Dragonslayer (109 minutes; 1981)

Written by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins. Directed by Matthew Robbins.

What is it?

A sorcerer’s apprentice travels across sixth-century England to battle a dragon terrorizing a small kingdom. The jerk of a king and the local populace eventually prove more trouble to deal with than the dragon. Unfortunately, the dragon loses.

Noteworthy

A joint production between Paramount and Walt Disney, Dragonslayer was only the third PG-rated film associated with Disney. Indeed it feels like a Disney movie that has taken a dark turn along the way. Although not a profitable one.

Peter MacNicol, in his first film role, stars as Galen, the sorcerer’s apprentice. He would go on to win an Emmy for his comedic performance as an eccentric lawyer on the TV series Ally McBeal. MacNicol in hindsight seems an odd casting choice for Galen. Certainly the character is young, eager, still learning and making occasional mistakes. But he’s also the leading man of the picture, and the hero who ultimately confronts the dragon in its lair and later slays it. The idea seems to be that he’s similar to young Luke Skywalker, but Mark Hamill was never remotely as goofy and bumbling as MacNicol occasionally is here.

Caitlin Clarke plays a sort-of dual role as Valerian, first presented to us as a young man with a deeper voice, and then revealed as a lovely young woman (who, upon being shown as female, immediately and unfortunately loses much of the fire and gumption she’s shown in the first half-hour of the film). After Dragonslayer, she appeared in a few other movies and TV shows, as well as teaching theater at the University of Pittsburgh. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2004, at age 52.

Sir Ralph Richardson plays the elderly sorcerer, Ulrich. John Hallam is the menacing (and annoying) warrior, Tyrian. Peter Eyre plays the overbearing, unlikable king, Casiodorus Rex. Honestly, everyone in this kingdom is either annoying or unlikable or both. Except possibly the dragon.

The film’s connection to the House of Mouse possibly hurt more than it helped: Upon initial release, Dragonslayer was met with controversy as it was marketed as a Disney-type production, only to shock unsuspecting audiences with violent and suggestive scenes. Some have speculated it would have been rated PG-13, warning parents to keep small children away, had that rating existed at the time.

Dragonslayer marks the first time ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) worked on a non-Lucasfilm production. The stop-motion dragon effects were created by Phil Tippett. He’d developed his “Go-Motion” technique at ILM for the previous year’s release of The Empire Strikes Back, notably for the tauntaun and AT-AT scenes. It works by a computer slightly moving the models as they’re being photographed, resulting in a greater sense of natural motion.

Dragonslayer was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, but lost to ILM’s other nominee, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Raiders also beat it out for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The movie was also unsuccessful at the box office, where its take amounted to a paltry $14 million, $4 million less than the production budget. Today, after years on cable and home video, it is considered a cult classic. The dragon effects – all practical, of course – are today regarded as among the greatest visuals of their type ever put on film.

Paramount released a remastered 4K Ultra HD disc in 2023.

Quick and Dirty Summary

The sorcerer Ullrich and his apprentice, Galen, are recruited by a party of villagers from the Medieval kingdom of Urland, where a dragon with the superlative name of “Vermithrax Pejorative” menaces the population. The king there, Casiodorus, has instituted a lottery, where young virgin girls are occasionally fed to the dragon to pacify it.

In relatively short order, Ulrich is slain, Galen accompanies the villagers back to Urland, and Valerian, the young man leading the group, is revealed to be a woman. She was raised as a boy, in order to keep her safe from the lottery.

Galen immediately fails at everything, including impressing the king, saving the princess or slaying the dragon. Later, he manages the third of those feats – only to have the rotten king roll up and claim the credit.

Galen and Valerian, as disgusted by all of this as the rest of us are, ride off into the sunset on a white horse.

Fantasy/SF/Sword & Sorcery Elements

With a sorcerer, a sorcerer’s apprentice, a dragon, a corrupt king, a princess in distress, and a few swords here and there, this one definitely checks most of the boxes.

High Point

They wisely save the film’s big dragon antics for the final reel, and it’s all pretty spectacular. While in flight, the dragon isn’t the greatest thing ever; it’s a bit reminiscent of the miniature jets flying around in front of a blue screen in Clint Eastwood’s Firefox. But whenever Vermithrax Pejorative is on the ground, roaring and breathing fire, the movie is hitting on all cylinders.

Low Point

The villagers. The point of the movie is that we root for Galen and Valerian to slay the dragon. But the villagers are so annoying, it’s hard not to switch sides only a few minutes in and hope ol’ Vermithrax wipes them all out.

They’re not even consistent with their attitudes toward the lottery.

Once Valerian’s true gender is revealed, the other villagers – who, presumably, have seen their own daughters fed to the dragon for years, while she hid under the guise of being a boy – shrug and grudgingly congratulate her dad on his cleverness. And for her part, Valerian doesn’t appear to feel any particular sense of guilt. And that’s despite the fact that she’s obviously been complicit in the deception from the start.

The princess, meanwhile, feels such great remorse upon discovering she, too, has avoided the lottery – something she, unlike Valerian, was not even aware of until this point – that she actually rigs the next lottery to be sure she’s chosen as the sacrificial victim.

And out of all that, we’re supposed to sympathize with and root for Valerian?

I don’t know about that. Princess Elspeth may well be the true hero of the story. She’s certainly the most principled character in it. Once she’s gone, it’s not clear there’s anyone else in that kingdom worth saving. If the dragon burned them all, he could face a Texas judge and plead, “Your honor – they needed burnin’!” and receive a “Fair enough – case dismissed!”

Standout Performance

The true standout performance is by Vermithrax Pejorative, in the form of sixteen puppets of varying size, shape and form for flying, walking, and breathing fire.

Also: Alex North’s music, which contains repurposed material from – of all things – his rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a highlight.

Overall Evaluation as a Movie and as Fantasy/SF/Sword & Sorcery:

This movie is far darker and more cynical than one might expect from a Disney-associated story of a young man trying to save a princess and slay a dragon.

The sorcerer, Ulrich, is stabbed in the chest almost immediately. The princess dies horribly (and graphically). The king is possibly a bigger menace than the dragon ever was; certainly he’s a bigger a-hole. The leading lady has been deceiving everyone her entire life, with no remorse.

And the film’s presentation of early Christians in the kingdom is surprising. One priest (played by the future Emperor Palpatine, Ian McDiarmid) believes the dragon is Satan and confronts it, only to be barbecued. Another Christian group ignores Galen at the end and backs the king’s false play for credit. Portrayed as cynical and cruel, they are shown to be the future of the land, while the sorcery of Ulrich and Galen is dying away, along with the dragon. (Some have speculated that the dragon represents the old, mythical world fading away, while the religious villagers represent the new world taking its place.)

All this dark and twisted complexity may have prevented it from being successful as a crowd-pleasing action flick in 1981, but – lest I be accused of breathing too much fire on the film – it does provide something richer for us to chew on today.

Down in our cave. With the fiery lake.

And those damned villagers that needed burnin’!

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Van Allen Plexico is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a Grand Master of Pulp Literature (2025 class) and a multiple-award-winning author of more than two dozen novels and anthologies, ranging from space opera to Kaiju to crime fiction to superheroes to military SF. Find his works on Amazon and at Plexico.net.