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Information
- Year
- 1981
- Runtime
- 109 min.
- Director
- Matthew Robbins
- Genres
- Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- Rating *
- 6.6
- Votes *
- 11,867
- Checks
- 879
- Favs
- 39
- Dislikes
- 16
- Favs/checks
- 4.4% (1:23)
- Favs/dislikes
- 2:1
Top comments
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dombrewer
Vermithrax Pejorative... still the greatest screen dragon after all these years.... 11 years 10 months ago -
Siskoid
A cocky sorcerer's apprentice (Peter MacNicol? the anxious lawyer in Ally McBeal? really!?) undertakes to kill the old dragon terrorizing a kingdom in Dragonslayer, a sword & sorcery movie that seems like family fare, but is at times a little gorier than you expect. Let me first commend the effects. They tease the dragon at first, a claw here, a tail there, and you think, okay, how cheap is this going to be? But it's so it can better surprise you when the animatronic monster actually shows up. The compositing/chromakey shows its age at times, but still makes for pretty great action, whether it's with hand-to-hand weapons or magic spells. As for the story, it's got a couple of interesting characters (like young Valerian) and twists you're not expecting, as well as a healthy dose of religious and political satire. Sure, there's a dragon, but the king's policies regarding that dragon are the real danger to the people we come to care about. It's a little slow at first, granted, and I question whether or not the "hero's journey" works (is Galen's flaw really sold to us, and does he actually overcome it?). There's a lot of stuff like this coming out of the early 80s (somehow even before Conan the Barbarian, which I would have thought would have originated the trend), and little of it is as worthwhile as Dragonslayer. 2 years 1 month ago -
the3rdman
Close up dragon effects: awesome. Dragon flying around effects: not so great. 12 years 3 months ago
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This movie ranks #44 in Butler's Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen
Butler's Fantasy Cinema:…
44