Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-bud­get spec­ta­cle, and nobody knew that bet­ter than the Pythons them­selves. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, they turned the pro­jec­t’s finan­cial con­straints into one of its many sources of humor, fash­ion­ing mem­o­rable gags out of every­thing from coconut shells sub­sti­tut­ing for hors­es to the sud­den shut­down of film­ing that ends the “sto­ry.” But, as explained in the Canned His­to­ry video above, putting togeth­er even the mod­est sum with which they had to work was hard­ly a straight­for­ward endeav­or. Turned down by stu­dios, the Pythons sought out the only financiers like­ly to pos­sess both suf­fi­cient wealth and suf­fi­cient belief in an absur­dist TV com­e­dy troupe mak­ing their first prop­er film: rock stars.

This was the mid-nine­teen-sev­en­ties, recall, when a group with a few hit albums could find them­selves mak­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, more mon­ey than they knew what to do with. Such was the case with Pink Floyd, for exam­ple, after releas­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

Mon­ty Python, for their part, had put out not only three sea­sons of their BBC series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, but also a vari­ety of pur­chasable goods like books and LPs. The lat­ter made them the music-indus­try con­nec­tions that they could use to enlist the likes of not just the Floyd, but also Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, as well as record labels like Island, Charis­ma, and Chrysalis. As Eric Idle tweet­ed much lat­er, Zep­pelin con­tributed £31,500, Pink Floy­d’s com­pa­ny £21,000, and Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son £6,300: £627,000 in more recent val­ue, or near­ly $850,000 in U.S. dol­lars.

Alto­geth­er, Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail’s bud­get came to £282,035 in 1974 pounds: by no means a king’s ran­som, but just enough to put togeth­er a com­ic take on Arthuri­an leg­end. No more con­ven­tion­al investors than the Pythons were con­ven­tion­al film­mak­ers, the rock stars and oth­er music-indus­try fig­ures involved made no vis­its to the set, nor offered any “notes” on the work in progress. One sus­pects that they were hap­py just to sup­port a Mon­ty Python project, and even more so to receive the tax break offered for films pro­duced in the U.K. In the event, of course, they all made their mon­ey back many times over, with a cut of the Broad­way musi­cal adap­ta­tion Spa­malot to boot. The film’s imme­di­ate and out­sized suc­cess can’t have been far from the mind of George Har­ri­son — that great ene­my of the tax­man — when Idle called him up a few years lat­er, ask­ing for the mon­ey to make Life of Bri­an.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Online Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniver­sary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It can be tempt­ing to view the box office’s dom­i­na­tion by visu­al-effects-laden Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle as a recent phe­nom­e­non. And indeed, there have been peri­ods dur­ing which that was­n’t the case: the “New Hol­ly­wood” that began in the late nine­teen six­ties, for instance, when the old stu­dio sys­tem hand­ed the reins to inven­tive young guns like Peter Bog­danovich, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But lest we for­get, that move­ment met its end in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from late-1970s block­busters like Jaws and Star Wars, a new kind of block­buster that sig­naled a return to the sim­ple thrills of silent cin­e­ma.

Even a cen­tu­ry ago, many movie­go­ers expect­ed two expe­ri­ences above all: to be wowed, and to be made to laugh. No won­der that era saw visu­al come­di­ans like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Char­lie Chap­lin become not just the most famous actors in the world, but some of the most famous human beings in the world.

Stay­ing on top required not just seri­ous per­for­ma­tive skill, but also equal­ly seri­ous tech­ni­cal inge­nu­ity, as explained in the new Lost in Time video above. It breaks down just how Lloyd, Keaton, and Chap­lin pulled off some of their career-defin­ing stunts on film, putting the actu­al clips along­side CGI recon­struc­tions of the sets as they would have looked dur­ing shoot­ing.

When Lloyd hangs from the arms of a clock high above down­town Los Ange­les in Safe­ty Last! (1923), he’s real­ly hang­ing high above down­town Los Ange­les — albeit on a set con­struct­ed atop a build­ing, shot from a care­ful­ly cho­sen angle. When the entire façade of a house falls around Keaton in Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (1928), leav­ing him stand­ing unharmed in a win­dow frame, the façade actu­al­ly fell around him — in a pre­cise­ly chore­o­graphed man­ner, but with only a cou­ple of inch­es of clear­ance on each side. When a blind­fold­ed Chap­lin skates per­ilous­ly close to a mul­ti­sto­ry drop in Mod­ern Times (1936), he’s per­fect­ly safe, the edge of the floor being noth­ing more than a mat­te paint­ing: one of those ana­log tech­nolo­gies of movie mag­ic whose obso­les­cence is still bemoaned by clas­sic-film enthu­si­asts, from whom CGI, no mat­ter how expen­sive, nev­er quite thrills or amus­es in the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Safe­ty Last!, the 1923 Movie Fea­tur­ing the Most Icon­ic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Pub­lic Domain

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme—the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds—hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films.

Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films here, and you can find some of these films in the Relat­eds below. Also find links to oth­er WWII pro­pa­gan­da films by Dr. Seuss, Mel Blanc, Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Capra and more.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Chill­ing Anti-Vene­re­al Dis­ease Poster Dur­ing World War II

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film, Rea­son and Emo­tion

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years