Dragonslayer (1981)

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We’ve covered Popeye already, one of the co-productions between Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures. Now it’s time to tackle the other, lesser-known one, Dragonslayer! Hey, a movie with a dragon in it can’t be bad, right? Right? Oh well, let’s find out!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Directed by Matthew Robbins, the film takes place in 6th Century Britain wherein we’re introduced to an old sorcerer named Ulrich, played by Ralph Richardson.

We also meet his young and eager apprentice, Galen, played by Peter MacNicol. Ulrich teaches Galen what he knows of sorcery and magic, but Galen is still nowhere near to being a master yet.

One day, a delegation of commoners led by a young man named Valerian, arrives at Ulrich’s and seeks his help. They’ve come from the kingdom of Urland wherein a dragon known as Vermithrax Pejorative terrorizes the people and is only appeased when a virgin girl is sacrificed to it. They’ve come to Ulrich to seek his help in slaying the dragon and ending their suffering.

Although elderly, Ulrich is up to the task, but is challenged by Tyrian, the cruel captain of the Royal Guard of Urland, played by John Hallam. He has followed Valerian and his posse and doesn’t believe in Ulrich’s powers. He ends up killing Ulrich in front of everyone’s eyes resulting in Valerian and his posse heading back home dejected.

Galen, however, feels that he can slay the dragon himself and heads out after Valerian and his posse. He’s accompanied by his elderly servant, Hodge, played by Sydney Bromley. Hodge has cremated Ulrich’s remains and carries it in a pouch to dispose of along their journey.

When they catch up with Valerian and his posse, Galen informs them that he will slay the dragon for them and they reluctantly accept his help. Along the journey, Galen discovers that Valerian is actually a young woman, played by Caitlin Clarke. She disguised herself as a man so as not to get drafted in the royal lottery that determines which virgin girl is chosen to be the next sacrifice to the dragon.

Eventually, they make it to Urland, although Hodge is killed along the way by Tyrian. Before dying, he hands Ulrich’s remains to Galen and informs him to empty the remains in a lake of burning water.

In Urland, Galen seals the entrance to the dragon’s lair and the people rejoice. However King Casiodorus, played by Peter Eyre, feels that this will just anger the dragon more. Galen soon meets the King’s daughter, Princess Elspeth, played by Chloe Salaman, who has immense faith in her father and the lottery system he devised. Galen breaks the news to her that the King never put his daughter’s name into the lottery which shatters her belief as she always assumed it was a fair lottery where her name was included.

At the next lottery, the Princess’ name is drawn much to the surprise of everyone especially the King. Princess Elspeth reveals that she changed the names on all the slips of paper in the lottery to hers so that she would definitely get picked, hoping to right the unfairness of the past lotteries. The King tries in vain to prevent this from happening, but the Princess is determined to go through with it. He then seeks Galen’s help to save the Princess.

Galen seeks Valerian’s blacksmith father’s help to forge an enchanted spear that can pierce the dragon’s hide and a shield for his own protection. Galen kills Tyrian who tries to stop him from rescuing the Princess, but is unable to rescue the Princess who falls to her death. We see her corpse being eaten by the dragon’s babies.

And where there are dragon babies, there’s bound to be an adult dragon nearby!

Galen wounds the dragon and manages to escape. While he didn’t kill the dragon, Valerian convinces him to leave the kingdom with her and start life anew somewhere else. (Apparently, they’ve both fallen in love with each other even though I feel they never really had many moments together to do so, but whatever.)

They have her father’s blessing and begin their journey. Along the way, Galen notices the sun’s rays hitting a lake and realizes that this is the “lake of burning water” Hodge was referring to. He empties the sorcerer’s ashes into the lake and Ulrich “comes back to life”.

Ulrich allows himself to be captured by the dragon and when he’s in the dragon’s clutches, he commanded Galen to destroy his amulet. Galen obeys and the destroyed amulet results in Ulrich exploding and killing the dragon in the process.

The kingdom is finally free, King Casiodorus takes credit for killing the dragon, and Galen and Valerian continue along their journey.

And that was Dragonslayer! I feel really bad to say this about a movie with a dragon in it, but boy, did I find it boring! It starts off with an interesting premise, but the overall pacing is so slow that I lost interest about 1/3 of the way in! I summarized so much in my retelling of the plot!

The ending itself also takes forever to actually end! You think it’s gonna end when Galen is sent to slay the dragon. Then you think it’s gonna end when he and Valerian leave Urland. Then you think it’s gonna end once Ulrich returns. Then it finally ends when Galen destroys the amulet. I just feel this could have been more concise.

I also wasn’t fond of the acting. I didn’t find any of the performances believable, mostly because I felt all the line deliveries were just bad. I don’t know if this was an ADR-related issue, but all the line deliveries sound like a bad dub rather than sincere acting.

The special effects were a mixed bag. Some felt fine while others felt outdated even for the time. The dragon itself looked really good during closeups, but far shots of it looked really gimmicky.

All in all, I really wanted to like this film more, but sadly it’s one of my least favorites that I’ve seen for this blog.

So, my final score for this film is 10/35 = 28.57% (F) !

The next review will be posted on November 5, 2024.