The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -classic- !!top!! Info

4 out of 5 (bawdy) beavers. Where to watch: Available on grainy VHS rips, obscure “Retro Smut” streaming services, and the occasional boutique Blu-ray release with a commentary track that is funnier than the film itself.

There was a specific sub-genre of "historical romps" in the 80s that has mostly disappeared. This film stands as a primary example of that lost style of adult-themed comedy. Comparing it to the Source Material The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -Classic-

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. 4 out of 5 (bawdy) beavers

In the original text, the Wife of Bath is a powerful, proto-feminist figure who argues that sovereignty in marriage belongs to women. In this adaptation, she is reduced to a one-note gag: she has had five husbands and wants a sixth by nightfall. Her tale—about a knight who must discover what women truly want—is resolved less with Arthurian wisdom and more with a montage of the knight romancing a hag through a series of increasingly bizarre acrobatic positions. The answer, according to the film, is not “sovereignty,” but “multiple orgasms.” It is reductive, juvenile, and oddly watchable. This film stands as a primary example of

What makes the Ribald Tales distinct from other adult cartoons of the era (like Fritz the Cat ) is its stubborn commitment to the form of a period piece. The characters wear historically suggestive costumes, the backgrounds feature muddy medieval villages, and the script tries—sometimes successfully—to mimic the sing-song rhythm of Middle English, albeit while discussing anatomical parts Chaucer only hinted at.