Death and Badminton

Posted on June 2, 2008 by acb

A while ago, Felix told me about a parody he had once seen of The Seventh Seal, in which Death appears on a very windy seafront, and when he announces himself the Knight thinks for a second and challenges him to a game of badminton. It doesn’t seem to be anywhere on youtube, but I did find some evidence that it really existed, in comments to a Swedish blog entry, where someone called Frederik Tersmeden claims to have made the clip as part of a series of short films for a comedy festival. He adds that the wind was so loud in the microphones that they had to redub the whole thing with the original soundtrack, changing only “Chess” for “Badminton”—with glorious results where Death asks the Knight how he knew he played, and the knight replies, “I’ve seen it in paintings, and heard about it in songs”.

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5 Responses to Death and Badminton

  1. Fredrik I says:
    June 2, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    I’ve seen a very similar clip, but not on a comedy festival. In the mid 90s the Swedish channel ZTV used to broadcast a show called Knesset, in which comedian Olle Sarri starred in brief scetches. In one of them he spoofed The Seventh Seal and challenged Death for a game of badminton. I remember they got into a silly and childish argument about the strings of the rackets. “Hey! Howcome YOU got the racket with the nylon strings all of a sudden?” Something like that. Very funny clip indeed.

    Perhaps this Tersmeden was involved in this, I don’t know. If not, it seems as if the chess scene has been parodied twice with the chess game replaced by badminton! Quite a remarkable coincidence.

  2. Simon Sarmiento says:
    June 2, 2008 at 11:42 pm

    To parody The Seventh Seal is truly sacrilegious, far worse than tampering with Scripture 🙂

  3. Fresca Davis says:
    June 5, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Oh! I saw that about twenty years ago! It’s called “De Düva: The Dove” (1968)–I found it on IMDB but not youTube.
    Oh–I just rummaged around and found it posted on a blog, Scooterville:
    http://www.scootersville.net/2007/06/de-duva.html

    The whole thing is in fake Swedish… Too funny!

  4. Terry Collmann says:
    June 12, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    De Duva is surely a parody of Wild Strawberries, done in schoolboy German with “subtitles” – I remember a marvellous scene where one of the female actors offers the “hero” a giant Havana stogie and says: “Phallike symbolen?” while the subtitles, of course, say “cigar?”

  5. ban~ken says:
    August 19, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    You kan watchske “De Duva” heren in itsen entireska: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730

    Diske filmen isen Amerikanska filmen andska isen noten in Germens bot in Engleska dressen upska as Svenska mitsk helpen de dummen suffiksen.

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