Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dragonslayer

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe raise all praise to the great dragon Vermithrax Pejorative in 1981’s “Dragonslayer.” They also really like Ralph Richardson. (originally published 4/12/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
Today you were going to be airing an episode that
originally came out four twelve, twenty twenty four. It is
nineteen eighty one's Dragon Slayer. We referenced this one again
recently when we're talking about the two thousand Dungeons and

(00:24):
Dragons film and how you know, of course nothing can
equal the majesty of the Dragons and Dragonslayer, So it
seems like a good enough reason to dive right back
into this episode.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
We hope you enjoy.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we are going to be talking about the nineteen eighty
one ant to see adventure Dragon Slayer. This was a
first for me. I'd heard about this movie for years.
In fact, a good friend of mine has long been recommending.
It was the first time I ever got to see it,

(01:13):
and I was mighty impressed. What an event this was.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh absolutely, this is one too that I've heard about
for ages, especially in reference to the titular dragon, so
I knew it was gonna have great dragon effects. And
so it's been on the to watch list for a
very long time, probably since I was a kid, and
I would see promos for it on cable for cable

(01:38):
viewings of it that I never never got around to
watching it, and ultimately, I think I'm glad that I waited.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
The reason that we ended up selecting Dragon Slayer is because,
as many of you might have noticed, on Monday, there
a lot of people got to witness a total solar
eclipse and that got us thinking, well, we should watch
an eclipse movie. And when you start looking around for
films that feature a total solar eclipse in a meaningful way,

(02:09):
there's really not a lot to choose from, And for
my money, it basically comes down to two choices. You
can do nineteen eighty one's Dragon Slayer or you can
do nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Now, Rob, as much as I can see why you
would be drawn to Dragon Slayer, I am quite perplexed
that you picked the non Rutger Hower option of the two.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, yeah, I think Lady Hawk is a fine film too,
and they're actually actually very interesting films to compare in
a couple of different ways, because on one hand, both films
cast organized religion in a suspicious or antagonistic light. Both
films immersis in a setting that is supposed to feel
realistically medieval or dark ages to some extent with it,

(02:50):
but with at least some magic. In other words, we're
not dealing with a high fantasy, non Earth world. We're
not dealing with worlds where magic can just do anything.
And both films center around a fresh faced protagonist. And
of course both films prominently feature a total solar eclipse.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Hmmm, that's interesting. Now it's been a while since I
saw Lady Hawk. I don't even recall what role the
eclipse plays in the plot, but I do like that
you bring up the kind of interesting fact that they're
fantasy movies that seem to be set roughly within real history,
like I believe we're supposed to interpret the or Land,
the setting of Dragon Slayer as somewhere within like post

(03:31):
Roman Britain, like say Britain in the six hundred's ad
or something.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, that's very much the sense that I got from it.
It is a world in which magic and sort of
traditional pagan if you will, beliefs are seeping away from
the world, just as this new religion of Christianity is
seeping in. And there's this idea that magic can still
be potent, but it is uncertain, like magic is leaving

(03:59):
the world. And this again, this is not an everything
as possible world of high fantasy magic, and so legitimate
magic in Dragon Slayer shares an uneasy space right alongside trickery,
right alongside superstition and the teachings of this new alien
religion that's being brought in by outsiders.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
And in the end getting all the credit for what
our good, virtuous pagan magicians do.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
That's right. So anyway, Yeah, no shade on Lady Hawk.
Lady Hawk is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That one is a.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Fun adventure film with a compelling romantic curse at the
center of it. But Dragon Slayer is its own spectacle.
I mean is it's certainly a creature lover's favorite, dazzling
cinematography and effects, but also I feel like there is
a lot more to Dragon Slayer than just the creature.
I think I maybe just had the little wrong opinion
of it for all these years, where I thought that

(04:54):
maybe it was kind of a creature only flick, like,
all right, you're going to be bored the rest of
the time, but the impressive And there are plenty of
movies like that, and we've probably watched films like that
for Weird House before.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, as far as the human drama goes in Dragon Slayer,
I would say I have some mixed thoughts, but they're
mostly positive. On the downside, I will admit that most
of the characterizations in this movie are not very deep. Like,
you know, you're not getting deeply drawn characters. The characters
are closer to archetypes, but in the immediate scenes they're in,

(05:29):
I would say often the characters behave in rather interesting
and unexpected and nuanced ways, Like the villains aren't as
villainous as you might expect, and you can kind of
see things from their point of view, and the heroes
sometimes do things that you wouldn't quite expect from a
story like this.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, when when the characters feel not so deep, it
is often in a way where you're like, I would
like to know more about this character. I feel like
there's more depth here that the movie. You know, it's
just it's just not a film that's going to explore
those additional depths, but like this feeling that those depths
are present in this character, Like the characters feel real
and nuanced enough that it may be there, which is

(06:08):
not the case with other.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Films that we've talked about.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yes, I do want to mention just a few reviews
of note, because this film does has long had its
supporters and its fans. I looked in Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia
film and this particular write up is by Bob Martin
and not Welden, but he urges readers and I think
this is written around the time of its release not

(06:32):
to dismiss it as kid stuff just because it's a
Disney co production and says, quote, it's got true medieval grit.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
I mean, this is a rather dark and grimy film. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, that maybe doesn't sound as impressive now because we
had you know, however, many seasons of Game of Thrones.
Everybody's seen a lot of gritty medieval fantasy at this point,
but at the time it was certainly like a breath
of fresh, gritty air.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
I suppose I would say it's not as dark as
Game of Thrones, Like there is not the violence in
it is not as cold as that, but it's a
good bit darker than your standard fantasy fair certainly in
nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, it's still PG, I have to stress now. Roger
Ebert gave it three stars and raved over the Dragon
over and also over the old Wizard, and it's overall dark,
grimy tone and look, and he said, here is a
movie with the courage to be grungy.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
Now, I wonder if this is at all a reaction to,
or maybe not a reaction to, because I think it
was the same year. The movie Excalibur is from nineteen
eighty one, which this has come up on the show before.
I've still never seen it, but my impression of it
is that it is just an almost offensively gleaming film
or everything is just very polished and shiny and high

(07:53):
fantasy veneer, whereas, yeah, this movie is gross and slimy,
and a lot of the locations are cramped, dark, dank
caves and rooms with like weird liquids bubbling in them,
and it's just like it's just a movie where everybody
looks like they smell bad.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Ebert specifically mentioned ex Caliber in that review, because yeah,
ex Caliber is shiny, super gleaming, blinding armor. But also
we have to keep in mind that ex Caliber, which
which I have a lot of fond memories off is all,
is not quite set in the real world. It's set
in kind of It's set in a mythic world. Is
the mythic world of authorian legend, you know. So it's

(08:33):
it's a maybe just a step or two removed from
any kind of realistic real world, you know, magical setting.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Now. I mentioned Game of Thrones earlier. George R. R.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Martin ranked it number five on his top ten fantasy
movies of all time, just below Lady Hawk, The Wizard
of Oz, The Princess Bride, and The Lord.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Of the Rings trilogy.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Okay, you mean he raked Dragonslay or not.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Ex Dragon Slayer.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
I don't think ex Caliber made this particular list.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
I mean not that.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
I mean I could also see him being of an
ex Caliber fan, because I do remember in the books
a lot of descriptions of very brightly colored armor. It
seemed to be very important to him to make sure
that armor wasn't boring looking. And it's not boring looking
at EXCaliber.

Speaker 4 (09:23):
That's interesting. So he placed it behind Lady Hawk. But
you know, I can see these other entries. Yeah, the
Wizard of Oz, Yeah, Lord of the Rings, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, Princess Bride. Everybody loves the Princess Pride. So yeah,
under understandable. You can find that and just do a
search for George R. Martin top ten fantasy films and
you'll easily find the list we're referring to. And then finally,
I'll say, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger
fan of this film than director Guiermean del Toro. I'll

(09:53):
be mentioning several things that he had to say about
this film and his connections to it as we proceed.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, well, certainly I can imagine that del Toro is
here for the dragon. He's like, when do we get
to the dragon? And this movie really does have an
amazing dragon, especially for the time it was created. But
this is an awesome looking dragon, but not just looking.
I want to stress that what's so great about the

(10:20):
dragon in this movie is that even before you see it,
its presence is signaled through you know, different kinds of
like point of view shots and sound effects and the
suggestion of it looming out of view in certain scenes
in a really powerful, ominous way. That is just one
of the great monster presences in any movie I've ever seen.

(10:43):
And I really like that the dragon in this movie
is a monster, is not just a I don't want
to say just a lot of the dragons were used
to lately, see more of the elegant, intelligent fantasy dragon variety,
you know, like almost kind of a higher being. This dragon,
it might be cunning, but it is. It's not like

(11:06):
a talking dragon. It's not a nice dragon. It's not
a noble dragon. This is a nasty, disgusting monster that
wants human blood.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, yeah, the dragon is amazing. The presentation of the
dragon is amazing, and I mean not just the full
blown effects, but like the fine art of presenting a
monster in a film, of teasing it out of you know,
early on in the film we don't even see it yet.
We see instead, like carved representations of the dragon in
these dank, you know, desolate settings that set the tone

(11:39):
and prepare the imagination.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
For the monstrosity to come. All right.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
In terms of elevator pitches for this one, mine is
pretty simple. It's look, no one likes having to make
a yearly blood sacrifice. To a dragon.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
However, however, what if we did it twice a year.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, Like I said, if you come into this just
for the dragon, you won't be disappointed. But there's a
lot of other stuff I think to keep your mind busy,
and we'll get into that as we proceed. Well, let's
go ahead and listen to some trailer audio here to
give you a sonic taste of Dragon Slayer.

Speaker 5 (12:21):
He quote all them omnia, I have been witnessed to something,
something of consequence to you.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
To me, there's a.

Speaker 5 (12:36):
Great task eating to be dumny, No doubt you've heard
about trouble at home.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
A dragon, fire and stench.

Speaker 5 (12:47):
It is evil, pure and simple. Want me to do
battle with that? Behold by I'm a chosen I shall
die that cy bay twice.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
The king selects a new victim, chosen by lot girls, virgins.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
Your kittens made a pagnant for the mobster.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
What your children or nine?

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Only a few? Because that's how cool Dragon Slayer coming
from Paramount Pictures.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
All right, now, if you want to go out and
watch Dragonslayer yourself or rewatch it, however you approach it
before getting into the rest of this episode, Well, let
me tell you this one is widely available. You can
easily rent or buy it digitally, but I would say
pay attention to what version you're you're watching. Get this
in the highest visual quality possible. We watched it on

(13:57):
the excellent twenty twenty three pairmont Blu ray, which provides
us with a four K remastered version with Dolby Atmos
sound mix, original screen tests if you're into that. A
six part documentary that is quite good. I watched a
couple of installments of this, dealing with the dragon effects
and another aspect of the production, and then also a

(14:18):
commentary track by director Matthew Robbins and dragonslay Or Megafan
Ghierramel del Tour.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
I want to hear more about this commentary track because
I've heard good things about other Del Toro commentary tracks.
A friend of mine has brought up before that his
Blade two commentary is a pretty great listen.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh yeah, I definitely did the Blade too commentary track
back in the day. I think I also did a
hell Boy commentary track, and I don't do a lot
of commentary tracks these days. It's just a little harder
to find time for them.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
I also think it's maybe not as constructive for the
weird house cinema treatment to get like really into the
weeds on the director's commentary. And not all commentar areas
from directors or stars and other people involved in the
production are necessarily that great, but del Toro is always
worth listening to. But because I mean, he has just
such you know, expertise, He has such love for cinema

(15:14):
and especially horror cinema and monster cinema. And this one
is this, this is really special because I have to
stress this is a film that del Toro had nothing
to do with. Del Toro was a boy when this
came out, He was a fan, and he ends up
having you know, meaningful connections to director Matthew Robbins later on.

(15:35):
But yeah, he's he's on this commentary track with the director,
you know, out of love for the film, out of
you know, and I'm also friendship with the director, and
you know, he's he's asking a lot of really insightful
questions about the production and also commenting on the things
that he really loves in it and pointing out some
some nuances that either might be lost on a first

(15:57):
time viewer or a casual viewer. But also and maybe
or more apparent to a filmmaker as opposed to and
to know someone who's just a pure viewer of cinema.
Let's go ahead and start talking about the connections here.

(16:19):
So yeah, I just mentioned him. Matthew Robbins was the
director and one of the writers on this born nineteen
forty five American writer and director, who at this point
was coming off of a nineteen seventy eight comedy titled
Corvette Summer starring Mark Hamill and Annie Potts. He was
part of the so called American New Way film movement
alongside the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and

(16:41):
worked early on often in uncredited capacities, with both directors,
contributing writing and or ideas for such projects as nineteen
sixty seven's Electronic Labyrinth THHX eleven thirty eight. For eb
that's the short film that would become the THCHX eleven
thirty eight. He had something to do uncredited with seventy

(17:05):
five Jaws, seventy seven's Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and then additionally, as a credited screenwriter, he'd written on
scripts for Spielberg's nineteen seventy four film the Sugarland Express
and the Baseball movie, the Bingo Long Traveling All Stars
and Motor Kinks.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
That's not exactly the background you would expect coming into Dragonslayer.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
That's right, But you know, dragonslaall to Dragons. Dragonslayer is
another one of these films though, that comes in the
aftermath of Star Wars, right, so you know, the studios
are all hungry for the next Star Wars and a
lot of you know, directors and writers come along and
they're like, well, you know, you're looking for the next
Star Wars, and it just so happens.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I have the script ready to go.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
Big epic adventure with a young hero who yearns, yearns
for greatness. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Unfortunately, Dragonslayer was not a commercial success, and afterwards Robin's
directive I'll see nineteen eighty five's the Legend of Billy
Jean eighty seven's Batteries not included, which he also wrote,
I have seen that one when I was a kid.
That that's like little flying robots in it. He also
did a rad dog movie called Bingo in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
He did not write that, he just directed.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
It is a rat dog movie like Beethoven.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, the dog. I think the dog is wearing sunglasses
on the cover. Like you just look at the poster,
the box out for this movie. It's like, that's a
rat dog movie. That dog's rat.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
He's gonna wear sunglasses in the movie. Might do some
dancing to some rock music, maybe Robert Palmer's on.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
I'd say thirty five percent chance this dog rides a skateboard.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
That kind of movie, yeah, h okay.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
And on the screenwriting front, he co wrote nineteen eighty
five's Warning Sign, but then in nineteen ninety seven, he
worked on a script for del Toro's first and nearly
his last American picture. According to del Toro, it's the
film mimic on this film, and the filmmaking experience was
somewhat compromised by studio interference. It led to a very

(19:06):
long and ongoing collaborative relationship between del Toro and Robbins.
To date, they've pinned four produced scripts together, so Mimic
twenty tens Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, twenty fifteen's
Crimson Peak, and twenty twenty two's Pinocchio. He's also worked
on screenplays for a couple of Bollywood films, I believe,
and he's still very much an active screenwriter to this day.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
But he had a co writer on Dragonslayer, Right.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's right, That's how Barwood born nineteen forty screenwriter and
director who came up alongside Robins, co wrote a number
of scripts with him, including The Sugarland Express, Corvette Summer,
and Warning Signs. Barwood also directed Warning Signs. That was
his only feature length film, but he went on to
direct and design several video game projects for Lucas Arts

(19:53):
and also wrote for them. All Right, now getting into
the cast here, this is a dragon movie, but this
is also a wizard movie, and you have we have
a pretty great wizard in this the Wizard Ulric and
a great wizard requires a great actor, and boy, they
landed one for this film with Sir Ralph Richardson.

Speaker 4 (20:14):
He really does well because he can capture the kind
of humble, befuddled, quaint version of the wizard as just
an unassuming old man, but he can also come to
seem quite powerful when the when the need arises.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, and I love how he's able to capture what
I think of as the weirdness of wizards, you know,
like I feel like there should be something about a
wizard that is, you know, just just utterly mysterious and dangerous,
like this is an individual with with knowledge beyond the
common man, and therefore, you know, who knows what's going
on in that mind of his.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
Part of any great wizard is that it's not just
that they're powerful, but that you are not permitted to
know how powerful they are.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right right, So Richardson does a great job with that.
He's also to convey able to convey this kind of
melancholy almost sadness of this aging master, you know, who
still has his powers at his disposable, but he's very
much in decline, just as magic is leaving the world,
like this is a very old man who is not

(21:22):
long for this world either.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
I mean quite explicitly portrayed as someone who, you know,
if he'd stuck around a few more years, might have
been burned at the stake by the newly converted Christians
in the village.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Right now, I should point out that on the commentary track,
Robinson del Toro point out, you know, they certainly talk
about his craft and how good he is at like
utilizing props such as the knife.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
We'll talk about the knife in a bit. They talk
about it.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
How utterly piercing his eyes are in any of these scenes.
He's quite a screen presence. But they say, like a
lot of that weird energy has is also legitimate, Like
he's like a delightfully weird person. He apparently kept a
pet rat in his pocket the whole time on set,
a pet rat named Gratty, and he would take him

(22:11):
out between takes, solid wizard move.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
How did he not talk the rat into getting screen time?

Speaker 1 (22:18):
He's a consummate professional. Yeah, consummate professional knows that the
rat is here for emotional support and friendship. But you're
not gonna like shoehorn him into the scene.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
The rat provides rat magic, whether you see it or not.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Right right, so yes, Sir, Sir Ralph Richardson lived nineteen
oh two through nineteen eighty three. Legendary English actor of
stage and screen, two time Oscar nominee. His dramatic credits
include such films as nineteen forty nine's The Heiress, nineteen
fifty five's Richard the Third, sixty five's Doctor Chivago in
nineteen seventy sevens Jesus of Nazareth. But he's equally celebrated

(22:54):
for his late career fantasy and sci fi work, appearing
in nineteen seventy three It's Frankenstein The True Story, seventy
five's Rollerball, nineteen eighty one's Time Bandits, and nineteen eighty
four's I Always Forget that. This film's title is so long,
but Gray Stroke. The legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
Wait, is that the Christoph Lambert Tarzan?

Speaker 2 (23:15):
It is? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (23:16):
And in Time band it's this Ralph Richardson play God.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
I believe he does.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, My memory of Time Bandits is a little afraid.
I really need to revisit it.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
I believe it's David Warner as the Devil and Ralph
Richardson is God. Let's look it up. Well, his character
is called Supreme Being, but yes, I think he's supposed
to be God. He arrives at the end of the
movie after Evil has been defeated, and he's just sort
of this tidy business like a British man with a

(23:48):
dry sense of humor.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
All right, So that's our wizard, and more on the
Wizard as we proceed here. But we also have an apprentice.
The Sorcerer's apprentice in this film is the character Galen
by Peter McNichol born nineteen fifty four.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
You know, I think before this I mainly knew him
as as Janosh from Ghostbusters Too.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
I think if you know him from nothing else, it
is from Ghostbusters Too, where he's he's the guy constantly
singing the praises of Vigo, the Karpathian.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah he is Vegoh.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, which is you know, a wonderful, you know, comedic
performance in that. And I think he's had a number
of really sort of out there comedic performances throughout his career.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
He's had a very rich.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Career on stage, screen and TV. This was his first
film role, coming off of theater work, but he debuted
on Broadway the same year in Crimes of the Heart.
He followed up Dragon Slayer with a role in nineteen
eighty two Sophie's Choice, and subsequent films include nineteen ninety
three's Adams Family Values and nineteen ninety five's Dracula Dead
and Loving It. That Is, of Course Is That of

(24:52):
Course is a comedy starring what Leslie Nielsen is Dracula
and McNichol plays the Wrenfield character in that.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
Oh It's got a rin Field. I don't think I've
ever seen that one, But why do I Why do
I think of it as a comedy adaptation of Dracula
that hughes way closer to the original story than it
needs to.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
That may be great. I believe I saw this when
I was younger, but I just vaguely remember a few
gags from it. A lot of people will also recognize
McNichol from TV. He was a cast member on Ali McBeal,
and his other TV credits include Tales from the Crypt,
he was in one of Russell McKay's episodes, he was
on twenty four, he was on Veep, and he's also

(25:33):
done a fair amount of voice acting, including voicing the
Mad Hatter in the Arkham Asylum games.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
Now, I think McNichol does quite well with the young
hero role in this movie. But when I mentioned earlier
that a lot of the major characters don't seem especially deep,
he's I sort of had the main character here in mind,
like he we don't ever really know why he wants
anything that he wants. And I'm not complaining too much

(26:00):
because I still love dragons Layer. You know, It's not
something that prevented me from enjoying the film. But he's
to be generous, as you said earlier, maybe a character
who generates more questions than he answers.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Absolutely, there are times where I find myself wondering, well,
why is he making this choice? Why does he want
this thing that he seems to want? And yeah, and
and this seems to be a common analysis of the
film based on some of the reviews I was looking at.
But but like you, I do like mcnickel in the role.
He has this kind of weird cherubic quality. He feels

(26:36):
more like a nerd hero as opposed to like a
sort of you know, sex appeal teen heart throb kind
of a character. Though I do love the idea of
eighties teens with like heart dotted Peter McNichol posters on
their walls.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
I feel like he's he's decently handsome in this film.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, I mean it's it's a major motion picture. He's
he's plenty handsome.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
But but yes, i'd see what you're saying. I mean,
he's not like a like a muscle bound go get
her hero. He's you know, he's a little bit apprehensive,
though he's also brave. But he's Yeah, he's closer to
Nerd than Jock, definitely.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, and I think that that does make him more endearing. Like,
I don't think this character would have worked as well,
especially given maybe some of the limitations we were talking about,
if some one of the other sort of flavors of
the day or hot up and coming talents had played him, Like,
for instance, I read that Eric Roberts was considered for
the part. Oh, and I think Eric Roberts is quite
excellent in some of the millions of films that he's done,

(27:34):
But that would have been.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
An entirely different Dragonslayer.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Even like nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one Eric Roberts, It
would have been a different flavor.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
Sorry, I got sidetracked just because I started thinking about
actors that have been in too many movies, and I
was like, what if it had been Udo Kierre or
John Krodine.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, yeah, I was saying. I was thinking that Eric
Roberts is kind of the John Kerrodine of our time.
All right, So here we're still on Team Wizard here,
and the old Wizard has a grot hainer by the
name of Hodge, and he's a familiar face because he
is played by Sidney Bromley, who lived nineteen oh nine
through nineteen eighty seven, a British character actor who we've
talked about on the show before because he was in

(28:13):
nineteen eighty four is The Never Ending Story, in which
he played the Nome scientist Inky Walk in that.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
Does he basically use the same voice in both movies?

Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, yeah, I think so, you know That's what I say. Voice,
same beard, same kind of like general. Well, I mean
he's ratcheting up that demeanor and never Ending story because
he's playing this kind of outrageous gnome character. But still,
I mean he's he's very much a character actor. I
get the impression, like you hire Sidney Bromley like you
want certain things.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yes, but in both cases he's very much like yo,
see surely enough exactly.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
His other credits include sixty two's Night Creatures, sixty seven
is The Fearless Vampire Killers, the excellent nineteen seventy one
adaptation of Macbeth, nineteen eighty one's An American Werewolf in London,
and nineteen eighty six as Pirates, Oh What is He?

Speaker 4 (29:00):
And Werewolf in London. This is just one of the
guys in the pub.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
I think he's one of the pub guys. Yeah, I
don't specifically remember him, but I mean that's that's where
he has to be. That makes the most sense. Or
he's like a street person that the werewolf kills in London,
like that would be the two main candidates here, but
I don't remember.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
But Hodge is a lovable old grump like hepent. He
spends most of his screen time complaining, but he's it's
quite sad when he is killed.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Right, all right.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
We also have a heroine in this picture, and that
is the character of Valerian played by Caitlin Clark. Not
to be confused with the basketball star of the same
name whose name is all over the news right now
for basketball reasons. But this is the actor Caitlin Clark,
who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and four.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Right, So she plays the character who kind of sets
the whole plot in motion, right by seeking out the
advice and counsel of a wizard in defeating the dragon.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, she's the one who ad on the scene and
it's like, hey, we need help with our dragon. And
it's a really interesting character because and this is I
think a prime example of a character that I ultimately
wanted to know more about. Like, I feel like there
there's ultimately unexplored depth here that, you know, depth that
we just got to get a hint of in many scenes,

(30:20):
but you want to know more about.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah, I think when I said that the characters could
have been deeper, I mainly had these two main roles
in mind, Peter Michichol's character in Caitlin Clark's character. But yeah,
she's interesting because she when we first meet her in
the movie, she her character is disguised as a boy,
and we learn that she has had to spend her
whole life whenever she was in public so far disguised

(30:45):
as a boy in order to avoid being drafted into
the potential lottery to become dragon food, which all the
girls of her village.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Were yeah, yeah, And then ultimately we see her you know,
it seems like she has the opportunity to live openly
again as herself, but then plans change, and so yeah,
it just left me wanting more exploration of this character.
But anyway, Clark came out of the theater scene and

(31:15):
this was her first feature film as well, followed by
sporadic TV work, occasional small roles in such films as
nineteen eighty six as Crocodile Dundee nineteen ninety four Is
Blown Away. She remained more active in theater and later
as a theater instructor. Now her father in this who's
just credited as the character's name, is just Hilarian's father,

(31:36):
and he was played by Imris James, who lived nineteen
twenty eight through nineteen eighty nine, a Welsh Shakespearean actor,
probably best known for this film. His credits include a
lot of Shakespearean theater and British television, including Sherlock Holmes,
Doctor Who, and Hammer House of Horror. In fact, we
have discussed the episode of Hammer House of Horror that
he acted in in Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode

(31:58):
Halloween episode Anthology of Horror that we did. That's the
nineteen eighty episode the Mark of Satan. Oh.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
Yeah, that was a creepy one where we talked about
like the evil mind control virus theme of that episode.
I was looking at the screenshot you showed me of
him in that episode and I think he might have
been playing like the coroner or something. But in Dragon
Slayer he plays yeah, Valerian's father, who you know He's

(32:27):
a very like, strong, kind, sturdy, friendly presence, and he
takes it quite well that his daughter seems to have
fallen in love with one of the last pagan wizards
in the country.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, he's very supportive and very protective. So yeah, fine,
fine character, so old performance. Oh but now let's get
to the royal family of the area, starting with the king.
The King Casadorus Rex played by Peter Are born nineteen

(33:00):
forty two. He is a practical ruler for dark times.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Yeah. I think practical is a good word for him
because and this will come up even more so with
I think the next character we're going to talk about.
But he is while you would say that he sort
of fills the role of a villain in the plot,
he's not really all that villainous. He does some kind
of bad or sneaky things, but he ultimately is is

(33:25):
shown to be quite quite practical and quite you know,
sympathetic in many ways.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
I think he's a pretty nuanced character. And then the
performance is quite nice instead, So we don't get like
a cartoon tyrant. We don't get a comical coward here,
but rather a rational ruler who has made some morally
questionable and at times hypocritical choices in order to maintain
the status quo, in order to I think very much

(33:52):
in his mind as he discusses to keep the peace
and to keep everything, to maintain stability. And if that
means yeah, feeding a woman to a dragon every year,
well that's just what you have to do. It's what
we've done. It seems to be working. Let's not shake
the boat, right. Peter Air probably best known for this film,

(34:15):
but his extensive credits include nineteen nineties Mountains of the Moon,
ninety two's Orlando, ninety three's The Remains of the Day
in two thousand and ones from Hell, alongside such TV
shows as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in Rome.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
He's got some interesting facial hair choices.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, they dress them up nicely for this. Now.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
His daughter in this picture is Princess Elsbeth played by
Chloe Salomon. So this is the king's noble and idealistic daughter.
More on her in a bit. But the actor here
a British actor with extensive TV and stage roles, though
this was her biggest film, and interestingly enough, this is
Alec Guinness's niece.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Oh, I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
So in many ways, she's the heart and moral compass
of the film, but that doesn't necessarily bode well for her.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Yeah, I would say her character's fate was one of
the biggest surprises of the movie. Got incredibly grim there
for a.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Bit, all right.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Now back to the sort of the villain realm our
sort of villains and shades of gray. Here we have
the character Tyrian, and this is the King's main enforcer,
a cold man but also a practical man of the sword.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
Yeah, so the same thing I said about the King
I think applies to his character, but even more so,
he is I would say, the human villain of the movie.
But I kept waiting for him to do something more
overtly villainous, more absolutely selfish, But he really doesn't. Unless

(35:48):
there's something I'm forgiving, I don't think he ever really
does something overtly all that selfish. Instead, it seems like
he has a view about what would be the best
way to protect the people of the kingdom, and he
is following through on that view.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah. I mean, there is one murder.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Oh, well, there's more than one murder, but there's there's
one that's particularly cold blood. Well, we can get into that,
and when we get.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
Into that, it is cold blooded, but it is part
of his strategy for protecting his people.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
I'm not saying murders, Okay, I'm just saying like, you
never end up seeing him doing something where he's just like, oh,
trying to grab all the gold and take it away
for himself or something.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
He makes some good points, as we'll get into. But
this character is played by John Hallam, who lived nineteen
forty one through two thousand and six. We've actually talked
about him on the show before because he played Luro,
the second in command Hawkman in nineteen eighty one's Flash Gordon,
which means he was very hard to focus on since

(36:45):
he was almost always in a scene with Brian Blessed.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Yeah, how could you even see him?

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Like, basically he's the other hawk Man that's not Brian Blessed,
and that is somewhat less loud. His other credits include
nineteen seventy one's Life Valley with Michael Caine, Nicholas and Alexandria.
From the same year, nineteen seventy three is the Wickerman
eighty five's Life Force, Oh eighty five Santa Claus the
movie and nineteen ninety one's Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
It's a lot of movies I've seen and I don't
remember what he was in any of them.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
And one more cast member I want to mention here,
and that is this I guess you would. He's kind
of like a missionary, a Christian, an outsider that has
brought Christianity to the local realm.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Here.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Brother jacopis here and he is played by Ian McDermott
born nineteen forty five. So, yes, the man who would
become Emperor Palpatine seen here in a small but solid part.

Speaker 4 (37:47):
Right, So he is the person who shows up at
the village to tell them the good news of Jesus
Christ and to inform them that the dragon is not
a dragon but is Lucifer incarnate. And then he just
gets like blasted with fire.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, so instead of like twinkling depths of decrepit evil,
we get reckless religious fanaticism. And in the process, I
think we do get some hints of the tools, the
acting tools he'd employ in his performances of Palpatine over
the decades to come. But yeah, great tremendous actor in
Star Wars and out of Star Wars. Outside of the

(38:20):
Star Wars franchise, his credits include nineteen eighties The Awakening,
eighty three's Gorky Park, eighty eight Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, nineteen
ninety five's Restoration in nineteen ninety nine Sleepy Hollow. All right, now,
going behind the scenes here. We don't always call out
the cinematographer on a picture, but we absolutely have to
hear because the cinematography in this film is amazing and

(38:43):
it is by a legend in the business, Derek van Lint,
who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty ten.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
I agree this is a fantastic looking movie, and in
all of its different ways. I liked that there is
a lot of visual contra asked in the sets and
the settings, Like you're constantly going back and forth between
environments that are cramped and claustrophobic and slimy and ugly

(39:11):
and suggest hell to and then going from there to
beautiful open vistas and mountain landscapes and valleys and running
water and all that. There is a there's a pleasing
sort of rhythm of images, and I like that.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah, come as no surprise, I think to a lot
of people that His other main cinematography credit in feature
film is for nineteen seventy nine's Alien, and I think
you definitely see that in comparing like the caves environments
and even the other interior environments that we explore in
this film, comparing those to the you know, like the

(39:50):
alien planet in Aliens or just that the depths of
the Nostromo. But the curious thing is that outside of
mostly dragons Alien, he worked mostly on commercials for Canadian TV.
He was a Canadian, you know, there's and I couldn't
find a complete list of everything he worked on, but
he did like an Atari twenty six hundred commercial for

(40:13):
Activision's Pitfall two and yeah, so not a lot of credits.
But even then, from what I've read, he was highly
influential within the business and actually turned down the work
on subsequent big film projects with Ridley Scott and others.
He directed a single feature link film himself the year
two thousands, The Spreading Ground, starring Dennis Hopper, which was

(40:36):
also co written by Mark Berman. Oh, I haven't seen that,
so anyway, He's one of the many reasons you should
definitely see this film in the best quality possible in
a nice dark room.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Good TV.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
It looks fantastic.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Now, the composer on this film is another legend in
the business, and that's Alex North, who lived nineteen ten
through nineteen ninety one American composer and fifteen time Academy
Award nominee. His most famous scores include those for nineteen
fifty two is a Street Car Named Desire, and Death
of a Salesman nineteen fifty six is Unchained. That's where
We get Unchained Melody nineteen sixty one Spartacus sixty four

(41:13):
is Cleopatra eighty five's Under the Volcano. He completed a
score for two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey, but
Kubrick rejected it in favor of a needle drop classical
music score, and I'm to understand he actually reused some
material from the two thousand and one project in this
film HM Now. He received an OSCAR nomination for Dragon Slayer,

(41:37):
but lost out to Vangelists for his work on Chariots
of Fire. John Williams was also nominated that year for Raiders,
But I mean Chariots of Fire is an all timer,
so I mean, if you got to lose to Chariots
of Fire.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
It's perfectly fine.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
I think the music in Dragon Slayer works quite well,
especially right at the beginning of the movie. There's it's
you know, classic dark fantasy opening. It opens with like
a black screen and these just lead heavy horns really
working the brass section. It's dark, deep, ominous. It's really good.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, highly effective. All right, Now, this is a special
effects movie. This is got This has tremendous special effects
and we're not going to be able to do complete
justice to them here. But the dragon does not play himself.
This was the work of a vast industrial light and
magic crew, featuring such names as Dennis Murran, Phil Tippett,

(42:33):
Ken Ralston and Brian Johnson. The film was nominated for
a Special Effects OSCAR that year, but lost out too.
The only other nominee which was also an ILM project,
Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film so they used
various methods to bring the dragon to life. The film
makes use of the go Motion system to create realistic

(42:56):
motion blur and smooth character articulation for the dragon, as
well as related miniature elements, and according to ILM on
their website, the film inspired the development of the GO
emotion system. I think Tipet had previously employed some of
the techniques on The Empire Strikes Back, but this was like,
this was a big go motion picture. And if you
want more details on what that consists of, again, I

(43:19):
highly recommend the making of documentary that is on the
Blu Ray.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
I was curious about how they achieved the shots of
the dragon moving because it does look unlike really any
other special effects shots of that type I can think of,
and it looks wonderful.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah, I think it's so these different types of effects. Obviously,
see have large scale pneumatic limbs. You got a large
scale heads, stop motion, go motion miniatures, flying miniatures that
are brought to life in a very kind of like
Star Wars spaceship fashion, and then puppetry, flamethrowers and so forth.
But I imagine the scenes you're thinking of are particularly

(43:58):
like the crawling around the cave sequences, and I believe
that what we're talking about here are those go motion
sequences that Phil tip It was in charge of, and
indeed these are just just so magical, it just absolutely
feels alive. I mean, there's a reason that del Toro
himself says like this not only is this the best
Dragon that had ever been done? This is the best

(44:20):
Dragon that has ever been done in.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Cinema still to this day. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know what I would think was better.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, I mean even I've read other productions talking about
their dragon and it's like they oftentimes acknowledge the DNA
of Dragon Slayer in what they do. You know, it's like, well,
we looked to Dragon Slayer, we looked at what worked,
and we tried to build off of that.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Let's dive in.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
So we begin in darkness, as I said earlier, with
those the heavy, scary kind of horn melodies playing, and
then eventually out of the blackness we see a burning
torch emerge, and then there's another and another, and the
picture kind of differentiates from just pure black into an
indigo nighttime sky in the background, and then the dark

(45:18):
shapes of dead trees in the foreground. So a group
of people are making their way across a hillside by
torchlight in the dead of night. And then somewhere else
we see an old man in a dim cave like
room surrounded by arcane instruments, engaged in magic and alchemy,
and he sort of waves a fire of sorcery into

(45:38):
existence in a metal bowl and then stares into the
flame like he is divining a scene from elsewhere or
from the future, and we hear screams and the sound
of metal clashing violence, all this echoing in his mind.
And then the party we saw traveling by night, they
arrive at the heavy door of a hilltop castle and
they knock and somebody answers the door. I believe it's Hodge.

(46:01):
Here are sort of like a strange old man, and
he tries to turn them away, but we learned that
this is the dwelling of Ulrich of Kraganmore. He says, yes,
you've come a long way, Yes, your business is urgent.
It does not matter. He sees no one, and there's
grumbling from within the party. They are being led by
a young man named a Valerian, and some of the

(46:24):
unhappy travelers are like, what now, boy? In fact, I
think it's the guy who's going to later convert to
Christianity that's being really grumpy. But eventually they get led
inside the castle and the master of the castle is
the great wizard Ulric of kraganmore and he has foreseen
that he must meet with them. He also tells his
young apprentice Galen that he foresees his own death and

(46:48):
matters that will be of great importance to Galen as well.
We learned that Galen is an eager young student. He
wants to basically what he wants more than anything else
in the world is to become mighty in the ways
of sorcery. But he is still learning. And then we
get to the scene where Ulric comes out to meet
the travelers, and I thought this was really funny. I

(47:09):
love the use of what you might call diegetic special
effects in this scene. So, you know, in many cases
you might say that the mechanisms of special effects are
non diegetic because they're just supposed to appear on screen
as if they are representing some kind of real magic.
But here, as Ulric comes out to meet the guests,

(47:31):
Galen is like shaking some sheet metal to generate a
sound of thunder, and then he throws exploding powder on
the floor to create a flash of light and smoke
as Ulric enters the room, so it's like he's still
sort of got the sorcery training wheels on, you know,
he's like using these materials.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
It also reminded me a bit of some of the
themes they're explored in The Last Unicorn, like the idea
of having to put a like a fake horn on
a real unicorn. Normal people could see it like a
we're living in a world here where magic is leaving
the world. There's less magic available, but also legitimate sorcery

(48:10):
as we see it in the film has kind of
like this kind of subtle quality to it, and there's
kind of this sense that just normal folk might miss it,
they might not understand what they're seeing. So perhaps you've
got to spice things up a little bit with some
stage effects and so forth.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
But of course Ulrich is the real deal, because when
he comes into the room, we see him immediately using
real magic, like he raises flames on the candles and
in the hearth with a word. And so he meets
with the travelers. We learn they are a delegation from
or Land, which is beyond Valvatia, and he says, let's
see the artifacts, as if this is almost like a routine,

(48:48):
kind of recurring type of meeting. He's just like, we
go through the steps here, show me the artifacts and
they share with him scales and an enormous tooth. Ulric
it first seems a little intimidated. He says, the beast
that this came from must be enormous, and he suggests
they try someone else. He says, try the Meridid sisters

(49:10):
or Rimbau. These are other sorcerers that apparently have experience
fighting dragons, but Valerian says, nope, they are all dead.
Ulrich seems to be the only great sorcerer left in
the land. Ulrich then discovers more of their plight. The
king of Orland, Cassiodorus, has made a pact with the monster.
The dragon agrees not to attack the villages and burn

(49:33):
the crops of Orland, but this is only as long
as at the spring and autumn equinox he receives a
human sacrifice. They will send him a virgin selected by lottery.
Ulrich judges this arrangement barbaric, and then Valerian says to him,
are you afraid of dragons? And Ulrich says, I'm going

(49:53):
to quote him here. He says no. In fact, if
it weren't for sorcerers, there wouldn't be any dragons. Once
the skies were dotted with them, magnificent horned backs, leathern wings, soaring,
and their hot breath wind. Oh, I know, this creature
of yours vermic thracks, pejorative. Look at these scales, these ridges.

(50:16):
When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain,
constant pain. It grows decrepit, crippled, pitiful, spiteful.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
It's a great moment because, I mean, obviously he's not
just describing the dragon here, he's also talking about himself.
He's talking about the ravages of age.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
That's right, So that's interesting. But also it's a strange
take on the dragon. So you know, we were saying
earlier that the dragon in this movie is very much
a monster and is not one of the noble, intelligent,
you know, higher dragons of some other fantasy stories. But
it almost sounds like maybe this same dragon would have
been many many years ago. But dragons, when they become

(50:59):
old to become twisted and cruel. Yeah, and it's because
they themselves are in pain.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a bit of examples
we've talked about in the natural world concerning meat eaters,
you know, particularly a man eaters, large predators that have
just have turned to killing and consuming human beings, and
in many cases that's not because you have a creature
in its prime. You have a creature that's aging, that

(51:28):
maybe has dental problems and so forth, and therefore has
kind of been reduced to this status.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, it's having trouble surviving in the way it always
has before, and so is trying new things out of desperation.
So Ulric agrees to help them. He suits up to travel,
and he says goodbye to Galen and Hodge. Hodge is
his retainer there at the castle, Galen's little magical assistant.
That's that's Peter McNichol. As he's leaving, he says to Galen,

(51:56):
keep your hands out of my reagents. Ooh, then we're
about to get a really great villain introduction. As the
party is preparing to leave the castle of Kraganmore, they
are intercepted by armed men led by Tyrian, the captain
of Cassiodorus's royal guard, his king's guard, if you will.
Tyrian is a large man. He is sneering and seemingly dangerous.

(52:21):
He has that energy of someone who is calm for
the moment, but could suddenly become violent. However, once he
starts talking, I gotta admit Tyrian makes some good points.
He says, look, I know what you're up to. You
know you're gonna get a wizard to go kill this dragon. Well,
I don't love the dragon either, but if you try

(52:42):
to kill it and fail, you are going to stir
up a huge mess of trouble and it may that
may be disastrous for the people of the kingdom. So
if you're gonna try to kill the dragon, you better
be sure that your wizard is up to the job.
And then Hodge responds to this, saying, ah, so it's
a test you're looking for. We don't do tests, and

(53:04):
Tyrian's response is no, of course not. They never do tests.
Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother's
shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two.
But comes a doubter. Why then it's the wrong day,
The planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable.
We don't do tests. And so Tyrian comes off like

(53:28):
a villain in the scene, but he's making a lot
of sense. You do not want to send Uri Geller
up to fight the monster that is going to react
with swift and terrible revenge.

Speaker 5 (53:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, he does make some great points here. You know,
it's like, again kind of in support of the status quo,
but it's like, are you going to actually solve any
problems with this or are you just going to make
things worse. He's very much of the mindset I think,
you know, better one hundred years of tyranny than a
day of chaos, that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
But they have sperience to base this on because they
will reveal later that the king's brother long ago did
try to go slay the dragon to free the people
from its from its oppression, and in response to this attack,
the dragon burned all their crops and attacked their villages
and many were killed and it was horrible. Yeah, but anyway,

(54:22):
Ulric says, yeah, okay, Tyrian, I will consent to a test.
And it's what test is it? It's the old stab
me with the magic dagger test. So Ulric assures Tyrian.
He like gets Peter McNichol to go get a special
dagger for him, and he puts the dagger against his
chest and says, go on, you can't hurt me. And
then Ulrich he uses magic to trap Galen inside his

(54:45):
workshop to prevent him from intervening, and Tyrian does the
test and oh no, Ulric is killed.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
This is a really great scene and one that I
enjoyed rewatching with commentary. So Richardson really does a lot
of s all fascinating work here, Like there's kind of
like ritualistic handling of the dagger leading up to the test,
the bearing of his breast for the dagger, and there's
and the look in his eyes, you know, with this

(55:13):
at first with the boldness and assuredness of a powerful wizard,
but then it you know, it kind of transitions into
like the certainty, the the the mundane nature of death,
you know. Uh. And del Toro talks about this a
bit on the commentary track, compares the overall blocking and
cinematography of the scene to like arim Brandt painting.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
It's it's it's really a great sequence and really a
showcase for Richardson's acting.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
Yeah, you know, there are a lot of things about
this movie I think you could regard as as a
bit rim brandy. There are these scenes of orange light
and shadows, but also yeah, the blocking, like the way
the wizard kind of collapses.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah, yeah, because he does do like the death here
does not feel magic. It feels like an old man
foolishly getting himself stabbed through the heart and just dying
there in the mud.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
It makes you wonder did he actually have any powers
at all? I mean, we saw him light some candles
and stuff, but was that it?

Speaker 1 (56:13):
And it seems very much a world where that is
a strong possibility that he had no magic left in him.
There was no great magic left for this guy to do.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
So we see funeral rights for Ulrich. Galen burns his
body on a pyre. There's a green flame that emerges,
and Galen looks on with terrible sadness. We see shooting
stars streaking across the heavens. And the next morning Hodge
comes in and scrapes up the ashes from the funeral
pyre into a leather pouch, and we see Galen kind

(56:42):
of moping around, covering up Ulric's things with cloth and
wondering what to do with himself. But his adventure is
just beginning because some magical selection is at work here.
Galen finds Ulric's enchanted amulet burning for him, burning with
this eager orange light in his presence. It has chosen

(57:02):
him as its next owner. You are the wizard now, Galen, and.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Just fills him with the foolish self confidence he needs
to set out to slay the dragon.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
That's right. So we see Galen and Hodge on the
journey to Orland. They're making the journey and they're like
catching up to the party of visitors that came to
them earlier. Galen seems excited and a little bit overwhelmed
by his new power, like he's levitating an egg in
his hands while they walk across the country. This is
the first time we see like some really gorgeous exterior

(57:34):
location shots. They're going through a green valley framed by mountains,
and they make their way through these misty, sun dappled woods.
It's very beautiful. But Galen is also he's playing with
and arguably abusing his wizard powers. Hodge is complaining and
Galen starts like magically stealing his cloak and stuff. Eventually,

(57:54):
Galen and Hodge catch up to the traveling party and
Galen introduces them to his new powers. Says, you know,
he's saying, I take on the burden of your request.
I am Galen, I am the inheritor of Ulrich's knowledge,
and I am the sorcerer you seek. Now Here we

(58:19):
cut away to somewhere else in Orland, where we are
going to witness a sacrifice to vermic Thrack's pejorative the dragon.
I don't know if we even took a moment to
comment on the dragon's name yet, did we know?

Speaker 1 (58:33):
But it is such a wonderful name, and it is
kind of left a little vague whether this is thought
of as an individual name or like a species sort
of name, given the Wizard's identification of it earlier.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
Oh, I hadn't thought of it as a species name.
I thought of it as like a proper name. But
you could be right, it works either way, I think. Yeah,
But how does anybody know this is the dragon's name?

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Like?

Speaker 4 (58:59):
Does the dragon use this name itself?

Speaker 1 (59:01):
We never hear it talk, I do know. If it
can talk, it doesn't, or it no longer speaks. Yeah,
this is not a dragon with anything to say and
say with words. It speaks instead with flames and violence.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
Right, So we see a procession of soldiers, carts robed
priests winding up a mountain path of dark rocks. They
are escorting a prisoner, a young woman dressed in white
with flowers in her hair. She is a sacrifice that
is meant for the dragon. So they take her up
the mountain and they leave her chain to a stake

(59:35):
near the mouth of a cave, and the priest produces
a scroll and begins reading an official decree commemorating the sacrifice.
Though while he's reading this, there begins a great deep rumbling,
and the soldiers and the teamsters with the carts, they
all panic and they start just trying to get out
of there as fast as they can before the cleric

(59:56):
even finishes reading the statement, which is really funny. Everybody's
trying to run away, like the carts are getting stuck
in the mud, and people are freaking out. But this
scene is actually quite scary. Yeah, the young woman being sacrificed,
she struggles to free herself from her manacles. We hear
these heavy footsteps approaching. We don't see the dragon yet,

(01:00:17):
but these sounds are coming from the yawning mouth of
the cave. There's steam rushing up from the gaps in
the rocks, and then we see a giant, clawed pair
of toes curling around the corner of the rock, and
the beast reveals itself in full to her, but not
to us. Yet we get the feeling we sort of

(01:00:37):
see from its point of view and get the feeling
that it is towering, monstrous. We do see that it
has a slimy tail covered in these spikes protruding bones.
Not like the elegant sort of patterns of ridges and
bumps who you see on smoother dragons of recent media.
This looks more like a gigantic spot of fish bones,

(01:01:01):
you know, like broken in places, irregular modeled, with age,
covered in scales and mucus. Just horrible in every way.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
And again we don't see it in full us the viewer.
We see bits and pieces of it. The full shape
of the dragon is implied rather than stated overtly.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
Right, So, the young woman, actually the last moment, does
manage to free herself from her from her manacles, but
it's too late. The dragon is there. It's looming over her,
a giant, stinking, hateful mass. And then finally it just
unleashes a breath of fire. It's an incredibly effective scary scene.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Yeah, this is like a horror movie sequence right here,
and it uses the tools of horror quite well. Like
you mentioned, her trying to free herselves from herself from
the manacles, and of course that they're cutting up her wrists,
she's straining and having to squeeze, like and it's one
of those small touches, you know, where we can more
easily imagine that pain, in that desperation, then we can

(01:02:02):
like the larger, more fantastic aspects of and extreme aspects
of the situation, and therefore, like the familiar makes the
fantastic more real to us. So it's excellently done. And yeah,
when we start seeing these glimpses of the dragon, just
utterly terrifying. On the commentary track, del Toro just loses

(01:02:23):
his mind over this sequence. He's just he's like, oh,
what of what I wouldn't give for a scene like this?
You know, It's like, find someone in your life who
loves you as much as del Toro loves these dragon sequences.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Yeah, that is a good point you make about the
way that it combines different types of horror in the
same scene. For this this greater than the sum of
its parts effect, so that the horrors of the scene
are both large and small, both sort of concrete and familiar,
and then fantastical and magical.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
Anyway, after this terrifying sequence, we see Valerian wake from
a nightmare in a cold sweat at their camp in
the forest, and then here at the river beside the camp,
Galen wakes up and he decides to go bathing in
the water, which Valerian is also doing as well, and
in this process he discovers that Valerian is not a

(01:03:15):
young man but a young woman in disguise, and this
is where we get the story she fills him in.
We find out that she has lived her whole life
in public disguised as a boy to hide from the
Vermathrax sacrifice lottery, and Galen promises he'll help her keep
her secret. He's not going to tell anybody, and they

(01:03:36):
have a conversation where Valerian reveals also that it's only
the daughters of the common people who are in danger.
If you're rich enough, if you're the daughter of the king,
you can avoid the lottery. But of course Valerian's father
is just a blacksmith. He's poor.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Now on the commentary tract, they do point out like
the obvious connection here to the military draft, particularly during
the nineteen sixties in the United States, and so there's
you know, there's this is one of the many moments
in the film where there's actually some there's a lot
of food for thought in the scenario that's being drawn
out for us here. You know, it's it's it's fantasy, Yes,

(01:04:12):
it's it's it's supposed to be centuries ago in this,
you know, somewhere a little adjacent to history. But he
does have you know, there are various comparison points for
modern life in the modern world.

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
Yeah, yeah, So also in the scene, though, Galen sees
a vision in the water, his like amulet activates and
he starts to use the water surface as a divining mirror.
And he sees soldiers riding on the road and Tyrian,
the captain of the King's guard, overlooking the camp, drawing
his bow. And now he sees Tyrian has shot Hodge

(01:04:47):
with an arrow. So Galen is like, no, no, no,
and he runs to intervene, but it's too late. Galen
finds Hodge dying of his wound, and Hodge instructs Galen.
He says, our master had dying wishes take the this
pouch of Ulrich's ashes, find the lake of burning water
and throw the ashes in, and then Hodg dies. Galen tries,

(01:05:09):
I think, to resurrect him with magic, but this fails.
So the stakes are up and this sort of marks
roughly the end of act one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Ish Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
So Galen, Valerian, and the rest of the Erlanders make
their way back to Dragon Country, and again lots of
absolutely gorgeous outdoor location shots here, the landscape, the rocks
covered in moss, waterfalls, mountains of gray boulders, and on
the way they pass by the layer of Vermathrax pejorative
and Galen wants to go straight to it. I think
they're like, well, let's go home first. Somebody's like, no,

(01:05:41):
get me there right now. So they go to the
cave mouth. Galen is just he has so much zeal
he just goes straight inside, against the warnings of Valerian
and the others. It's very tense when he goes in
the atmosphere and the dragon's cave is wonderful, and he
tries to call out vermoth racks and there are these
blasts of smoke and dust, but the dragon does not appear.

(01:06:02):
So Galen comes back out of the cave and he's
been told by the others that there is only one
entrance and exit to the cave. There's no other way
in or out, so seemingly kind of chastened by fear
a little bit. Instead of going in to fight the
dragon inside, he does a magical incantation to cause a
boulder to fall down and plug the mouth of the cave. Again,

(01:06:25):
we've been told this is the only entrance, but it's
almost like he doesn't know his own strength because it
ends up causing a gigantic rock slide with all of
these rocks coming down and piling up over the mouth
of the cave, and it seems to have worked. The
mouth of the cave of Vermathrax is filled in with rocks,
and they say he's done it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
All right, mission accomplished, kind of like a lucky first
blow there.

Speaker 4 (01:06:47):
All right, yeah, good thing, the movie's over. But it's
not so. Back at the village, everybody is celebrating being
freed of the dragon. There's a bonfire. They're burning the
cult effigies of the dragon that they'd previously care eat
up the mountain in fear. Galen is telling stories to
the children, and we meet Valerian's father, who is the
village blacksmith, and Valerian finally now free of the dragon's curse.

(01:07:11):
She in this scene puts on address and reveals to
everyone that she is a girl. And there's also a
funny development in the scene, which is where we meet
the Christian missionary and it's Ian McDermid and some of
the villagers are talking. I think I forget the villager's name,
but it's the one who seems to be really into
what the Christian is saying. He's like, don't you think

(01:07:34):
it's strange that there's a holy man in the village
at the same time that the dragon was defeated?

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Makes you think, yeah, I think this is the character
Griel played by Albert Salmi who lived nineteen twenty eight
through nineteen ninety. He was an American character actor. It
was in a bunch of things. He was in Caddy Shack,
He was on episodes of the original Twilight Zone and
Night Gallery. And I think his voice is dubbed in this,
but he has a very recognized.

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
M yeah, but record scratch. The party stops when soldiers
come riding into the village on horseback, led by Tyrian,
the captain of the King's Guard, and they're like, we
need to take Galen off to meet the king. The
king wants to meet the wizard who delivered them all
from the power of the dragon, And so we see
Peter McNichol in front of the king trying to do

(01:08:21):
demonstrations of magic. It's not going super well, like he
tries to levitate a table and just kind of knocks
stuff all over.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
The place a little bit. Nothing convincing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
Yeah, but this is where we hear the stories that
I alluded to earlier, where the king explains like, look,
we have tried to kill the dragon before, my brother
tried to do it and all it led to was
horrible reprisals from the dragon. So we have to make
sure did you really kill the dragon? Is it really dead?
Galen promises, yes, it is, but the king is suspicious

(01:08:52):
of him. He doesn't believe it, so he takes Galen prisoner,
throws him in the dungeon, takes away his magical ambulet,
and in the dungeon, Galen meets Princess Elspeth as she
comes in, saying like, oh, I heard you muttering spells
in Greek and Latin. It seems like that's not working
because you know of your amulet. But I speak Greek
and Latin too. And in this scene they sort of

(01:09:13):
talk about what goes on with the dragon, and it's
revealed that she is naive about how she's been avoiding
the Dragon's lottery. Galen fills her in like, yeah, your
dad's covering for you, like your name's not going into
the lottery.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Where she thinks, I've just I've had the same risk
the whole time, and you know, I've been lucky.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
But he's like, no, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
That's complete, complete BS. The fix is in obviously.

Speaker 4 (01:09:38):
Yeah, And she goes directly to her father, King Cassiodorus
and confronts him about this, and so he's he's about
to sort of have to answer for misleading her about this,
letting her think that she'd been competing fairly not competing,
and that she'd had the same fair risk as all
the other girls. But instead they're interrupted. There's like the

(01:09:59):
qua of the Earth and O no Vermothrax is alive
And in the in the middle here Galen escapes the
dungeon because the princess comes and frees him. She's she's
sort of like his revelations have rocked her world, and
she's like Okay, I gotta let him out of the dungeon,
and I'm in rebellion mode. Now Galen gets on a
horse and runs away from the castle. Meanwhile, the villagers

(01:10:21):
are led up the mountain in terror by the Christian monk,
by brother Jacopis, and the Christian tells them this is
not a dragon, it's a lucifer. But Vermothrax comes out
of the earth and faces off against the Christian wizard
here and it is no contest. There is a breath
of hot wind, and the dragon is so scary.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yeah, this is this is another great sequence. This is
another sequence that del Toro loses his mind over because
it's just just it's the way it's blocked, the way
it shot, the way Vermothrax rises up out of these
flaming pit, this flaming pit with it with these horns,
like some sort of Satanic figure emerging out of hell,

(01:11:06):
and then like it. Very quickly, I think becomes obvious
to our Christian missionary friend here that he is out
of his element, that this is not something that he's
going to be over to be able to overcome with
his religion and his faith.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
Yeah, he is. He is vanquished by the power of evil.
So we cut to sometime later where we see Tyrian
arrive at the house of Valerian and her father, and
Tyrian and his men are searching the village for Galen.
So they're going around the house like looking in baskets
and stuff, being like, oh, it's the wizard hiding in here,
And Tyrian threatens that you know what, because the dragon

(01:11:42):
is now so angry that somebody tried to go kill him,
there's going to need to be an early sacrifice ahead
of schedule. And you know what, now that everybody knows
about your daughter, she's going to have to be in
the lottery too. And they try, they try to find Galen,
but they don't find him anywhere, so they leave and
it turns out to he was hiding in like a
secret compartment under the anvil.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Yeah, yeah, standard issue.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
I think, yeah, But here we get a forging the
weapon sequence where we find about how we find out
that Valerian's father has created a secret dragon slaying weapon
that he's got like hidden in this cage that's hidden
behind a waterfall. That this is really cool. It's like
this giant spear that he's made. But he never had

(01:12:26):
the courage to use it himself. And Galen sees it.
He says, it's a beautiful weapon, but it will be
useless unless he unless he has the ambulet back. That's
the only way he can, like, I think, infuse it
with the power it needs to fight the dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
Yea.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Then we get the big lottery scene where they're going
to select who has to face the dragon next and
who gets picked when they pull the tiles out of
the big pot. Why it's el Smeth, the princess. The
king tries to say, like, no, no, no, my minister
read the name on the tile wrong. Let us draw
another tile. But all the tiles say Elsbeth. In fact,

(01:13:02):
she arranged it that way because she thinks it's only
fair given that she has been protected unfairly all these
years past. There's no changing it. She's now selected. The
king is desperate, trying to talk anybody into helping him
get out of this, Like he tries to talk Tyrian
into saying, let's figure something else out. It can't be her,
But Tyrian's like, yeah, it seems fair to me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
This is a great sequence, and I love how I mean,
first of all, for plot reasons, they do it this way.
But also I think it plays into the overall theme
of the picture. There's this sense that the lottery is
this thing that, once it has been created, is no
longer entirely in control, in the control of the king
and his men, you know, Like there's this energy between

(01:13:47):
the king and his men and the crowd, like they're channing,
stir the tiles, stir the tals with kind of urgency,
like you know, obviously like stir it up. You've got
to make sure it's fair, got to make sure it's fair.
Like it's this great kind of semi chaotic feeling that
things could get out of hand very easily.

Speaker 4 (01:14:04):
That's right. It's almost like the people themselves have a
frenzy for the outcome of the lottery selection. So the
king feels utterly helpless, like he can't really and it's
happened in public, so he can't really undo it. So
he thinks, of the only other thing that occurs to
him is we have to actually kill the dragon. So
he catches Galen, having snuck back into the castle looking

(01:14:27):
for his amulet. He catches him and he begs him,
and he says, you can have your amulet back. If
you kill the dragon and save el Smith. So Galen
has been given like official sanction. Now we see him
in the Blacksmith trying to like magically fire the dragon
slayer weapon, like using the amulet to power up the spear.
I love the following scene, by the way, there's a

(01:14:48):
scene where Valerian goes up up the mountain to collect
scales from the dragon to make for Galen a dragon
scale shield that he can use to face firm a threat.
Oh and also while she's up there, she discovers there
they're baby dragons in the cave and they are also
scary and must also be destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Yeah, they are not cute, and they, and I say
this lovingly, they have some real Gromlin energy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
They did. It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
So this is a definite puppetry used here, but to
great effect.

Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
These Verma Thras babies would be popping out of a
toilet in another movie or another movie cover some VHS
box art. But also, oh, here we get the culmination
of a I think, if I'm going to be fully honest,
a somewhat underdeveloped love story. But you know what, it's fine.
It's fantasy adventure.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
There's just kind of like acknowledge it, like we we're
most of the way into this picture. We love each other, right, Yeah, yeah,
of course we.

Speaker 4 (01:15:41):
Did, right. Galen and Valerian they announced their love with
the in love with each other. Valerian initially thinks, oh, Galen,
you must be in love with the princess, but he's like, no, no, no,
I love you a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Yeah, silly duck. That relationship hasn't been established either.

Speaker 4 (01:16:05):
This all leads up to the Great Final Confrontation, where
Elsbeth is taken up to be sacrificed to the dragon.
Galen appears and announces his intention to kill the dragon first,
and everybody runs away in fear, everyone but Tyrian, and
Tyrian says, you know this is the way, and if
you intend to interfere with the sacrifice, I will stop you.

(01:16:28):
And they fight and initially Galen is not a fighter,
he's not trained to fight a captain of the King's Guard,
but through a combination of pluck and luck, he does
prevail in this duel.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
He also has a magical spear weapon, which he doesn't
completely know how to use, but it is a magical weapon,
so he's got like a plus three on this baby.

Speaker 4 (01:16:47):
Exactly, so the princess. Yeah, it's funny. It's like it's
a hand to hand combat battle between what would you say,
like a level six fighter versus a level two sorcerers. Yeah,
but yeah, he has a magical weapon, so it makes
up the difference. But it was kind of all for
nothing here because the princess determined to be a sacrifice.

(01:17:10):
She's like, no, it's got to happen. She runs into
the cave and then Galen runs in after her, and
in a really shockingly unexpected and horrifying scene, the princess
is in there just being like eaten up by baby dragons.
They're just like tearing off her limbs and eating them.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Yeah, they have what They've killed her and are now
like taking her apart.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Yeah, these little like disgusting little gromlins. And yeah, it's
really a daring choice for again, a Disney co produced
fantasy answer to Star Wars picture. I remember the Yeah,
the director in commentary with del Toro kind of said,
you know, there's a lot of stuff we got away
with in this in part because we were making a

(01:17:58):
film abroad and you know, so far from from studio heads,
and so they you know, they weren't getting dailies.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
They didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
You know, we had, you know, the way we were
shooting some of these choices.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Well, the movie is the more remarkable for it these
are choices.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
Yeah, So Galen goes in and fights the baby dragons, uh,
and he defeats them pretty easily. But then he goes
deeper into the cave and finds a burning lake. Now
that meant something to me when I saw it, but
apparently Galen doesn't really remember at this point, like, oh yeah,
that's significant. It will come up again. But there's a
big confrontation here between Galen and Vermathrax. They have their

(01:18:38):
first big fight and the dragon and the scene is
finally revealed in all of its hideous glory, and wow, Rob,
would you like to say anything about what what Vermothrax
looks like when revealed?

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
I mean there's so many ways to approach it. I
mean the simple thing to say is like, this is
a real dragon, like you feel, Yeah, you can put
your mind in the appreciating the spec effects and trying
to see all the things they've done to bring this
dragon to life. But for most of this it just
feels like a real creature, and they make so many
wonderful choices in the design to make that possible, things

(01:19:13):
like making sure that is a quadruped that it doesn't
have like four limbs plus wings. Its front limbs are wings.
And therefore when it's crawling around in the cave, it's
moving like a bat.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
On the ground.

Speaker 4 (01:19:29):
The bat comparison. That's great. The way the wings are
folded as it crawls.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Ugh, yeah, yeah. And then the way they've shaped the head.
A lot of a lot of a lot of folks
have pointed out like it has this kind of brow,
so it has a lot of like I want to say, personality,
but personality befitting a great beastly dragon like this. You know,
there is an animal intelligence there.

Speaker 4 (01:19:55):
It reminds me a bit of a Skexis.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a solid comparisons.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
So they fight and they there's a bunch that goes
on in this fight. They get their jabs in, it
blows fire and all that, but it's a stalemate here.
The fight is not fully resolved. And the next day
Valerian goes up the mountain and she finds Galen unconscious
on the rocks. She wakes him and takes him back,
but he is still alive, and so is the dragon.
So at this point, Valerian's father talks them into leaving

(01:20:22):
or Land. He's like, you know, y'all are young, you're
in love. Just live in peace, go somewhere else and
share your love, he says. He says, magic magicians, it's
all fading from the world, all dying out. That makes
me happy. That means the dragons will be dying out too.
And they try to leave. They take their stuff and
they start loading up a boat to go live their
lives somewhere else. But then something changes. There's a darkness

(01:20:46):
growing in the sky and it is a total solar eclipse. Yeah,
and here's your eclipse tie in the eclipse. I don't
know if maybe I miss something about this, if they
said it had any particular magical effect on the dragon.
But one thing it does seem to do is cause
Galen to remember that his master Ulric wanted his ashes

(01:21:08):
to be thrown into the burning lake, and he remembers
there was a lake of fire inside the dragon's cave.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Yeah, I was. My wife watched this movie with me
for rewatch it. She had seen it before many years ago,
and afterwards we were like, yeah, did anybody say there
was going to be an eclipse? Is that factored into
the plot at all? It does very much feel like
and then a total So a total solar eclipse happens
because it looks awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:21:33):
It does look awesome, and there is a total solar
eclipse going on for the entire rest of the Showdown
with the Dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Yeah, it's like it's a good, solid twenty minutes of totality.

Speaker 4 (01:21:43):
Yeah, so Galen does remember this. He does as he
was instructed. He goes back up to the Dragon's cave,
goes inside, throws the ashes into the water, and in
a cradle of green fire, Ulric is resurrected. He's back.
The power of the Dragon's fiery lake like brought him

(01:22:03):
back from the dead, at least temporarily, so he can
face the dragon with them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
I have to say, I wasn't sure this was gonna happen.
It's easy to in retrospect expect this to happen, but
Ulric's death early in the picture just felt so final
and so yeah, Mundane like it just the film worked.
The trick worked here, and I really wasn't expecting him
to come back.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
Meanwhile, you know, back down in the village, this is
when one of the guys is converted to Christianity, the
gray old guy, and he's baptizing everybody. Yeah, and then
we get the final showdown. So now it is Vermathrax
versus the three of our heroes, Galen, Valerian and Ulrich,
and so Ulrich goes up on like a mountain peak
and he's casting down lightning bolts at the dragon and

(01:22:50):
the dragon is dive bombing him. Vermathrax is like flying
by the dragon in the scene, has a kind of
jet fighter quality to him, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Yeah, yeah, And I believe it was one of the
extras with Phil tipp that talking about, though it might
have been Phil Tippitt, but I don't think Phil Tippet
did these effects sequences so much. I mean he was,
I think therefore it, but he was. I think he
did with some of the other stuff more. But they
did talk about how, like most of the scenes of
the dragon in flight, you're not getting that flapping, sort

(01:23:20):
of labored takeoff effect that we've seen in other Dragon films.
This is a dragon like swooping down from peaks and
indeed flying with this kind of like fighter jet kind
of severity, so we have very effective It's.

Speaker 4 (01:23:35):
Almost like you can hear a jet engine roaring as
he goes by, and he goes by so fast.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:23:43):
A lot of other movie dragons have more of a
helicopter quality, you know, they just kind of like hover
around somewhere. This one like swoops, he goes really fast.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:23:52):
And what Galen and Valierian have been told to do
is to smash the magical amulet at the right time.
They're going to know when it's the right time, and
ultimately Ulric is snatched up by the dragon. He's being
carried away. They know, okay, it's the time. Now, they
smash the amulet, and this apparently has like a detonation
effect on Ulric. That's like the detonator for Ulric's resurrected form,

(01:24:15):
and it blows up the dragon. The eclipse ends. Vermicthrax
is dead. There's a big, gory, charred skeleton laying on
the ground. And who gets credit. Well, they bring the
king in. They bring him up in a carriage and
they hand him a sword and he stands there and
he just kind of pokes the corpse of the dragon
and they're like, congratulations, sire.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
Yeah. Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
He ends up appropriating the church, the Kingship, the rulers,
as Del Toro puts it, the man co ops everything completely,
completely claims all the.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Credit for the victory over the dragon.

Speaker 4 (01:24:55):
Yeah that's right. The now baptized villagers come up and say,
ah does the church that saved us from the dragon.
But there's also a nice ending where we see Galen
and Valuria and they're still in love. They've survived this
and they get to travel on together and who knows
what kind of adventures of pagan sorcery they can get
up to in this rapidly christianizing land.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
The end, yeah, their final there's this final bit where
they sort of accidentally summon a horse, like a really
beautiful horse, which is, you know, it's a little bit
kind of like cheesey ended on a nice note, but
also I like it. I was talking about this with
my wife's she was like, yeah, it's kind of like
there is still magic, it's just a different type of magic,
you know. And so the world, at least for these

(01:25:37):
two characters, is not going to be devoid of magic,
but maybe magic ends up taking a different form.

Speaker 4 (01:25:43):
Maybe it increasingly looks less and less like hidden forces
operating and more and more like luck. Yeah, anyway, that's
what I have on Dragon Slayer. But I'm glad you
picked this one, Rob. I really really liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean credit to my wife for that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
Was.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
I was looking at a number of things for this week,
and she was like, well, we got to watch an
Eclipse movie, dude, dragon Slayer, and so I was like like,
well maybe, and she's like, I'll watch it with you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
I'm like, okay, So she doesn't always always watch him
with me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
It's a lot to ask. So so yeah, this was
a lot of fun. Oh and you know, I forgot
to mention and mention the special effects. I do want
to call out that one of the main individuals credited
with the design of the dragon and also the typeface
was man by the name of David Bunnett, who you know,
I think also worked in like the video game industry.

(01:26:35):
But yeah, it's even said that if you look at
a picture of this guy, the dragon kind of looks
like a self caricature, Like there's sort of elements of
his face, like his brow and the dragon. So anyway,
you know, it's a credit where credit is.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
A du there.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
He had a hand in designing this tremendous dragon whoa
vermathrax pajorative.

Speaker 4 (01:27:00):
A finer name has never been conjured.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
All right, we'll go and close it up here then,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do
you have memories of seeing dragons Layer for the first time,
be that in a theater, on video or like on
a Sunday afternoon on A and E. I think they
were they aired it there. I remember seeing promos for it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Write in.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
that Weird House Cinema is the Friday episode that we
published in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
We're primarily science and culture podcasts, but on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird film here on Weird House Cinema. And if you
want to see a list of all the movies we've
covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com. It's
L E T T E R B O x D

(01:27:45):
dot com. Look for us. Our username is weird House.
You'll find a list of everything we've covered and sometimes
a glimpse at what's coming up next?

Speaker 4 (01:27:53):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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