Dragonslayer
Encyclopedia
Dragonslayer is a 1981
fantasy
movie
set in a fictional medieval
kingdom, following a young wizard (played by Peter MacNicol
) who experiences danger and opposition as he attempts to defeat a dragon
.
A co-production between Walt Disney Productions
and Paramount Pictures
, Dragonslayer was more mature and realistic than other Disney films of the period. Because of audience expectations for a more family-friendly film from Disney, the movie's violence and adult themes were somewhat controversial at the time - even though Disney did not hold US distribution rights, which were held by Paramount (it was rated PG in the U.S.; TV showings after 1997 have carried a TV-14 rating). Disney later created Touchstone Pictures
to produce more mature fare.
The film was directed by Matthew Robbins
(who later directed *batteries not included
), from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood
. It starred Peter MacNicol
, Ralph Richardson
, John Hallam
, and Caitlin Clarke
.
Dragonslayer also featured then-unknown actor Ian McDiarmid
as the minor character Brother Jacopus. McDiarmid's next film role after Dragonslayer would be that of the villain Palpatine
in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
, a role which he would reprise in the subsequent Star Wars films.
The special effect
s were created at Industrial Light and Magic
, where Phil Tippett
had co-developed an animation technique called go motion
for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
(1980). Go motion is a variation on stop motion animation
, and its use in Dragonslayer led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Visual Effects
; it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark
(another Paramount film). The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Original Music Score
; Chariots of Fire
took the award. Including the hydraulic 40 feet (12.2 m) model, 16 dragon puppets were used for the role of Vermithrax, each one made for different movements; flying, crawling, fire breathing etc.
The film was also nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
. Once again, it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In October 2003, Dragonslayer was released on DVD
in the U.S. by Paramount Home Video.
) offers it virgin girls twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian (Clarke
) seeks the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Craggenmoor (Richardson), for help. A brutish centurion
from Urland named Tyrian (Hallam
), who has followed the expedition, intimidates the wizard. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice
Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol
) and his elderly servant Hodge (Sydney Bromley
). They cremate Ulrich's body and place the ashes in a leather pouch.
Galen inherits the wizard's magical amulet, and takes it upon himself to journey to Urland. On the way, he accidentally discovers Valerian is really a young woman, who disguised herself to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge.
Arriving in Urland, Galen inspects the dragon's lair and attempts to seal its entrance by causing rocks to fall from the cliff. Tyrian apprehends Galen and takes him to the court of King Casiodorus. After seeing Galen's clumsy efforts at magic tricks, King Casiodorus guesses that he is not a real wizard and complains that his attack may have angered the dragon instead of killing it, as his own brother and predecessor once did. The king then confiscates the amulet and imprisons Galen. His daughter Elspeth (Chloe Salaman
) comes to taunt Galen, but is shocked when he informs her of rumours the lottery is rigged. Casiodorus is unable to lie convincingly when she confronts him.
Meanwhile, the dragon frees itself from its prison and causes an earthquake. Galen narrowly escapes, but without the amulet. The village priest, Brother Jacopus (Ian McDiarmid
), leads his congregation to confront the dragon, denouncing it as the Devil, but the dragon incinerates him and then heads for the village, burning all in its path.
When the lottery begins anew, Princess Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen, in reparation. The King returns the amulet to Galen so that he might save Elspeth. Galen uses the amulet to enchant a heavy spear (dubbed Sicarius Dracorum, or "Dragonslayer") forged strong enough to pierce the dragon's armored hide. Meanwhile, Valerian gathers some molted dragon scales and uses them to make Galen a shield. She discovers that Vermithrax has a brood of dragonets. As Galen attempts to rescue Princess Elspeth, he fights and kills Tyrian. The Princess, however, has descended into the dragon's cave to her death. Galen follows her and finds the young dragons feasting upon her corpse. He kills them and then finds Vermithrax nesting by an underground lake of fire. He manages to wound the monster but the spear is broken and only Valerian's shield saves him from incineration.
After his failure to kill Vermithrax, Valerian convinces Galen to leave the village with her. As the two lovers prepare to leave, the amulet gives Galen a vision that explains his teacher's final wishes. Ulrich had asked that his ashes be spread over "burning water", and Galen realizes that the wizard had planned the whole thing. Galen returns to the cave, spreads the ashes and the wizard is resurrected from the flames of the burning lake. Ulrich reveals that his time is short and that Galen must destroy the amulet when the time is right. The wizard then transports
himself to a mountaintop and attracts the dragon's attention. After a brief battle, the monster grabs the old man and flies away with him. Galen crushes the amulet with a rock, causing the wizard to explode and kill the dragon.
Inspecting the wreckage, the villagers credit God
with the victory, while the king arrives and drives a sword into the dragon's broken carcass to claim the glory for himself. As Galen and Valerian leave Urland together, he confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet. But when he says, out loud, "I just wish we had a horse", as if on cue, a white horse appears to take the incredulous lovers away.
, and later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robin rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world in order to give the film more realism: "our film has no knights in shining armour, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphonous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead we set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the Roman departure from Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity
. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline of the film on June 25, 1979 and finished it in early August. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures
and Walt Disney Productions, becoming the two studio's second joint effort after Popeye
.
Twenty-five percent of the film's budget went into the special effects to bring the dragon to life. Graphic artist David Bunnet was assigned to design the look of the dragon, and was fed ideas on the mechanics on how the dragon would move, and then rendered the concepts on paper. It was decided early on in production that as the film's most important sequence would have been the final battle, it was deemed necessary to design a dragon with an emphasis on its flying abilities. Bunnet also designed the dragon to have a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid creating something like the titular creature from Alien
, which he believed was "too hideous to look at".
After Bunnet handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, it was decided that the dragon would have to have been realized with a wide variety of techniques: the resulting dragon on film is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett
of ILM
finalized the dragon's design, and sculpted a reference model which Danny Lee
of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for closeup shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished building a sixteen-foot head and neck assembly, a twenty-foot tail, thighs and legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a 30 feet (9.1 m) wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios
outside London
in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747
.
Brian Johnson
was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning both on and off-set effects with various special effects specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars
or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned."
After the completion of principal shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California
worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas
sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers and by hand, thus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression.
Phil Tippett built a model for the scenes in which the dragon would be required to walk. Tippett did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure rather than in between as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films.
Ken Ralston
was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminium
skeleton in order to give it a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying in order to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles in order to convey the sensation of flight.
.
Caitlin Clarke was initially hesitant to involve herself in the film, as she was preparing to audition for a play in Chicago
. Her agent insisted, though, and after doing an audition tape, was called back for more tests. Clarke failed them, but managed to pass after doing another test at the insistence of Matthew Robins. She got on well with Ralph Richardson, and stated that he taught her more in one rehearsal than in years of acting classes.
Elliot Scott
was hired to design the sets of the film's sixth century world. He temporarily converted the 13th century Dolwyddelan Castle
into Ulrich's ramshackle sixth century fortress, much to the surprise of the locals. Next, Scott built the entire village of Swanscombe on a farmside outside London. Although Scott extensively researched medieval architecture in the British Museum
and his own library, he took some artistic liberties in creating the thatched roof houses, the granary, Simon's house and smithy and Casiodorus' castle, as he was unable to find enough information on how they would look exactly. Scott then built the interior of the dragon's lair, using 25000 cubic feet (707.9 m³) of polystyrene and 40 tons of Welsh slate and shale. The shots of the Welsh and Scottish landscapes were extended through the use of over three dozen matte paintings.
Nearly all of the outdoor scenes were shot in North Wales
. The final scene was shot in Skye
, Scotland
.
. Mendelson designed the costumes to be roughly stitched and the utilised colours were ones which would have only been possible with the vegetable dyes then in use. The costumes of Casiodorus and his court were designed to be finely silked, as opposed to the coarsely woven clothes of the Urlanders.
. The score's linear conception was developed through transparently layered, polyphonic orchestral texture dominated by a medieval style modal harmony. The score was largely based on five major thematic concepts: 1) the suffering of the Urlanders; 2) a "magic" motif; 3) the amulet; 4) the sacrificial virgins; 5) the relationship between Galen and Valerian. North was disappointed by the resulting dragon scenes, as they did not use the entirety of the pieces he composed for them. He later stated that he had written "a very lovely waltz for when the dragon first appears, with just a slight indication that this may not be a bad dragon". The waltz was scrapped in favour of tracks used earlier in the movie. Despite this, the score was widely praised. In an article of the New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the score was a "beauty", and that "at times, the music and the fiery dragon seem one". Royal S. Brown of the Fanfare magazine praised the soundtrack as "one of the best scores of 1981".
The film grossed just over $14 million in the U.S.
with an estimated budget of USD
$18 million. Often regarded as a commercial failure, it later became a cult classic
on home video
. Rotten Tomatoes
gives the film an 82%.
called Vermithrax "the greatest dragon yet", and praised the film for its effective evocation of the Dark Ages.
David Denby of New York
praised Dragonslayers special effects and lauded the film as being much better than Excalibur
and Raiders of the Lost Ark
.
, although praising the sets and pacing of the film, criticised it for lack of originality, stressing that McNicol's and Richardson's characters bore too many similarities to the heroes of Star Wars
. A similar critique was given by John Coleman of the New Statesman
, who called the film a "turgid sword-and-sorcery fable, with Ralph Richardson in a backdated kind of Star Wars of Alec Guinness role...".
Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin
criticised the film's lack of narrative drive and clarity to supplement the special effects.
Alex Keneas of Newsday
criticised the film for being too focused on superstition, and for being "bereft of any sense of medieval time, place and society...".
that delves deeper into the background of many of the characters. Expansions upon the film's plot include details such as these:
. The new album featured newly-mastered audio from the original LCR(Left-Center-Right)-mix and included previously unreleased source music and alternate takes.
's monster pens in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.
Guillermo del Toro
has stated that along with Maleficent
in Sleeping Beauty
, Vermithrax is his favourite cinematic dragon. He further stated that “One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer. The design of the Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."
1981 in film
-Events:*January 19 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie Heaven's Gate, a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it....
fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
set in a fictional medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
kingdom, following a young wizard (played by Peter MacNicol
Peter MacNicol
Peter MacNicol is an American actor. He may be best known in films for his roles of Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II, Stingo in Sophie's Choice, Thomas Renfield in Dracula: Dead and Loving It and David Langley in Bean...
) who experiences danger and opposition as he attempts to defeat a dragon
European dragon
European dragons are legendary creatures in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.In European folklore, a dragon is a serpentine legendary creature. The Latin word draco, as in constellation Draco, comes directly from Greek δράκων,...
.
A co-production between Walt Disney Productions
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
and Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, Dragonslayer was more mature and realistic than other Disney films of the period. Because of audience expectations for a more family-friendly film from Disney, the movie's violence and adult themes were somewhat controversial at the time - even though Disney did not hold US distribution rights, which were held by Paramount (it was rated PG in the U.S.; TV showings after 1997 have carried a TV-14 rating). Disney later created Touchstone Pictures
Touchstone Pictures
Touchstone Pictures is an American film production label and is one of several film labels of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. Established in 1984, its releases typically feature more mature themes and darker tones than those that are released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner.Touchstone...
to produce more mature fare.
The film was directed by Matthew Robbins
Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
(who later directed *batteries not included
*batteries not included
*batteries not included is a 1987 family-science fiction film directed by Matthew Robbins about small extraterrestrial living machines that save an apartment block under threat from property development....
), from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood is an American game designer and game producer best known for his work on games based on the Indiana Jones license.Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, he studied art at Brown University and later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, where he met and...
. It starred Peter MacNicol
Peter MacNicol
Peter MacNicol is an American actor. He may be best known in films for his roles of Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II, Stingo in Sophie's Choice, Thomas Renfield in Dracula: Dead and Loving It and David Langley in Bean...
, Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
, John Hallam
John Hallam
John William Francis Hallam was a Northern Irish character actor.- Career :He appeared in many film and television roles including Nicholas and Alexandra , Murphy's War , The Pallisers , The Mallens , Flash Gordon , Dragonslayer , the BBC television adaptations of Prince Caspian...
, and Caitlin Clarke
Caitlin Clarke
Caitlin Clarke was an American theater and film actress best known for her role as Valerian in the 1981 fantasy film Dragonslayer and for her role as Charlotte Cardoza in the 1998–1999 Broadway musical Titanic....
.
Dragonslayer also featured then-unknown actor Ian McDiarmid
Ian McDiarmid
Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish theatre actor and director, who has also made sporadic appearances on film and television.McDiarmid has had a successful career in theatre; he has been cast in many plays, while occasionally directing others and although he has appeared mostly in theatrical productions,...
as the minor character Brother Jacopus. McDiarmid's next film role after Dragonslayer would be that of the villain Palpatine
Palpatine
Palpatine is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the Star Wars saga, portrayed by Ian McDiarmid in the feature films.Palpatine first appeared as the unnamed Emperor of the Galactic Empire in the 1980 film Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back...
in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand and written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan. It is the third film released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth in terms of the series' internal chronology...
, a role which he would reprise in the subsequent Star Wars films.
The special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s were created at Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light & Magic is an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas and is owned by Lucasfilm. Lucas created the company when he discovered that the special effects department at 20th Century Fox was shut down after he was given...
, where Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...
had co-developed an animation technique called go motion
Go motion
Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation, and was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett.- History :Tippett and Industrial Light & Magic created the go motion technique for the first time for some shots of the tauntaun creatures and AT-AT walkers in the 1980 Star Wars...
for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan...
(1980). Go motion is a variation on stop motion animation
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
, and its use in Dragonslayer led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Visual Effects
Academy Award for Visual Effects
The Academy Award for Visual Effects is an Academy Award given for the best achievement in visual effects.-History of the award:The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences first recognized the technical contributions of special effects to movies at its inaugural dinner in 1928, presenting a...
; it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
(another Paramount film). The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Original Music Score
Academy Award for Original Music Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
; Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British film. It tells the fact-based story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice....
took the award. Including the hydraulic 40 feet (12.2 m) model, 16 dragon puppets were used for the role of Vermithrax, each one made for different movements; flying, crawling, fire breathing etc.
The film was also nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
. Once again, it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In October 2003, Dragonslayer was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in the U.S. by Paramount Home Video.
Plot
A sixth century post-Roman kingdom called Urland is being terrorized by a 400 year old dragon named Vermithrax Pejorative. To appease the dragon, King Casiodorus (Peter EyrePeter Eyre
Peter Eyre is an American actor.Eyre was born in New York City, New York, the son of Dorothy Pelline and Edward Joseph Eyre, a banker. He was sent to a public school in England at the age of twelve, and has been based in the country ever since. Although offered a place at the Royal Academy of...
) offers it virgin girls twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian (Clarke
Caitlin Clarke
Caitlin Clarke was an American theater and film actress best known for her role as Valerian in the 1981 fantasy film Dragonslayer and for her role as Charlotte Cardoza in the 1998–1999 Broadway musical Titanic....
) seeks the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Craggenmoor (Richardson), for help. A brutish centurion
Centurion
A centurion was a professional officer of the Roman army .Centurion may also refer to:-Military:* Centurion tank, British battle tank* HMS Centurion, name of several ships and a shore base of the British Royal Navy...
from Urland named Tyrian (Hallam
John Hallam
John William Francis Hallam was a Northern Irish character actor.- Career :He appeared in many film and television roles including Nicholas and Alexandra , Murphy's War , The Pallisers , The Mallens , Flash Gordon , Dragonslayer , the BBC television adaptations of Prince Caspian...
), who has followed the expedition, intimidates the wizard. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol
Peter MacNicol
Peter MacNicol is an American actor. He may be best known in films for his roles of Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II, Stingo in Sophie's Choice, Thomas Renfield in Dracula: Dead and Loving It and David Langley in Bean...
) and his elderly servant Hodge (Sydney Bromley
Sydney Bromley
Sydney Bromley was an English actor. He appeared in more than sixty films and television programmes. On stage, he appeared in St. Joan, by George Bernard Shaw, in 1924...
). They cremate Ulrich's body and place the ashes in a leather pouch.
Galen inherits the wizard's magical amulet, and takes it upon himself to journey to Urland. On the way, he accidentally discovers Valerian is really a young woman, who disguised herself to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge.
Arriving in Urland, Galen inspects the dragon's lair and attempts to seal its entrance by causing rocks to fall from the cliff. Tyrian apprehends Galen and takes him to the court of King Casiodorus. After seeing Galen's clumsy efforts at magic tricks, King Casiodorus guesses that he is not a real wizard and complains that his attack may have angered the dragon instead of killing it, as his own brother and predecessor once did. The king then confiscates the amulet and imprisons Galen. His daughter Elspeth (Chloe Salaman
Chloe Salaman
Chloe Salaman is an English film and television actress.-Career:She has appeared in several films and various television productions including appearing as Princess Elspeth in the fantasy film Dragonslayer and Sarah Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years , an eight-part television...
) comes to taunt Galen, but is shocked when he informs her of rumours the lottery is rigged. Casiodorus is unable to lie convincingly when she confronts him.
Meanwhile, the dragon frees itself from its prison and causes an earthquake. Galen narrowly escapes, but without the amulet. The village priest, Brother Jacopus (Ian McDiarmid
Ian McDiarmid
Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish theatre actor and director, who has also made sporadic appearances on film and television.McDiarmid has had a successful career in theatre; he has been cast in many plays, while occasionally directing others and although he has appeared mostly in theatrical productions,...
), leads his congregation to confront the dragon, denouncing it as the Devil, but the dragon incinerates him and then heads for the village, burning all in its path.
When the lottery begins anew, Princess Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen, in reparation. The King returns the amulet to Galen so that he might save Elspeth. Galen uses the amulet to enchant a heavy spear (dubbed Sicarius Dracorum, or "Dragonslayer") forged strong enough to pierce the dragon's armored hide. Meanwhile, Valerian gathers some molted dragon scales and uses them to make Galen a shield. She discovers that Vermithrax has a brood of dragonets. As Galen attempts to rescue Princess Elspeth, he fights and kills Tyrian. The Princess, however, has descended into the dragon's cave to her death. Galen follows her and finds the young dragons feasting upon her corpse. He kills them and then finds Vermithrax nesting by an underground lake of fire. He manages to wound the monster but the spear is broken and only Valerian's shield saves him from incineration.
After his failure to kill Vermithrax, Valerian convinces Galen to leave the village with her. As the two lovers prepare to leave, the amulet gives Galen a vision that explains his teacher's final wishes. Ulrich had asked that his ashes be spread over "burning water", and Galen realizes that the wizard had planned the whole thing. Galen returns to the cave, spreads the ashes and the wizard is resurrected from the flames of the burning lake. Ulrich reveals that his time is short and that Galen must destroy the amulet when the time is right. The wizard then transports
Teleportation
Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...
himself to a mountaintop and attracts the dragon's attention. After a brief battle, the monster grabs the old man and flies away with him. Galen crushes the amulet with a rock, causing the wizard to explode and kill the dragon.
Inspecting the wreckage, the villagers credit God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
with the victory, while the king arrives and drives a sword into the dragon's broken carcass to claim the glory for himself. As Galen and Valerian leave Urland together, he confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet. But when he says, out loud, "I just wish we had a horse", as if on cue, a white horse appears to take the incredulous lovers away.
Cast
- Peter MacNicolPeter MacNicolPeter MacNicol is an American actor. He may be best known in films for his roles of Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II, Stingo in Sophie's Choice, Thomas Renfield in Dracula: Dead and Loving It and David Langley in Bean...
- Galen Bradwarden - Caitlin ClarkeCaitlin ClarkeCaitlin Clarke was an American theater and film actress best known for her role as Valerian in the 1981 fantasy film Dragonslayer and for her role as Charlotte Cardoza in the 1998–1999 Broadway musical Titanic....
- Valerian - Ralph RichardsonRalph RichardsonSir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
- Ulrich of Craggenmoor - John HallamJohn HallamJohn William Francis Hallam was a Northern Irish character actor.- Career :He appeared in many film and television roles including Nicholas and Alexandra , Murphy's War , The Pallisers , The Mallens , Flash Gordon , Dragonslayer , the BBC television adaptations of Prince Caspian...
- Tyrian - Peter EyrePeter EyrePeter Eyre is an American actor.Eyre was born in New York City, New York, the son of Dorothy Pelline and Edward Joseph Eyre, a banker. He was sent to a public school in England at the age of twelve, and has been based in the country ever since. Although offered a place at the Royal Academy of...
- King Casiodorus - Albert SalmiAlbert SalmiAlbert Salmi was an American actor.-Biography:Albert Salmi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Finnish immigrant parents, and following a stint in the Army, took up acting as a career, studying Method acting with Lee Strasberg. In 1955, Salmi starred in Bus Stop on Broadway...
- Greil - Sydney BromleySydney BromleySydney Bromley was an English actor. He appeared in more than sixty films and television programmes. On stage, he appeared in St. Joan, by George Bernard Shaw, in 1924...
- Hodge - Chloe SalamanChloe SalamanChloe Salaman is an English film and television actress.-Career:She has appeared in several films and various television productions including appearing as Princess Elspeth in the fantasy film Dragonslayer and Sarah Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years , an eight-part television...
- Princess Elspeth - Emrys JamesEmrys JamesEmrys James , was a Welsh Shakespearean actor. He also performed in many theatre and TV parts between 1960 and 1989, and was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company...
- Simon (Valerian's Father) - Roger KempRoger KempFrancis Roderick Kemp OBE , known as Roger, was one of Australia's foremost practitioners of transcendental abstraction...
- Horsrick - Ian McDiarmidIan McDiarmidIan McDiarmid is a Scottish theatre actor and director, who has also made sporadic appearances on film and television.McDiarmid has had a successful career in theatre; he has been cast in many plays, while occasionally directing others and although he has appeared mostly in theatrical productions,...
- Brother Jacopus
Conception
According to Hal Barwood, he and Matthew Robins got the inspiration for Dragonslayer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence in FantasiaFantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
, and later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robin rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world in order to give the film more realism: "our film has no knights in shining armour, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphonous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead we set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the Roman departure from Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline of the film on June 25, 1979 and finished it in early August. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
and Walt Disney Productions, becoming the two studio's second joint effort after Popeye
Popeye (film)
Popeye is a 1980 live-action film adaptation directed by Robert Altman and adapted from E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre aka Popeye comic strip.Marketed with the tagline, "The sailor man with the spinach can!", the film is a musical...
.
Dragon design and realisation
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
, which he believed was "too hideous to look at".
After Bunnet handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, it was decided that the dragon would have to have been realized with a wide variety of techniques: the resulting dragon on film is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...
of ILM
Ilm
Ilm or ILM can refer to:*Ilm, Arabic for knowledge, referring to knowledge of Islam*I Love Music, an Internet music forum*Ilmr, a goddess in Norse mythology, sometimes written as Ilm- Acronyms :...
finalized the dragon's design, and sculpted a reference model which Danny Lee
Danny Lee
Danny Lee Sau-Yin is a Hong Kong actor, film producer, screenwriter, director, action director and presenter. He is best known for frequently portraying Hong Kong police officers in films such as Law With Two Phases, The Killer and The Untold Story.-Background:Lee did not do so well in school and...
of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for closeup shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished building a sixteen-foot head and neck assembly, a twenty-foot tail, thighs and legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a 30 feet (9.1 m) wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
outside London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
.
Brian Johnson
Brian Johnson (special effects)
-Biography:Johnson's work on Space: 1999 set the tone for the Star Wars films to follow. George Lucas visited Johnson during the series production because he was so impressed with his work. Lucas asked Johnson to supervise the special effects for the first film but his prior commitment to Year 2 of...
was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning both on and off-set effects with various special effects specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned."
After the completion of principal shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas
Chris Walas
Chris Walas is an American special effects/make-up artist and director.-Biography:His main body of work is with special effects in a wide variety of movies from science fiction to action-adventure. His work on The Fly led to his directorial debut on The Fly II...
sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers and by hand, thus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression.
Phil Tippett built a model for the scenes in which the dragon would be required to walk. Tippett did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure rather than in between as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films.
Ken Ralston
Ken Ralston
Visual effects pioneer Ken Ralston is Senior Visual Effect Supervisor and Creative Head at the Academy Award–winning visual effects studio Sony Pictures Imageworks. For more than three decades Ralston has taken audiences to unimaginable worlds with his intuitive vision and unparalleled mastery of...
was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
skeleton in order to give it a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying in order to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles in order to convey the sensation of flight.
Casting
Peter McNicol first met Matthew Robins while waiting to audition for the pilot film of Breaking Away, and agreed to take part in Dragonslayer, despite having a dislike for performing magic tricks. McNicol had to learn horse riding, both English style and bareback for the role. McNicol found this difficult, saying that "They took away my stirrups, they took away my reins and whipped the horse, and then they told me to windmill my arms and turn a complete circle in the saddle. Then they took away the saddle!" He later took on vocal coaching in order to disguise his Texas accent, and took magic lessons from British prestidigitator Harold Taylor, who had previously performed for the British royal familyBritish Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
.
Caitlin Clarke was initially hesitant to involve herself in the film, as she was preparing to audition for a play in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. Her agent insisted, though, and after doing an audition tape, was called back for more tests. Clarke failed them, but managed to pass after doing another test at the insistence of Matthew Robins. She got on well with Ralph Richardson, and stated that he taught her more in one rehearsal than in years of acting classes.
Set design
Elliot Scott
Elliot Scott was an English art director. He was nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:Scott was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Art Direction:...
was hired to design the sets of the film's sixth century world. He temporarily converted the 13th century Dolwyddelan Castle
Dolwyddelan Castle
Dolwyddelan Castle was a native Welsh castle located near Dolwyddelan in Conwy County in North Wales. It was built in the 13th century by Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd and North Wales.-Construction:...
into Ulrich's ramshackle sixth century fortress, much to the surprise of the locals. Next, Scott built the entire village of Swanscombe on a farmside outside London. Although Scott extensively researched medieval architecture in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and his own library, he took some artistic liberties in creating the thatched roof houses, the granary, Simon's house and smithy and Casiodorus' castle, as he was unable to find enough information on how they would look exactly. Scott then built the interior of the dragon's lair, using 25000 cubic feet (707.9 m³) of polystyrene and 40 tons of Welsh slate and shale. The shots of the Welsh and Scottish landscapes were extended through the use of over three dozen matte paintings.
Shooting locations in North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
. The final scene was shot in Skye
Skye
Skye or the Isle of Skye is the largest and most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate out from a mountainous centre dominated by the Cuillin hills...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
- The filming crew were based in Betws y Coed, and the artists were stabled further down the Conwy valley.
- Dolwyddelan CastleDolwyddelan CastleDolwyddelan Castle was a native Welsh castle located near Dolwyddelan in Conwy County in North Wales. It was built in the 13th century by Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd and North Wales.-Construction:...
was used for all outdoor shots of Ulrich's Castle. This includes the arrival of the delegation from Urland, the arrival of guards from Urland, Ulrich's first death scene and funeral burning. Many locals were hired as extras during this scene.
- The external long shots of the dragon's lair were of the main face of TryfanTryfanTryfan is a mountain in Snowdonia, Wales, forming part of the Glyderau group. It is one of the most recognisable peaks in the region, having a classic pointed shape with rugged crags. At 3,010 feet above sea level it is the fifteenth highest mountain in Wales...
, within yards of the A5, opposite Llyn OgwenLlyn OgwenLlyn Ogwen is a lake in north-west Wales. It lies alongside the A5 road between two mountain ranges of Snowdonia, the Carneddau and the Glyderau...
. The lair was shot looking upwards from the road, towards the broken face of Tryfan, Nant Ffrancon.
- Shots of Galen and Hodge on the trek to Urland were shot on the old road from Cobdens to Bryn Engan, in Capel CurigCapel CurigCapel Curig is a village and community in Conwy County Borough, in Wales. It lies in the heart of Snowdonia, on the River Llugwy, and has a population of 226...
.
- The early morning camping scenes on the trek to Urland, Tyrian's shooting of Hodge, and Hodge's death scene all take place on a 500 yard (500 m) section of Fairy Glen between Betws-y-Coed and PenmachnoPenmachnoPenmachno is a village in the isolated upland valley of Cwm Penmachno, 4 miles south of Betws-y-Coed in the county of Conwy, north Wales.It is renowned as the home of Bishop William Morgan , who lived at Tŷ Mawr, Y Wybrnant, near the village. He was one of the leading scholars of his day, having...
.
- The scenes of the delegation crossing over into Urland were shot above Ogwen CottageOgwen CottageOgwen Cottage Outdoor Pursuits Centre is part of Birmingham City Council's Outdoor Learning Service. It provides outdoor education and has links to the climbing community.-Thomas Telford:...
, Nant Ffrancon.
- Galen fleeing on horseback from Casiodorus's castle was shot high above Llyn CrafnantLlyn CrafnantLlyn Crafnant is a lake that lies in a beautiful valley in North Wales where the northern edge of the Gwydir Forest meets the lower slopes of the Carneddau mountains and, more specifically, the ridge of Cefn Cyfarwydd. The head of the valley offers a profile of crags which are silhouetted at...
.
- The scene where Galen Bradwarden sees an apparition in the lake was shot at the bottom end of Llyn Crafnant.
- The bleak rocky outcrop where Valerian gathers Dragon scales is Castell y GwyntCastell y GwyntCastell y Gwynt is a top of Glyder Fach in Snowdonia, north-west Wales. It has the merit of being the only 3000 ft Welsh summit classed as only a Nuttall, hence it is not included in the Welsh 3000s. It has a prominence of 15.7 m , and was only included on the Nuttall's list after...
, above the Pen-y-GwrydPen-y-GwrydPen-y-Gwryd is a pass at the head of Nantygwryd and Nant Cynnyd rivers in Gwynedd, North Wales and a quarter of a mile from the boundary with Conwy in northern Snowdonia, close to the foot of Snowdon...
hotel.
- The scenes where Valerian delivers a shield made from the Dragon's scales and the intimate scene between Valerian and Galen were shot in the boulder field below Tryfan, about 300 yards from the A5 near the Llyn OgwenLlyn OgwenLlyn Ogwen is a lake in north-west Wales. It lies alongside the A5 road between two mountain ranges of Snowdonia, the Carneddau and the Glyderau...
Car Park.
- The procession scenes in which victims are transported to the Dragon's lair were shot on Gelli behind the main shop in Capel Curig.
- Vermithrax crashes into Llyn LlydawLlyn LlydawLlyn Llydaw is a lake in Snowdonia National Park on the flanks of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain. This long thin lake has formed in a cwm about one-third of the way up the mountain....
, below SnowdonSnowdonSnowdon is the highest mountain in Wales, at an altitude of above sea level, and the highest point in the British Isles outside Scotland. It is located in Snowdonia National Park in Gwynedd, and has been described as "probably the busiest mountain in Britain"...
.
Costumes
The costumes were designed by Anthony Mendelson, who consulted the British Museum, the London Library and his own reference files in order to make the clothing evoke the designs of the early Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. Mendelson designed the costumes to be roughly stitched and the utilised colours were ones which would have only been possible with the vegetable dyes then in use. The costumes of Casiodorus and his court were designed to be finely silked, as opposed to the coarsely woven clothes of the Urlanders.
Musical score
The film's Academy-Award-nominated score was composed by Alex NorthAlex North
Alex North was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood ....
. The score's linear conception was developed through transparently layered, polyphonic orchestral texture dominated by a medieval style modal harmony. The score was largely based on five major thematic concepts: 1) the suffering of the Urlanders; 2) a "magic" motif; 3) the amulet; 4) the sacrificial virgins; 5) the relationship between Galen and Valerian. North was disappointed by the resulting dragon scenes, as they did not use the entirety of the pieces he composed for them. He later stated that he had written "a very lovely waltz for when the dragon first appears, with just a slight indication that this may not be a bad dragon". The waltz was scrapped in favour of tracks used earlier in the movie. Despite this, the score was widely praised. In an article of the New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the score was a "beauty", and that "at times, the music and the fiery dragon seem one". Royal S. Brown of the Fanfare magazine praised the soundtrack as "one of the best scores of 1981".
Box office and reception
| Dragonslayer is a compelling and often brilliant fantasy film; it is also, however, a movie which is at odds with the normal internal structure of the typical "hero myth". It first tries hard to evoke a certain time and place and then tries just as hard to reject the necessary, and expected, limitations its particular setting and historical era impose. To put it bluntly, Dragonslayer is not content to conform to the strictures of the genre and to tell a rousing good story; it seeks, as well, to impose modern sensibilities on its medieval characters and plot- twentieth-century political, sociological, and religious sensibilities which only serve to dilute its particular strengths. |
| — Von Gunden, Kenneth Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Films, McFarland, 1989, ISBN 0786412143 |
The film grossed just over $14 million in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with an estimated budget of USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
$18 million. Often regarded as a commercial failure, it later became a cult classic
Cult Classic
Cult Classic is a Blue Öyster Cult studio recording released in 1994, containing remakes of many of the band's previous hits.-Track listing:# " The Reaper" - 5:05# "E.T.I...
on home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
gives the film an 82%.
Praise
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
called Vermithrax "the greatest dragon yet", and praised the film for its effective evocation of the Dark Ages.
David Denby of New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
praised Dragonslayers special effects and lauded the film as being much better than Excalibur
Excalibur (film)
Excalibur is a 1981 dramatic fantasy film directed, produced and co-written by John Boorman that retells the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Adapted from the 15th century Arthurian romance, Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, Excalibur features the music of Richard Wagner...
and Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
.
Criticism
David Sterritt of The Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, although praising the sets and pacing of the film, criticised it for lack of originality, stressing that McNicol's and Richardson's characters bore too many similarities to the heroes of Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
. A similar critique was given by John Coleman of the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, who called the film a "turgid sword-and-sorcery fable, with Ralph Richardson in a backdated kind of Star Wars of Alec Guinness role...".
Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin
Monthly Film Bulletin
The Monthly Film Bulletin was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a narrow arthouse release. The MFB was edited in the mid-1950s by David Robinson, in the late...
criticised the film's lack of narrative drive and clarity to supplement the special effects.
Alex Keneas of Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
criticised the film for being too focused on superstition, and for being "bereft of any sense of medieval time, place and society...".
Novelization
A novelization was written by Wayland DrewWayland Drew
Wayland Drew was a writer born in Oshawa, Ontario. He earned a BA in English Language and Literature from Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1957, and began a teaching career in 1961 at the high school in Port Perry, Ontario...
that delves deeper into the background of many of the characters. Expansions upon the film's plot include details such as these:
- As an infant, Galen was handed to Ulrich by his parents due to their fear of his magical abilities. Ulrich took him as an apprentice, but was concerned with the lad's lack of focus, which usually resulted in the unintentional creation of bizarre, dream-inspired creatures.
- A vision glimpsed by Ulrich in his scryingScryingScrying is a magic practice that involves seeing things psychically in a medium, usually for purposes of obtaining spiritual visions and less often for purposes of divination or fortune-telling. The most common media used are reflective, translucent, or luminescent substances such as crystals,...
bowl implies that sorcerers could have been responsible for the creation of dragons. This is only briefly alluded to in the film. It is further mentioned that the sorcerer who created dragons also fashioned the magical amulet which Galen wears through most of the story. - The revelation that Vermithrax, while physically androgynous, nevertheless required copulation with another dragon for fertilization.
- It is revealed that the lottery's standards for eligibility fluctuated, and several married women and mothers were sacrificed too, Valerian's mother being among them. Her death was the price Simon had to pay in order to fashion Sicarius Dracorum, which was done with the assistance of Ulrich himself.
- Simon is revealed to be a master blacksmith who fashioned highly prized weapons and armor. It was the toll of seeing so many use his arms and armor only to be killed by the dragon that convinced him to stop forging arms and armor.
- King Cassiodorus is revealed to be of Roman heritage, and is portrayed as contemptuous toward his largely Saxon subjects, whom he views as superstitious and backward.
Marvel Comic
Marvel comics released a comic book version of the movie around the film's release.Soundtrack
Australian label Southern Cross initially released an unauthorized soundtrack album in 1983 on LP, and in 1990 on CD. That album also appeared on iTunes for a limited time. The first official and improved CD release came in 2010 by U.S. label La-La Land RecordsLa-La Land Records
La-La Land Records is an American record company based in Burbank, California . The company specializes in film and television soundtracks. The label is run by Michael V...
. The new album featured newly-mastered audio from the original LCR(Left-Center-Right)-mix and included previously unreleased source music and alternate takes.
Impact
During the filming of Return of the Jedi, the ILM crew jokingly placed a model of one of the dragons from Dragonslayer in the arms of the rancor model and took a picture. The picture was included in the book Star Wars: Chronicles. A creature based on the appearance of this dragon appears in one of Jabba the HuttJabba the Hutt
Jabba the Hutt is a fictional character in George Lucas's space opera film saga Star Wars. Designed as a large, slug-like alien, his appearance has been described by film critic Roger Ebert as "Dickensian," a cross between a toad and the Cheshire Cat....
's monster pens in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...
has stated that along with Maleficent
Maleficent
Maleficent is a fictional character and the main antagonist in Walt Disney's 1959 adaptation of Sleeping Beauty. She is the self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil" who, after not being invited to the baby's christening, curses the infant Princess Aurora to "prick her finger on the spindle of a...
in Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault...
, Vermithrax is his favourite cinematic dragon. He further stated that “One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer. The design of the Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."