The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -classic- Link

The climax of the film—narratively, at least—is not a sex scene. It is a storytelling competition between the Nun and the Pardoner. The Nun (a doe-eyed young woman with braces, which she keeps hidden behind a wimple) tells a pious, boring tale about a saint who turns down a demon’s offer of a magic goat. The pilgrims boo. The Pardoner then tells a wild, incoherent story about a fake relic—a jar containing “the last fart of the Angel Gabriel”—that causes a village to riot. It is absurdist, surreal, and ends with the Pardoner himself laughing so hard he forgets his lines and simply points at the camera and says, “Ah, hell, you get it.”

The pilgrims gather, but these are not the sober, weary travelers of Chaucer’s verse. Here, the Knight is a musclebound oaf in dented aluminum foil armor who speaks only in grunts. The Miller has a nose like a strawberry and a laugh like a donkey’s bray. The Pardoner is a gaunt, androgynous figure in velvet who sells “indulgences” that turn out to be scratch-off tickets. And the Host, a sleazy rotund man named Harry Bailly (played with manic glee by B-movie legend Ron “The Hammer” Hartley), claps his hands. The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -Classic-

To call it a “Classic” is to use the term loosely. To call it “Ribald” is an understatement. And to call it a product of 1985 is to understand that 1985 was a very, very weird year. But for those who have seen it—who have heard the Pardoner’s fart joke or watched the Wife of Bath pin a knight to a hay bale—it remains a dirty, beautiful, and oddly sacred text. The tape is probably moldering in a landfill now. But in the hearts of a few dozen Gen-Xers, the pilgrims still ride, telling their filthy tales, laughing all the way to a cathedral that was never there. The climax of the film—narratively, at least—is not

“Right, you sinful lot!” Harry shouts, wiping ale from his beard. “The rules are simple. Tell a tale. Make it funny. Make it filthy. And if you can’t make ’em laugh… make ’em blush!” The pilgrims boo