Perfectly Silly Extras for ‘Holy Grail’ Believers

Everyone--well, everyone properly acquainted with the 1975 classic “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”--knows about the Knights who say “Ni,” about brave Sir Robin and Tim the Enchanter, the Bridge of Death and the Killer Rabbit.

But what of the one-legged silversmith? Who can say which castles were true stone and which were cardboard cutouts? How was the Trojan Rabbit actually pushed into the courtyard and dropped from the sky? What does Eric Idle do to stop giggling during a long pause by John Cleese in the Witch Village scene?

This is the kind of essential information that’s packed into the DVD of the English comedy troupe’s medieval satire. Released this week, the “special edition” two-disc package affords an absurd degree of immersion in “Grail” lore.

Want to join in on the chipper musical number “Knights of the Round Table”? Just follow the bouncing ball in the sing-along section. Curious about how Doune Castle is holding up 25 years later? Here are Terry Jones and Michael Palin visiting the location, where tourists are provided with coconuts and trot around making hoofbeat sounds, like the knights in the movie.

Maybe you don’t even like Monty Python’s humor. They’ve thought of that too and included a version of the film with subtitles from Shakespeare (“O give me the spare men,” for instance, replaces Python’s less elegant “Bring out your dead” in the Plague Village scene).

Of course Python fans, generally obsessive if not downright loony, are a prime demographic for this kind of treatment. And the back story of “Grail,” replete with budget crises, foul Scottish weather, seat-of-the-chain-mail improvisations, personality clashes and a rotting sheep carcass, can be as absorbing as the final product.

These tales are recounted in two separate commentary tracks, one by the film’s co-directors, the Terrys Gilliam and Jones (like several of the DVD features, it was originally heard in 1993 on the Criterion laserdisc version) and a new one by Idle, Cleese and Palin.

There are also things you’ve probably not imagined, such as a version of the entire movie with the screenplay superimposed, and the “Round Table” song and dance executed by animated Lego figures. Well, why not?

Oh, the one-legged silversmith? He was actually hired as a stand-in for Cleese’s Black Knight in the sword fight with Arthur, at the point when his limbs have been three-quarters pruned.

How to sum up this world, as deep and dark as the Cave of Caerbannog?

Maybe Graham Chapman’s King Arthur says it best when he turns his back on Camelot and rides away in a thunder of coconut hoofbeats. “A silly place,” he mutters.

Indeed.