Dragonslayer (1981)
In the dark age, magic was a weapon. Love was a mystery. Adventure was everywhere… and Dragons were real.
My fantasy game had an update, and it’s got me craving some fantasy flicks. The one that would most match the game i’ve already done, but I had another one in mind and it happened to be on sale, so I guess that’s as close to planetary alignment as you can ask for in the middle of a hot week filled with chaos. Grab your magic rocks, prepare for something older than me, and let out your inner sorcerer’s apprentice - tonight we watch Dragonslayer.
A group of villagers roll up on an old magicians tower, asking to speak to the man. Although his help initially turns them away, they do get to see him after his apprentice asks. Why would these folks need a magic man? Well their kingdom is plagued by a dragon you see, and some are getting rather upset about the constant lottery condemning their daughters to be abominable lizard snacks. The man agrees, but the entire adventure runs into trouble within moments of getting started when a guard of the kingdom shows up and decides to test the magic man - which ends up with him dying. At any rate, the apprentice and the crew head off to deal with the dragon regardless, and things seem like it could be a great match after the apprentice causes a massive landside and seals the dragon’s entrance. Of course, if it in fact ended that quickly we wouldn’t have much of a movie now would we?
Acting here is pretty good. It’s got a level of cryptic shenanigans on the main wizards part, with plenty left to the imagination as to if it is in fact really magic or some level of chemistry and fraud. Most everything is person to person, and a good deal of interaction are with physical objects so there isn’t a ton to worry about when it comes to something like eye lines, although the actors do a pretty decent job there regardless. Some bits can be a bit chompy, but I wouldn’t really think it bad acting as much as it being a few separate things. Such things include it being from 1981, and the acting is of that time as well. Other things lending to it being more the mood and intention of the movie - such as being a bit cheeky or overzealous. Sometimes it could use a little more emotion, others perhaps a little less - but it’s good enough.
Characters get some room to play with things. One of our village boys turns out to be a girl (to probably no ones surprise), the apprentice goes through a ton of stuff pretty much right off the bat. It’s a bit hero’s journey, although that trope path usually starts with denying the path and the apprentice is pretty well accepting of it almost cockily from the get go (although I do feel the other phases still apply). You get some romance in there, although I’d label it more like “young love” than any real heavy duty sort of thing. You get some greedy bad guys doing rich greedy bad guy things, and some dark age Christians calling anything with horns Satan instead of just admitting it’s a dragon. It’s enough to keep you watching, and primarily about the apprentice as he tries to do the right thing to mixed results though, so expect some light building and not real heavy drama and you’d be set I think.
Apprentice shenanigans.
Setting is classic fantasy, so we get a whole plethora of outfits to look at. Some classic peasant styles, some fancy royals, and of course a hole breadth of drips for the apprentice as he goes from lowly apprentice up to attempted dragon slaying warrior. It provides a lot of range, but it’s also all very fitting with the kind of dreary atmosphere of the movie. It’s not quite hitting that super-Gothic look, but the movie will borderline become a horror movie when it wants to be spooky about things, and the lack of vivid colors on the costumes helps set that atmosphere. It also helps keep our main players from looking to similar from each other. The settings themselves also all look good, From towns and castles to dank smoggy dragon caves. If the movie wants to evoke danger and death, it’s not beyond just littering the floor with skeletons or lighting a lake on fire.
Effects are also great here. I’m sure some don’t hold up to a modern audiences scrutiny as well as others, but if you remind yourself this movie is from 1981 when your watching it can be pretty darn impressive at times. The full size props look great, and the lighting and fog interacts with it well - but even the stop motion dragon parts look wonderful. I think this is when they started doing go-motion, which was a fun way of doing stop motion where the parts would move when the camera did it’s thing so you could get the motion blur and make it look more realistic. I mean, yes, I’m sure the modern person isn’t going to be entirely convinced it’s not at least some form of special effect - but it still looks really good if you ask me (although I do have a soft spot for stop motion). Other things like fire or the other magical moving and levitating sort of stuff also play out quite well. I don’t think most would complain about the props and the effects for this one, but I would be remiss to say they aren’t all as good as others (like the various mannequins/figures getting lit on fire).
For audio, it’s what you’d expect from a 80s fantasy movie. Nice orchestral and dark ages style instrumentation. It helps with the mood and what you would expect, but I’m not exactly remembering any of it after the movie. In fact, my brain at one point actually overlaid the Godzilla theme over one of the dragons attacks, so this time around my mind apparently though it could use some up-zazzing. Beyond that, line deliveries are good, although a few were a tad quiet for me compared to some of the louder moments (thankfully the two didn’t really overlap). For the thinkers out there, I guess you get a bunch of the classic stuff - royalty and rich rigging the game, is man more the monster, is magic real, and why wizards can’t just spell things out nice and simple for you all the time (aka is the journey more important than the answer). Definitely someone could pick out some stuff about the dangers of faith though.
Can you see the dragon?
It’s a good movie. It can feel a bit weird with it’s balance between drab and spooky and downright cheerful moments, and it’s certainly one of those PG movies from back in the day where it was okay to have a boob pop up in it and not get a harsher rating - but neither of those things happen to dampen my enjoyment. It’s fun to see the effects work on display, and the story is at this point so common that it borderline feels comforting. That said, it’s not afraid to take some dark twists that you wouldn’t think would happen, but such is the power of belief I suppose. Come for the dragon, stay for the apprentice’s journey.