The Crimson Permanent Assurance
The Crimson Permanent Assurance is a 1983 British swashbuckling comedy short film that plays as the beginning of the feature-length motion picture Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
Plot
The elderly British employees of the Permanent Assurance Company, a staid London firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America (VBCA), rebel against their much younger corporate masters when one of them is sacked. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Sailing through the City of London, they then proceed to attack the VBCA's skyscraper, using, among other things, wooden filing cabinets which have been transformed into carronades and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, vanquishing them.
More details
author | Terry Gilliam |
---|---|
contentLocation | London |
director | Terry Gilliam |
editor | Julian Doyle |
events | sea piracy |
genre | comedy |
keywords | assurance assurance services begin big corporation build callback carronade ceiling city of london edge of the world edwardian edwardian architecture fall file filing cabinet fire flat earth flying circus force holy grail lock meaning of life monty python and the holy grail monty python\'s flying circus office building pirate ship sack sail scaffold sea shanty spanish inquisition survive swallow the meaning of life the spanish inquisition |
musicBy | John Du Prez |
producer | John Goldstone Terry Gilliam |
productionCompany | Python (Monty) Pictures |
publisher | Universal Pictures |
theme | short |