DRAGONSLAYER (1981)

A wizard is asked to kill a dragon that is menacing a kingdom, things go sideways and he is killed before he can make the journey.  However his apprentice thinks he knows enough and decides to try to kill the dragon himself.

I was of two minds when I saw DRAGONSLAYER opening night. The first was that I had finally seen a dragon in real life. The effects work, done with models, is still one of the gratest things I've ever seen. It also changed the effects industry and how we see dragons in films and in real life (REIGN OF FIRE and GAME OF THRONES steal mercilessly from the film). I love the dragon and it lives in my head and heart rent free. The second thing I thought was that the film is really draggy for a good chunk of the middle. Mind you that is the nature of the story, which is a road film mixed with a coming of age tale. I kind of understood why the film kind of faded from some people's minds.

However forty plus years on and lord know how many viewings, I think the film is nigh on perfect in it's way. I think it's a perfect fantasy film that mirrors a novel. It's an adult tale told at a time when the movies were beginning to shift toward spectacle alone.  

The problem with the film is that in the wake of films like STAR WARS and all the films that followed, motion was what people were looking for in a spectacle film. DRAGONSLAYER has spectacle but it wants people to connect with the characters and their plight. This is an adult film about adult things. This is a story about finding out that we don't know everything and that there is a cost to growing up. It's a film that is literally about the death of magic in our world since the death of the dragon comes at the cost of the loss of magic in the film's world.  The themes of the film didn't hit me until a decdae or so after I first saw the film.

I know this didn't do that well when it came out. It was one of the films, like many others in this series at Unseen, where they tried to put out a quality project, but found that the tastes of Americans had gotten less refined. From a financial perspective it may have bombed but on evey other level it soars. Its a film that isn't predictable, it's a film with something to say and it's a film that proves dragons are real.

This is a great film.

If you want to see a real dragon, see this film.