Yesterday night, I watched the Sword in the Stone again, you know, the old Disney movie. A disturbing thought we had whilst watching the film was this though: by, the time we are all in our 50s and 60s, that film will be over 100 years old.
Anyway, that old film is still just as funny today as it was when in was made in the 60s, evidently as I feel I should write about it. The first thing we picked up on was their clever use of medieval curse word replacements. Obviously lots of stuff happens where the character in the real world would say "shit!" or something, but they dance around it because the film is directed at children. But some of the replacement words are just incredible and make it even more funny. Two in particular are "Hang it all!" and "Dash it all!". Those get put to great and extensive use when Merlin fumbles something.
There is some fantastic 'tom and jerry' style exaggerations of accidents too, this one specifically gets me every time.
What happens to Merlin's beard is hilarious, and it is my personal opinion that he should style it that way for good. Alas, he smooths it out.
I'm not sure how his beard does that after getting it stuck, I'm sure if I pulled my hair and let it go it wouldn't turn into an afro... For this one I shall put the incredible trick of the beard down to the fact Merlin is a wizard. However! Someone who is not a wizard, but still exhibits facial hair sorcery is, SIR PELLINORE.
Pellinore's moustache literally makes this film for me, and he is considered a bit of a cult hero in this film. (according to people's comments on YouTube) Some people claim to only watch this film because Pellinore and his tash are in it.
Clearly we are missing a trick here, as in Medieval times, people had the ability to shake wine out of their moustaches until it is completely dry. I'll assume its like one of those long forgotten skills that have just died out over the generations. Also perhaps not many people have moustaches anymore, and news from London is normally delivered via the internet. Maybe people just wised up and were more careful with their wine, so didn't need this amazing skill anymore.
Sigh, I suppose we'll never know.
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