Goofs

Sir Rodney wedges his snuff box into the guillotine as the Duc De Pommfrit is about to be executed. After he has been hustled away, the snuff box is much higher up and stops the blade dropping anywhere near the Duc's neck.

When Malabonce checks the guillotine, his hands are gripping the runners in all the close ups but his arms are by his sides in the long shots.

When the message girl runs on the platform to give the Duc De Pomfrit his message, he tells her to throw it into the basket. In the next shot it disappears. Later, when Ffing tricks Camembert into executing Malabonce, the letter reappears.

In the guillotine scenes, after the aristocrats are executed, their heads and bodies completely disappear with no time for them to be removed.

Early in the fight scene, the strings on the harp are loose. Later, when Camembert's head goes through them, they are taut.

All the aristocrats are shown being executed facing upwards. In real life, they were executed facing downwards into the basket. The only person to be executed facing up was Robespierre.

The Duc de Pommfrit (Charles Hawtrey) is wearing NHS (National Health Service) issue spectacles which were not introduced until 1948.

When Pommfrit is talking to the three women at Ffing House, he says he was face-down on the guillotine and later "the knife came hurtling down and bounced off the back of my neck" which implies he was facing downwards when he was actually facing upwards. However, Pommfrit is making up details as he is going along to make the story sound more gripping and heroic, such as the basket full of heads and the made-up fight where he allegedly kills six or seven soldiers.

When the Duc De Pommfrit is standing next to the fountain, water is flowing out of it. In the following shots of the Duc talking to Desiree Dubarry, the flowing water has turned into a solid plastic rod.

Although the executions at the start and the executions at the end are supposed to be taking place days or possibly even weeks apart from each other the exact same crowd of spectators can be seen witnessing both executions (the spectators are also all standing in exactly the same places and wearing exactly the same clothes during both executions).

When Camembert says the line "Oh no not the harp" you can clearly see that he is running at a completely different harp to the one that featured in the previous scene with Ffing fighting around it. The one Camembert runs at is larger, has more strings and has a lighter finish than the original harp. This one was clearly a specially rigged one to allow Kenneth Williams to push his head between the strings safely.

When Effing is fighting with one of Camembert's guards he shoves a piece of timber on the end of the guard's sword and then knocks him out by hitting him with a bottle. Whilst it appears that the guard was rendered unconscious by the bottle hitting him over the head the bottle can clearly be seen hitting him on the arm.

In the long shots of Ffing's girl playing the harp it is quite clear that she is merely stroking one hand against the other (or at least creating that illusion). In the close ups she is merely pretending to pluck the strings of the harp (to try to make it less obvious that she isn't playing the harp).

In the first scenes when the prisoners are being guillotined, there is no blood on the blade after each beheading.

Sir Rodney picks the spot for the duel with Camembert in the garden of fragrance and starts off by pacing ten steps the they are interrupted by Désirée Dubarry then and only then does Sir Rodney ask for the number of paces to be changed to fifteen steps so that Camembert will fall into the cesspit but he did not know that the duel would be interrupted and if it had not then Camembert would not have fallen in.

When Duc de Pommfrit is being executed, the same two men are standing to the left of the drummer when the first prisoners were executed at the start of the movie. It would be assumed that each scene were depicting different days.

The modern road leading to the Chateau.

The signpost seen when Ffing and Darcy are escaping to England with Pommfrit shows distances in kilometres. Metric measures were not introduced until 1795, a year after the end of "The Terror".

During some of the executions the camera pans out to the crowd and a woman can be seen wearing modern clothes (the blonde lady at the front centre wearing a low cut black top).

When Sir Rodney is masquerading as a woman out after curfew, you can see a zip on his collar. This type of zip wasn't invented until 1851.

Pommfrit blows a whistle with a pea in it - they weren't invented for another hundred years.

When Camembert's guard is fighting with Pommfrit and slashes the curtain (after Camembert has fallen in to the harp). Pommfrit can be heard saying "Oooh I say!!!" but his mouth movements are consistent with the laughter that is heard for the rest of that scene.

Throughout the film, the name of the girl Sir Rodney loves is not revealed. However when Sir Rodney is trying to find a way to get into the Chateau Neuf, he calls her Jacqueline. When does he find out her name?

Darcy refers to Camembert and Desiree as the Duke and Duchess de la Plume de ma Tante to Sir Rodney before they arrive at the ball at Ffing House. After this they are always referred to as the Count/Countess.

Chateau Neuf is described as Chateau Number Nine, whereas in fact it would be best translated as 'The New Chateau' (much like Paris' Pont Neuf is 'The new bridge'.)

After the duel in the Garden of Fragrance, Sir Rodney asks Pommfrit where the Bastille is. But he had in fact been there earlier in the film, masquerading as a soldier, so he should already know where it is.