Monty Python Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Erotic film is a sketch that appears in "Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the 20th Century," the fifth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It also appears in And Now for Something Completely Different.

Synopsis[]

Bevis (Terry Jones) and a woman (Carol Cleveland) passionately kiss, both wearing only their underwear. The newsreader from the previous sketch awkwardly steps into the foreground and clarifies that he had made a mistake and that they are not watching Match of the Day, but edited highlights of the night's romantic movie. He leaves the shot as the couple sitting on the bed become ever more passionately involved. The newsreader pops back into view in the foreground and says that on BBC2, Joan Bakewell will be talking to Michael Dean about what makes exciting television.

When the newsreader is gone, the woman asks tenderly, "Oh, oh, oh Bevis, should we?" When he suggests that they should, she pleads, "Be gentle with me." The couple reclines on the bed, as the shot fades to a movie --- a series of images, while highly unorthodox, suggesting coitus. This particular film has images such as:

  • a falling tower, played in reverse
  • a pan up tall poplars soaring in the wind
  • waves crashing
  • fish in shallow water
  • exploding fireworks
  • a volcano spewing lava
  • a rocket taking off
  • an express train going into a tunnel
  • a dam bursting
  • a battleship broadside
  • a lion leaping through a flaming hoop
  • a quite phallic microphone in the face of a grinning Richard Nixon (by implication, a scathing comment on the then-current U.S. president)
  • the udder of a cow while being hand-milked
  • planes refuelling in mid-air
  • the stock footage of the women from the Women's Institutes meeting applauding
  • tossing the caber
  • a plane falling in flames
  • a cut tree crashing to the ground
  • the lead shot, the falling tower, in forward time

The woman sits on the bed smoking a cigarette, the cliché post-coital image. She complains, "Oh Bevis, are you going to do anything or are you just going to show me films all evening?" He says, "Just one more, dear."

And Now for Something Completely Different[]

After the woman complains about the films her husband has been showing her, the last one they watch is Upper Class Twit of the Year.

External links[]

Advertisement