When I was very young... around 10 years old... I was pretty sick. This was before we had a remote control TV, and the cable box was one of those old ones with the slider. My mom and dad went to work and left me at home on the couch, and my mom put on PBS, thinking at least I'd have something reasonably educational on the TV. That day, they ran a 12 hour marathon of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and I was thoroughly hooked.
Monty Python's Meaning of Life was the very first rated R movie I saw in the theaters. They were masters of moving seamlessly between high comedy and low.