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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 first tale belongs to the Carpenter, a nervous, sweaty man played by a character actor who would later find fame as a mortician on a daytime soap. His story, “The Milled Key,” is a slapstick disaster about a locksmith’s wife and a traveling juggler that devolves into a custard pie fight and an accidental nudist parade. It is shot with the grace of a public access show and the audio quality of a drive-thru speaker. Yet, it is strangely charming. When the juggler drops his flaming batons into the locksmith’s trousers, the resulting chase scene is pure, unadulterated Looney Tunes with nudity. The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -Classic-
What elevates The Ribald Tales of Canterbury from mere smut to a true “1985 Classic” is its heart. Unlike the cold, mechanical pornography that would flood the home video market later in the decade, this film is warm, goofy, and almost innocent. The actors, many of whom were struggling stage performers or retired adult stars trying to break into “legitimate” comedy, seem to be genuinely having fun. There are flubbed lines left in the final cut. You can see a boom mic dip into frame during a particularly vigorous kiss. The soundtrack features a terrible folk-rock ballad called “Pilgrim’s Lust” that repeats the chorus, “Gonna ride my mule to Canterbury / And ring your little bell.”
“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!” And we do
The Ribald Tales of Canterbury was not a hit. It played for three days at a drive-in in Bakersfield and vanished. But the VHS tape lived on, passed from hand to grimy hand, bootlegged and beloved. It became a rite of passage for a certain kind of teenager in the late ‘80s: the kid who wanted to see nudity but stayed for the jokes. It was a relic of a time when adult entertainment still had a sense of humor, when production values were an afterthought, and when a group of broke, happy weirdos could dress up like medieval pilgrims and make something that was, against all odds, genuinely charming.
The clerk, a bored philosophy dropout named Lenny, always told customers the same thing: “It’s not porn. I mean, it is porn, but it’s also… Shakespeare for perverts. With tits.” And for the faithful few who rented it, he wasn’t wrong. It is a storytelling competition between the Nun
The final scene finds the pilgrims arriving at Canterbury Cathedral, only to find it closed for renovations. Harry Bailly shrugs, pulls out a flask, and says, “Well, lads and lasses, the destination is a lie. The journey… the journey is the foreplay.” The screen fades to black over a freeze-frame of the Miller chasing a sheep, the synthesizer playing one last mournful chord.