Dragonslayer (1981)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Absolutely the worst movie.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

In the kingdom of Urland, King Casiodorus selects a virgin maiden twice a year in a lottery to be sacrificed to an ancient dragon. Valerian (Caitlin Clarke) leads a group to find Ulrich (Ralph Richardson), the only one alive rumored to have killed a dragon. Soldier Tyrian challenges Ulrich to prove himself but the test kills him. His apprentice Galen Bradwarden (Peter MacNicol) with the special amulet intends to complete the quest himself. He discovers that Valerian is actually a girl pretending to be a boy. Tyrian intends to stop anything that could disrupt the way of life and kills Ulrich's elderly servant Hodge. Hodge tells Galen to spread Ulrich's ashes over a lake of "burning water". Galen seals the dragon cave entrance. Thinking it safe, Valerian reveals herself as a girl to the village. Tyrian arrests Galen. In the dungeon, princess Elspeth comes to see Galen and he reveals the popular rumor of the rigged lottery. She rigs the lottery against herself and is sent to be sacrificed.This is simple high adventure. Peter MacNicol may not be the pretty young face that the hero is suppose to be. He does have a good nature about it. Caitlin Clarke is a great heroine. Her story is compelling. The princess is great and so is Tyrian. On top of that, Vermithrax is a great scary dragon. He doesn't show his face until the last act like Jaws. This is one of the great dragon movie.

You have to give credit to "Dragonslayer" for what it does right; the special effects are quite good, the principal characters are compelling and the story is never predictable. However, in its efforts to turn a medieval wizard & dragon story on its head the movies proves itself to be needlessly dark and depressing. The Kingdom of Urland lives in a constant state of terror because of a 400-year-old dragon named Vermithrax Pejorative and must sacrifice young virgins to it in order to save themselves from a fiery death. Not terribly happy with this deal, the King sends for the last sorcerer to come to the kingdom's aid. What he gets instead is the sorcerer's apprentice. The story follows Galen (Peter MacNicol) who has only limited magical skills, little confidence in himself and all-out hostility from King Even with the help of a young woman (Caitlin Clarke), there isn't much hope for the apprentice, particularly with magic clearly dying out in the world.I'm going to start with the positive aspects of the movie. We have not one, but two characters you can really get attached to and genuinely like. You admire Galen for stepping up to the plate and volunteering to confront the dragon, an opponent who is significantly more powerful than he is but must be stopped. This guy knows he's outmatched so he is forced to use his intelligence to confront the beast, sneaking about its lair, using a mix of conventional and magically-enhanced weapons, and sorcery to take on the dragon. Being young and inexperienced, things seldom go right but he never gives up. Another reason that you like him is because he has to face much more than just the dragon, he has many human opponents as well. The king and his guards, they're total jerks. There are some pretty dark revelations about them that makes you want our young hero to win even more.The other character I really like is the young woman who helps Galen. Her character is essential to the plot because she helps our hero at multiple instances and in fact gets the story moving from the get-go. You would expect her character to be a typical damsel in distress considering the wizard combating the dragon that wants virgins thing, but she's actually a tough character that holds her own and in some ways is much more confident and stronger than our actual hero.I also have to give credit for the film's special effects, particularly whenever you get to see full shots of the dragon Vermithrax. The creature is created with puppetry when it comes to the close-ups (to mixed results) and with stop-motion in the full-length shots. The way the creature is revealed is expertly done, with several shots at the beginning teasing you enough that you want to see more, without showing too much and giving away the best part of the movie (the monster itself) too early. When you do see the dragon, the stop-motion effects used to bring it to life are excellent, some of the best I've seen. It ranks as high as the works of masters Willis O' Brien and Ray Harryhausen. The film also has numerous complex ideas and themes throughout and like I said before, it subverts many stereotypes of the genre so you can't see where the movie is going at any point.That brings me to what works less well with the movie. It's simply so dark. There are so many deaths during the movie that it brings you down. It's not like the deaths I'm complaining about are heroic deaths either, they just feel kind of petty. Sympathetic characters are brutally murdered for no real reason. It's not even to make the villains seem really evil or to add a tragic back story kind of thing, they're just written in to be slaughtered. If the intention was to make the odds against our hero feel overwhelming there was no need to do so. Another major negative point towards the movie is a revelation about Galen's master at the very end. If it had been tweaked just a little bit, where it was discovered by our hero and then implemented by him, it could have been a really clever plot development. To me it felt like a needlessly cryptic revelation that was as bad as those rage-inducing scenes in romantic comedies where the plot could have been solved within 5 minutes if people would actually talk like human beings. It makes you think that a) that wizard was just too lazy to do the whole thing himself b) he really put all his eggs in one basket in hoping nothing would go wrong in this convoluted plan of his and c) that if anyone is to blame because of the fiasco in the kingdom, it's the wizard! The film then ends on a tone that sort of just tells you that your dreams of an awesome, uplifting world where magic, sorcery, beautiful princesses to be rescued and fantastical monsters to be slain by valiant heroes... those are stupid thing to believe in. Get back to reality, because the movie is over buddy!I'm torn with this picture because this is the second time I've seen it and I really didn't like it at first. I thought it was depressing but well made and the ending was bad. I still think that's the case, but there are also many good points and it does make it worth a watch. So here's what I recommend. Watch it once, and think what you want of it, but then watch it a second time, like several months later when you remember the tone of it, but not too many of the details. With lowered expectations and forward knowledge of what happens overall, you will be able to focus your attention on the positive aspects and actually enjoy the film. (On DVD, June 20, 2014)

A King has made a pact with a dragon where he sacrifices virgins to it, and the dragon leaves his kingdom alone. An old wizard, and his keen young apprentice volunteer to kill the dragon and attempt to save the next virgin in line.....the Kings own daughter.This is one of those movies where the poster sells it to you, and i', talking about the poster that comes with the title here on IMDb, and it was a trait that many films in the eighties had, fantastic poster, terrible film.For the most part, we have Peter MacNicol spouting silly sub-par Tolkein dialogue and getting scared when he sees lady bits.For a hero, hes a moaning little boy, and I can understand why the actor is embarrassed to put this on his CV, he isn't any good.The rest of the cast are just the typecast characters you saw in endless films like this in the eighties, Hawk The Slayer, Krull, Ladyhawke, you'd be forgiven if you think you've already seen it.But, what saves this from being a one star movie, is the Dragon, we wait a long time, but when we see it, it's brilliant. It's very impressive to look at in 2013, so heaven knows what audiences thought in 1981, it's a pity go motion wasn't used more.If for some reason, you can see just the dragon footage, see it, but it will make you want to watch the rest of the film, which just consists of old men walking through Wales.A boring film, except for the Dragon.

A strange fact that you see when looking at movies through the years is that movies featuring dragons for some reason never really perform all that well. Sure you have your semi hits like "Dragon Heart", but nothing that really sets the box office ablaze as it were. Take this one for instance, you can tell they put some good money into the film because at times the film looks terrific, however the movie did not really perform all that well at the box office. Granted it was rather dark at times and while there is a great fight between the hero and the dragon at a point in the film when he was trying to save that one girl who rigged the lottery so she would get chosen the ending fight was nonexistent. The story has a town and castle plagued by a dragon, people go to search for I think a wizard to help them get rid of said dragon. Well for some reason or other a man stabs said wizard and the wizard dies and they are now just left with the apprentice. The town holds a lottery and whose ever name is drawn is sacrificed to the dragon. Only females are drawn though. Like I said the dragon looks rather good and the one scene of the apprentice going to the lair is good too, but to often the movie bogs down and feels sluggish. Still, overall it was a somewhat good film that features a dragon so it was doomed to fail like so many other dragon movies.