The story thats too big to be quiet. The title thats too big to fit on the marquees.

Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different was first released in the US in 1973, but didn't really take off as a midnight-movie fixture until after the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series began making the PBS rounds. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam are the Pythonites in attendance, together with semiregulars Carol Cleveland and Connie Booth. The sketches presented include such classics as "The Lumberjack Song", "Hell's Grannies", "The Upperclass Twit of the Year Race", and, of course, "The Dead Parrot". Additionally, Terry Gilliam's animated-cartoon interpolations act as buffers between sketches.


And Now for Something Completely Different is a film spin-off from the television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus featuring sketches from the first two series. The title was used as a catchphrase in the television show.
The film, released in 1971, consists of 90 minutes of sketches seen in the first two series of the television show. The sketches were remade on film without an audience, and were intended for an American audience which had not yet seen the series. The announcer (John Cleese) appears briefly between some sketches to deliver the line "and now for something completely different", in situations such as being roasted on a spit and lying on top of the desk in a small, pink bikini.

Reviews for American audiences were mixed (principally because British humour was unfamiliar to American viewers at that time) but mostly positive. When it was released on 22 August 1972, the film had little success at the box office and did not do well until a late 1974 re-release, which was around the time PBS started showing the original television episodes. It currently has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Release Date: August 22, 1972


Distrib: Columbia Pictures