it's Christmas, and I like a nice ribbon on my presents.
Next week; "The All-England Summarize Proust Competition"
PS Here are the anagramized credits...
