Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Today you were going to be airing an episode that
Speaker 1: originally came out four twelve, twenty twenty four. It is
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one's Dragon Slayer. We referenced this one again
Speaker 1: recently when we're talking about the two thousand Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons film and how you know, of course nothing can
Speaker 1: equal the majesty of the Dragons and Dragonslayer, So it
Speaker 1: seems like a good enough reason to dive right back
Speaker 1: into this episode.
Speaker 2: We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 4: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 4: we are going to be talking about the nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: one ant to see adventure Dragon Slayer. This was a
Speaker 4: first for me. I'd heard about this movie for years.
Speaker 4: In fact, a good friend of mine has long been recommending.
Speaker 4: It was the first time I ever got to see it,
Speaker 4: and I was mighty impressed. What an event this was.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, this is one too that I've heard about
Speaker 1: for ages, especially in reference to the titular dragon, so
Speaker 1: I knew it was gonna have great dragon effects. And
Speaker 1: so it's been on the to watch list for a
Speaker 1: very long time, probably since I was a kid, and
Speaker 1: I would see promos for it on cable for cable
Speaker 1: viewings of it that I never never got around to
Speaker 1: watching it, and ultimately, I think I'm glad that I waited.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The reason that we ended up selecting Dragon Slayer is because,
Speaker 1: as many of you might have noticed, on Monday, there
Speaker 1: a lot of people got to witness a total solar
Speaker 1: eclipse and that got us thinking, well, we should watch
Speaker 1: an eclipse movie. And when you start looking around for
Speaker 1: films that feature a total solar eclipse in a meaningful way,
Speaker 1: there's really not a lot to choose from, And for
Speaker 1: my money, it basically comes down to two choices. You
Speaker 1: can do nineteen eighty one's Dragon Slayer or you can
Speaker 1: do nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk.
Speaker 4: Now, Rob, as much as I can see why you
Speaker 4: would be drawn to Dragon Slayer, I am quite perplexed
Speaker 4: that you picked the non Rutger Hower option of the two.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think Lady Hawk is a fine film too,
Speaker 1: and they're actually actually very interesting films to compare in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways, because on one hand, both films
Speaker 1: cast organized religion in a suspicious or antagonistic light. Both
Speaker 1: films immersis in a setting that is supposed to feel
Speaker 1: realistically medieval or dark ages to some extent with it,
Speaker 1: but with at least some magic. In other words, we're
Speaker 1: not dealing with a high fantasy, non Earth world. We're
Speaker 1: not dealing with worlds where magic can just do anything.
Speaker 1: And both films center around a fresh faced protagonist. And
Speaker 1: of course both films prominently feature a total solar eclipse.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, that's interesting. Now it's been a while since I
Speaker 4: saw Lady Hawk. I don't even recall what role the
Speaker 4: eclipse plays in the plot, but I do like that
Speaker 4: you bring up the kind of interesting fact that they're
Speaker 4: fantasy movies that seem to be set roughly within real history,
Speaker 4: like I believe we're supposed to interpret the or Land,
Speaker 4: the setting of Dragon Slayer as somewhere within like post
Speaker 4: Roman Britain, like say Britain in the six hundred's ad
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very much the sense that I got from it.
Speaker 1: It is a world in which magic and sort of
Speaker 1: traditional pagan if you will, beliefs are seeping away from
Speaker 1: the world, just as this new religion of Christianity is
Speaker 1: seeping in. And there's this idea that magic can still
Speaker 1: be potent, but it is uncertain, like magic is leaving
Speaker 1: the world. And this again, this is not an everything
Speaker 1: as possible world of high fantasy magic, and so legitimate
Speaker 1: magic in Dragon Slayer shares an uneasy space right alongside trickery,
Speaker 1: right alongside superstition and the teachings of this new alien
Speaker 1: religion that's being brought in by outsiders.
Speaker 4: And in the end getting all the credit for what
Speaker 4: our good, virtuous pagan magicians do.
Speaker 1: That's right. So anyway, Yeah, no shade on Lady Hawk.
Speaker 1: Lady Hawk is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: That one is a.
Speaker 1: Fun adventure film with a compelling romantic curse at the
Speaker 1: center of it. But Dragon Slayer is its own spectacle.
Speaker 1: I mean is it's certainly a creature lover's favorite, dazzling
Speaker 1: cinematography and effects, but also I feel like there is
Speaker 1: a lot more to Dragon Slayer than just the creature.
Speaker 1: I think I maybe just had the little wrong opinion
Speaker 1: of it for all these years, where I thought that
Speaker 1: maybe it was kind of a creature only flick, like,
Speaker 1: all right, you're going to be bored the rest of
Speaker 1: the time, but the impressive And there are plenty of
Speaker 1: movies like that, and we've probably watched films like that
Speaker 1: for Weird House before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as far as the human drama goes in Dragon Slayer,
Speaker 4: I would say I have some mixed thoughts, but they're
Speaker 4: mostly positive. On the downside, I will admit that most
Speaker 4: of the characterizations in this movie are not very deep. Like,
Speaker 4: you know, you're not getting deeply drawn characters. The characters
Speaker 4: are closer to archetypes, but in the immediate scenes they're in,
Speaker 4: I would say often the characters behave in rather interesting
Speaker 4: and unexpected and nuanced ways, Like the villains aren't as
Speaker 4: villainous as you might expect, and you can kind of
Speaker 4: see things from their point of view, and the heroes
Speaker 4: sometimes do things that you wouldn't quite expect from a
Speaker 4: story like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when when the characters feel not so deep, it
Speaker 1: is often in a way where you're like, I would
Speaker 1: like to know more about this character. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's more depth here that the movie. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just not a film that's going to explore
Speaker 1: those additional depths, but like this feeling that those depths
Speaker 1: are present in this character, Like the characters feel real
Speaker 1: and nuanced enough that it may be there, which is
Speaker 1: not the case with other.
Speaker 2: Films that we've talked about.
Speaker 1: Yes, I do want to mention just a few reviews
Speaker 1: of note, because this film does has long had its
Speaker 1: supporters and its fans. I looked in Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: film and this particular write up is by Bob Martin
Speaker 1: and not Welden, but he urges readers and I think
Speaker 1: this is written around the time of its release not
Speaker 1: to dismiss it as kid stuff just because it's a
Speaker 1: Disney co production and says, quote, it's got true medieval grit.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a rather dark and grimy film. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that maybe doesn't sound as impressive now because we
Speaker 1: had you know, however, many seasons of Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1: Everybody's seen a lot of gritty medieval fantasy at this point,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was certainly like a breath
Speaker 1: of fresh, gritty air.
Speaker 4: I suppose I would say it's not as dark as
Speaker 4: Game of Thrones, Like there is not the violence in
Speaker 4: it is not as cold as that, but it's a
Speaker 4: good bit darker than your standard fantasy fair certainly in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still PG, I have to stress now. Roger
Speaker 1: Ebert gave it three stars and raved over the Dragon
Speaker 1: over and also over the old Wizard, and it's overall dark,
Speaker 1: grimy tone and look, and he said, here is a
Speaker 1: movie with the courage to be grungy.
Speaker 4: Now, I wonder if this is at all a reaction to,
Speaker 4: or maybe not a reaction to, because I think it
Speaker 4: was the same year. The movie Excalibur is from nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty one, which this has come up on the show before.
Speaker 4: I've still never seen it, but my impression of it
Speaker 4: is that it is just an almost offensively gleaming film
Speaker 4: or everything is just very polished and shiny and high
Speaker 4: fantasy veneer, whereas, yeah, this movie is gross and slimy,
Speaker 4: and a lot of the locations are cramped, dark, dank
Speaker 4: caves and rooms with like weird liquids bubbling in them,
Speaker 4: and it's just like it's just a movie where everybody
Speaker 4: looks like they smell bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ebert specifically mentioned ex Caliber in that review, because yeah,
Speaker 1: ex Caliber is shiny, super gleaming, blinding armor. But also
Speaker 1: we have to keep in mind that ex Caliber, which
Speaker 1: which I have a lot of fond memories off is all,
Speaker 1: is not quite set in the real world. It's set
Speaker 1: in kind of It's set in a mythic world. Is
Speaker 1: the mythic world of authorian legend, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a maybe just a step or two removed from
Speaker 1: any kind of realistic real world, you know, magical setting.
Speaker 2: Now. I mentioned Game of Thrones earlier. George R. R.
Speaker 1: Martin ranked it number five on his top ten fantasy
Speaker 1: movies of all time, just below Lady Hawk, The Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz, The Princess Bride, and The Lord.
Speaker 2: Of the Rings trilogy.
Speaker 4: Okay, you mean he raked Dragonslay or not.
Speaker 2: Ex Dragon Slayer.
Speaker 1: I don't think ex Caliber made this particular list.
Speaker 2: I mean not that.
Speaker 1: I mean I could also see him being of an
Speaker 1: ex Caliber fan, because I do remember in the books
Speaker 1: a lot of descriptions of very brightly colored armor. It
Speaker 1: seemed to be very important to him to make sure
Speaker 1: that armor wasn't boring looking. And it's not boring looking
Speaker 1: at EXCaliber.
Speaker 4: That's interesting. So he placed it behind Lady Hawk. But
Speaker 4: you know, I can see these other entries. Yeah, the
Speaker 4: Wizard of Oz, Yeah, Lord of the Rings, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Princess Bride. Everybody loves the Princess Pride. So yeah,
Speaker 1: under understandable. You can find that and just do a
Speaker 1: search for George R. Martin top ten fantasy films and
Speaker 1: you'll easily find the list we're referring to. And then finally,
Speaker 1: I'll say, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger
Speaker 1: fan of this film than director Guiermean del Toro. I'll
Speaker 1: be mentioning several things that he had to say about
Speaker 1: this film and his connections to it as we proceed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, certainly I can imagine that del Toro is
Speaker 4: here for the dragon. He's like, when do we get
Speaker 4: to the dragon? And this movie really does have an
Speaker 4: amazing dragon, especially for the time it was created. But
Speaker 4: this is an awesome looking dragon, but not just looking.
Speaker 4: I want to stress that what's so great about the
Speaker 4: dragon in this movie is that even before you see it,
Speaker 4: its presence is signaled through you know, different kinds of
Speaker 4: like point of view shots and sound effects and the
Speaker 4: suggestion of it looming out of view in certain scenes
Speaker 4: in a really powerful, ominous way. That is just one
Speaker 4: of the great monster presences in any movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: And I really like that the dragon in this movie
Speaker 4: is a monster, is not just a I don't want
Speaker 4: to say just a lot of the dragons were used
Speaker 4: to lately, see more of the elegant, intelligent fantasy dragon variety,
Speaker 4: you know, like almost kind of a higher being. This dragon,
Speaker 4: it might be cunning, but it is. It's not like
Speaker 4: a talking dragon. It's not a nice dragon. It's not
Speaker 4: a noble dragon. This is a nasty, disgusting monster that
Speaker 4: wants human blood.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the dragon is amazing. The presentation of the
Speaker 1: dragon is amazing, and I mean not just the full
Speaker 1: blown effects, but like the fine art of presenting a
Speaker 1: monster in a film, of teasing it out of you know,
Speaker 1: early on in the film we don't even see it yet.
Speaker 1: We see instead, like carved representations of the dragon in
Speaker 1: these dank, you know, desolate settings that set the tone
Speaker 1: and prepare the imagination.
Speaker 2: For the monstrosity to come. All right.
Speaker 1: In terms of elevator pitches for this one, mine is
Speaker 1: pretty simple. It's look, no one likes having to make
Speaker 1: a yearly blood sacrifice. To a dragon.
Speaker 4: However, however, what if we did it twice a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, if you come into this just
Speaker 1: for the dragon, you won't be disappointed. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff I think to keep your mind busy,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that as we proceed. Well, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and listen to some trailer audio here to
Speaker 1: give you a sonic taste of Dragon Slayer.
Speaker 5: He quote all them omnia, I have been witnessed to something,
Speaker 5: something of consequence to you.
Speaker 4: To me, there's a.
Speaker 5: Great task eating to be dumny, No doubt you've heard
Speaker 5: about trouble at home.
Speaker 2: A dragon, fire and stench.
Speaker 5: It is evil, pure and simple. Want me to do
Speaker 5: battle with that? Behold by I'm a chosen I shall
Speaker 5: die that cy bay twice.
Speaker 2: The king selects a new victim, chosen by lot girls, virgins.
Speaker 5: Your kittens made a pagnant for the mobster.
Speaker 1: What your children or nine?
Speaker 2: Only a few? Because that's how cool Dragon Slayer coming
Speaker 2: from Paramount Pictures.
Speaker 1: All right, now, if you want to go out and
Speaker 1: watch Dragonslayer yourself or rewatch it, however you approach it
Speaker 1: before getting into the rest of this episode, Well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you this one is widely available. You can
Speaker 1: easily rent or buy it digitally, but I would say
Speaker 1: pay attention to what version you're you're watching. Get this
Speaker 1: in the highest visual quality possible. We watched it on
Speaker 1: the excellent twenty twenty three pairmont Blu ray, which provides
Speaker 1: us with a four K remastered version with Dolby Atmos
Speaker 1: sound mix, original screen tests if you're into that. A
Speaker 1: six part documentary that is quite good. I watched a
Speaker 1: couple of installments of this, dealing with the dragon effects
Speaker 1: and another aspect of the production, and then also a
Speaker 1: commentary track by director Matthew Robbins and dragonslay Or Megafan
Speaker 1: Ghierramel del Tour.
Speaker 4: I want to hear more about this commentary track because
Speaker 4: I've heard good things about other Del Toro commentary tracks.
Speaker 4: A friend of mine has brought up before that his
Speaker 4: Blade two commentary is a pretty great listen.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I definitely did the Blade too commentary track
Speaker 1: back in the day. I think I also did a
Speaker 1: hell Boy commentary track, and I don't do a lot
Speaker 1: of commentary tracks these days. It's just a little harder
Speaker 1: to find time for them.
Speaker 2: Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I also think it's maybe not as constructive for the
Speaker 1: weird house cinema treatment to get like really into the
Speaker 1: weeds on the director's commentary. And not all commentar areas
Speaker 1: from directors or stars and other people involved in the
Speaker 1: production are necessarily that great, but del Toro is always
Speaker 1: worth listening to. But because I mean, he has just
Speaker 1: such you know, expertise, He has such love for cinema
Speaker 1: and especially horror cinema and monster cinema. And this one
Speaker 1: is this, this is really special because I have to
Speaker 1: stress this is a film that del Toro had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with. Del Toro was a boy when this
Speaker 1: came out, He was a fan, and he ends up
Speaker 1: having you know, meaningful connections to director Matthew Robbins later on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's he's on this commentary track with the director,
Speaker 1: you know, out of love for the film, out of
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm also friendship with the director, and
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's asking a lot of really insightful
Speaker 1: questions about the production and also commenting on the things
Speaker 1: that he really loves in it and pointing out some
Speaker 1: some nuances that either might be lost on a first
Speaker 1: time viewer or a casual viewer. But also and maybe
Speaker 1: or more apparent to a filmmaker as opposed to and
Speaker 1: to know someone who's just a pure viewer of cinema.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and start talking about the connections here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just mentioned him. Matthew Robbins was the
Speaker 1: director and one of the writers on this born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five American writer and director, who at this point
Speaker 1: was coming off of a nineteen seventy eight comedy titled
Speaker 1: Corvette Summer starring Mark Hamill and Annie Potts. He was
Speaker 1: part of the so called American New Way film movement
Speaker 1: alongside the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and
Speaker 1: worked early on often in uncredited capacities, with both directors,
Speaker 1: contributing writing and or ideas for such projects as nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven's Electronic Labyrinth THHX eleven thirty eight. For eb
Speaker 1: that's the short film that would become the THCHX eleven
Speaker 1: thirty eight. He had something to do uncredited with seventy
Speaker 1: five Jaws, seventy seven's Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
Speaker 1: and then additionally, as a credited screenwriter, he'd written on
Speaker 1: scripts for Spielberg's nineteen seventy four film the Sugarland Express
Speaker 1: and the Baseball movie, the Bingo Long Traveling All Stars
Speaker 1: and Motor Kinks.
Speaker 4: That's not exactly the background you would expect coming into Dragonslayer.
Speaker 1: That's right, But you know, dragonslaall to Dragons. Dragonslayer is
Speaker 1: another one of these films though, that comes in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of Star Wars, right, so you know, the studios
Speaker 1: are all hungry for the next Star Wars and a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, directors and writers come along and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, you know, you're looking for the next
Speaker 1: Star Wars, and it just so happens.
Speaker 2: I have the script ready to go.
Speaker 4: Big epic adventure with a young hero who yearns, yearns
Speaker 4: for greatness. Here we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Dragonslayer was not a commercial success, and afterwards Robin's
Speaker 1: directive I'll see nineteen eighty five's the Legend of Billy
Speaker 1: Jean eighty seven's Batteries not included, which he also wrote,
Speaker 1: I have seen that one when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: That that's like little flying robots in it. He also
Speaker 1: did a rad dog movie called Bingo in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: He did not write that, he just directed.
Speaker 4: It is a rat dog movie like Beethoven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the dog. I think the dog is wearing sunglasses
Speaker 1: on the cover. Like you just look at the poster,
Speaker 1: the box out for this movie. It's like, that's a
Speaker 1: rat dog movie. That dog's rat.
Speaker 4: He's gonna wear sunglasses in the movie. Might do some
Speaker 4: dancing to some rock music, maybe Robert Palmer's on.
Speaker 1: I'd say thirty five percent chance this dog rides a skateboard.
Speaker 2: That kind of movie, yeah, h okay.
Speaker 1: And on the screenwriting front, he co wrote nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five's Warning Sign, but then in nineteen ninety seven, he
Speaker 1: worked on a script for del Toro's first and nearly
Speaker 1: his last American picture. According to del Toro, it's the
Speaker 1: film mimic on this film, and the filmmaking experience was
Speaker 1: somewhat compromised by studio interference. It led to a very
Speaker 1: long and ongoing collaborative relationship between del Toro and Robbins.
Speaker 1: To date, they've pinned four produced scripts together, so Mimic
Speaker 1: twenty tens Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, twenty fifteen's
Speaker 1: Crimson Peak, and twenty twenty two's Pinocchio. He's also worked
Speaker 1: on screenplays for a couple of Bollywood films, I believe,
Speaker 1: and he's still very much an active screenwriter to this day.
Speaker 4: But he had a co writer on Dragonslayer, Right.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's how Barwood born nineteen forty screenwriter and
Speaker 1: director who came up alongside Robins, co wrote a number
Speaker 1: of scripts with him, including The Sugarland Express, Corvette Summer,
Speaker 1: and Warning Signs. Barwood also directed Warning Signs. That was
Speaker 1: his only feature length film, but he went on to
Speaker 1: direct and design several video game projects for Lucas Arts
Speaker 1: and also wrote for them. All Right, now getting into
Speaker 1: the cast here, this is a dragon movie, but this
Speaker 1: is also a wizard movie, and you have we have
Speaker 1: a pretty great wizard in this the Wizard Ulric and
Speaker 1: a great wizard requires a great actor, and boy, they
Speaker 1: landed one for this film with Sir Ralph Richardson.
Speaker 4: He really does well because he can capture the kind
Speaker 4: of humble, befuddled, quaint version of the wizard as just
Speaker 4: an unassuming old man, but he can also come to
Speaker 4: seem quite powerful when the when the need arises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how he's able to capture what
Speaker 1: I think of as the weirdness of wizards, you know,
Speaker 1: like I feel like there should be something about a
Speaker 1: wizard that is, you know, just just utterly mysterious and dangerous,
Speaker 1: like this is an individual with with knowledge beyond the
Speaker 1: common man, and therefore, you know, who knows what's going
Speaker 1: on in that mind of his.
Speaker 4: Part of any great wizard is that it's not just
Speaker 4: that they're powerful, but that you are not permitted to
Speaker 4: know how powerful they are.
Speaker 1: Right right, So Richardson does a great job with that.
Speaker 1: He's also to convey able to convey this kind of
Speaker 1: melancholy almost sadness of this aging master, you know, who
Speaker 1: still has his powers at his disposable, but he's very
Speaker 1: much in decline, just as magic is leaving the world,
Speaker 1: like this is a very old man who is not
Speaker 1: long for this world either.
Speaker 4: I mean quite explicitly portrayed as someone who, you know,
Speaker 4: if he'd stuck around a few more years, might have
Speaker 4: been burned at the stake by the newly converted Christians
Speaker 4: in the village.
Speaker 1: Right now, I should point out that on the commentary track,
Speaker 1: Robinson del Toro point out, you know, they certainly talk
Speaker 1: about his craft and how good he is at like
Speaker 1: utilizing props such as the knife.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about the knife in a bit. They talk
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: How utterly piercing his eyes are in any of these scenes.
Speaker 1: He's quite a screen presence. But they say, like a
Speaker 1: lot of that weird energy has is also legitimate, Like
Speaker 1: he's like a delightfully weird person. He apparently kept a
Speaker 1: pet rat in his pocket the whole time on set,
Speaker 1: a pet rat named Gratty, and he would take him
Speaker 1: out between takes, solid wizard move.
Speaker 4: How did he not talk the rat into getting screen time?
Speaker 1: He's a consummate professional. Yeah, consummate professional knows that the
Speaker 1: rat is here for emotional support and friendship. But you're
Speaker 1: not gonna like shoehorn him into the scene.
Speaker 4: The rat provides rat magic, whether you see it or not.
Speaker 1: Right right, so yes, Sir, Sir Ralph Richardson lived nineteen
Speaker 1: oh two through nineteen eighty three. Legendary English actor of
Speaker 1: stage and screen, two time Oscar nominee. His dramatic credits
Speaker 1: include such films as nineteen forty nine's The Heiress, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five's Richard the Third, sixty five's Doctor Chivago in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy sevens Jesus of Nazareth. But he's equally celebrated
Speaker 1: for his late career fantasy and sci fi work, appearing
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three It's Frankenstein The True Story, seventy
Speaker 1: five's Rollerball, nineteen eighty one's Time Bandits, and nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four's I Always Forget that. This film's title is so long,
Speaker 1: but Gray Stroke. The legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.
Speaker 4: Wait, is that the Christoph Lambert Tarzan?
Speaker 2: It is? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And in Time band it's this Ralph Richardson play God.
Speaker 2: I believe he does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, My memory of Time Bandits is a little afraid.
Speaker 1: I really need to revisit it.
Speaker 4: I believe it's David Warner as the Devil and Ralph
Speaker 4: Richardson is God. Let's look it up. Well, his character
Speaker 4: is called Supreme Being, but yes, I think he's supposed
Speaker 4: to be God. He arrives at the end of the
Speaker 4: movie after Evil has been defeated, and he's just sort
Speaker 4: of this tidy business like a British man with a
Speaker 4: dry sense of humor.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's our wizard, and more on the
Speaker 1: Wizard as we proceed here. But we also have an apprentice.
Speaker 1: The Sorcerer's apprentice in this film is the character Galen
Speaker 1: by Peter McNichol born nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 4: You know, I think before this I mainly knew him
Speaker 4: as as Janosh from Ghostbusters Too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think if you know him from nothing else, it
Speaker 1: is from Ghostbusters Too, where he's he's the guy constantly
Speaker 1: singing the praises of Vigo, the Karpathian.
Speaker 2: Yeah he is Vegoh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is you know, a wonderful, you know, comedic
Speaker 1: performance in that. And I think he's had a number
Speaker 1: of really sort of out there comedic performances throughout his career.
Speaker 2: He's had a very rich.
Speaker 1: Career on stage, screen and TV. This was his first
Speaker 1: film role, coming off of theater work, but he debuted
Speaker 1: on Broadway the same year in Crimes of the Heart.
Speaker 1: He followed up Dragon Slayer with a role in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two Sophie's Choice, and subsequent films include nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three's Adams Family Values and nineteen ninety five's Dracula Dead
Speaker 1: and Loving It. That Is, of Course Is That of
Speaker 1: Course is a comedy starring what Leslie Nielsen is Dracula
Speaker 1: and McNichol plays the Wrenfield character in that.
Speaker 4: Oh It's got a rin Field. I don't think I've
Speaker 4: ever seen that one, But why do I Why do
Speaker 4: I think of it as a comedy adaptation of Dracula
Speaker 4: that hughes way closer to the original story than it
Speaker 4: needs to.
Speaker 1: That may be great. I believe I saw this when
Speaker 1: I was younger, but I just vaguely remember a few
Speaker 1: gags from it. A lot of people will also recognize
Speaker 1: McNichol from TV. He was a cast member on Ali McBeal,
Speaker 1: and his other TV credits include Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 1: he was in one of Russell McKay's episodes, he was
Speaker 1: on twenty four, he was on Veep, and he's also
Speaker 1: done a fair amount of voice acting, including voicing the
Speaker 1: Mad Hatter in the Arkham Asylum games.
Speaker 4: Now, I think McNichol does quite well with the young
Speaker 4: hero role in this movie. But when I mentioned earlier
Speaker 4: that a lot of the major characters don't seem especially deep,
Speaker 4: he's I sort of had the main character here in mind,
Speaker 4: like he we don't ever really know why he wants
Speaker 4: anything that he wants. And I'm not complaining too much
Speaker 4: because I still love dragons Layer. You know, It's not
Speaker 4: something that prevented me from enjoying the film. But he's
Speaker 4: to be generous, as you said earlier, maybe a character
Speaker 4: who generates more questions than he answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there are times where I find myself wondering, well,
Speaker 1: why is he making this choice? Why does he want
Speaker 1: this thing that he seems to want? And yeah, and
Speaker 1: and this seems to be a common analysis of the
Speaker 1: film based on some of the reviews I was looking at.
Speaker 1: But but like you, I do like mcnickel in the role.
Speaker 1: He has this kind of weird cherubic quality. He feels
Speaker 1: more like a nerd hero as opposed to like a
Speaker 1: sort of you know, sex appeal teen heart throb kind
Speaker 1: of a character. Though I do love the idea of
Speaker 1: eighties teens with like heart dotted Peter McNichol posters on
Speaker 1: their walls.
Speaker 4: I feel like he's he's decently handsome in this film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's a major motion picture. He's
Speaker 1: he's plenty handsome.
Speaker 4: But but yes, i'd see what you're saying. I mean,
Speaker 4: he's not like a like a muscle bound go get
Speaker 4: her hero. He's you know, he's a little bit apprehensive,
Speaker 4: though he's also brave. But he's Yeah, he's closer to
Speaker 4: Nerd than Jock, definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that that does make him more endearing. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think this character would have worked as well,
Speaker 1: especially given maybe some of the limitations we were talking about,
Speaker 1: if some one of the other sort of flavors of
Speaker 1: the day or hot up and coming talents had played him, Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I read that Eric Roberts was considered for
Speaker 1: the part. Oh, and I think Eric Roberts is quite
Speaker 1: excellent in some of the millions of films that he's done,
Speaker 1: But that would have been.
Speaker 2: An entirely different Dragonslayer.
Speaker 1: Even like nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one Eric Roberts, It
Speaker 1: would have been a different flavor.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I got sidetracked just because I started thinking about
Speaker 4: actors that have been in too many movies, and I
Speaker 4: was like, what if it had been Udo Kierre or
Speaker 4: John Krodine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was saying. I was thinking that Eric
Speaker 1: Roberts is kind of the John Kerrodine of our time.
Speaker 1: All right, So here we're still on Team Wizard here,
Speaker 1: and the old Wizard has a grot hainer by the
Speaker 1: name of Hodge, and he's a familiar face because he
Speaker 1: is played by Sidney Bromley, who lived nineteen oh nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen eighty seven, a British character actor who we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show before because he was in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four is The Never Ending Story, in which
Speaker 1: he played the Nome scientist Inky Walk in that.
Speaker 4: Does he basically use the same voice in both movies?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so, you know That's what I say. Voice,
Speaker 1: same beard, same kind of like general. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: he's ratcheting up that demeanor and never Ending story because
Speaker 1: he's playing this kind of outrageous gnome character. But still,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's very much a character actor. I
Speaker 1: get the impression, like you hire Sidney Bromley like you
Speaker 1: want certain things.
Speaker 4: Yes, but in both cases he's very much like yo,
Speaker 4: see surely enough exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: His other credits include sixty two's Night Creatures, sixty seven
Speaker 1: is The Fearless Vampire Killers, the excellent nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: adaptation of Macbeth, nineteen eighty one's An American Werewolf in London,
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty six as Pirates, Oh What is He?
Speaker 4: And Werewolf in London. This is just one of the
Speaker 4: guys in the pub.
Speaker 1: I think he's one of the pub guys. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't specifically remember him, but I mean that's that's where
Speaker 1: he has to be. That makes the most sense. Or
Speaker 1: he's like a street person that the werewolf kills in London,
Speaker 1: like that would be the two main candidates here, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember.
Speaker 4: But Hodge is a lovable old grump like hepent. He
Speaker 4: spends most of his screen time complaining, but he's it's
Speaker 4: quite sad when he is killed.
Speaker 2: Right, all right.
Speaker 1: We also have a heroine in this picture, and that
Speaker 1: is the character of Valerian played by Caitlin Clark. Not
Speaker 1: to be confused with the basketball star of the same
Speaker 1: name whose name is all over the news right now
Speaker 1: for basketball reasons. But this is the actor Caitlin Clark,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: Right, So she plays the character who kind of sets
Speaker 4: the whole plot in motion, right by seeking out the
Speaker 4: advice and counsel of a wizard in defeating the dragon.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's the one who ad on the scene and
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, we need help with our dragon. And
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting character because and this is I
Speaker 1: think a prime example of a character that I ultimately
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about. Like, I feel like there
Speaker 1: there's ultimately unexplored depth here that, you know, depth that
Speaker 1: we just got to get a hint of in many scenes,
Speaker 1: but you want to know more about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think when I said that the characters could
Speaker 4: have been deeper, I mainly had these two main roles
Speaker 4: in mind, Peter Michichol's character in Caitlin Clark's character. But yeah,
Speaker 4: she's interesting because she when we first meet her in
Speaker 4: the movie, she her character is disguised as a boy,
Speaker 4: and we learn that she has had to spend her
Speaker 4: whole life whenever she was in public so far disguised
Speaker 4: as a boy in order to avoid being drafted into
Speaker 4: the potential lottery to become dragon food, which all the
Speaker 4: girls of her village.
Speaker 1: Were yeah, yeah, And then ultimately we see her you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like she has the opportunity to live openly
Speaker 1: again as herself, but then plans change, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it just left me wanting more exploration of this character.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Clark came out of the theater scene and
Speaker 1: this was her first feature film as well, followed by
Speaker 1: sporadic TV work, occasional small roles in such films as
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six as Crocodile Dundee nineteen ninety four Is
Speaker 1: Blown Away. She remained more active in theater and later
Speaker 1: as a theater instructor. Now her father in this who's
Speaker 1: just credited as the character's name, is just Hilarian's father,
Speaker 1: and he was played by Imris James, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight through nineteen eighty nine, a Welsh Shakespearean actor,
Speaker 1: probably best known for this film. His credits include a
Speaker 1: lot of Shakespearean theater and British television, including Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: Doctor Who, and Hammer House of Horror. In fact, we
Speaker 1: have discussed the episode of Hammer House of Horror that
Speaker 1: he acted in in Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode
Speaker 1: Halloween episode Anthology of Horror that we did. That's the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty episode the Mark of Satan. Oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a creepy one where we talked about
Speaker 4: like the evil mind control virus theme of that episode.
Speaker 4: I was looking at the screenshot you showed me of
Speaker 4: him in that episode and I think he might have
Speaker 4: been playing like the coroner or something. But in Dragon
Speaker 4: Slayer he plays yeah, Valerian's father, who you know He's
Speaker 4: a very like, strong, kind, sturdy, friendly presence, and he
Speaker 4: takes it quite well that his daughter seems to have
Speaker 4: fallen in love with one of the last pagan wizards
Speaker 4: in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very supportive and very protective. So yeah, fine,
Speaker 1: fine character, so old performance. Oh but now let's get
Speaker 1: to the royal family of the area, starting with the king.
Speaker 1: The King Casadorus Rex played by Peter Are born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. He is a practical ruler for dark times.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think practical is a good word for him
Speaker 4: because and this will come up even more so with
Speaker 4: I think the next character we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4: But he is while you would say that he sort
Speaker 4: of fills the role of a villain in the plot,
Speaker 4: he's not really all that villainous. He does some kind
Speaker 4: of bad or sneaky things, but he ultimately is is
Speaker 4: shown to be quite quite practical and quite you know,
Speaker 4: sympathetic in many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he's a pretty nuanced character. And then the
Speaker 1: performance is quite nice instead, So we don't get like
Speaker 1: a cartoon tyrant. We don't get a comical coward here,
Speaker 1: but rather a rational ruler who has made some morally
Speaker 1: questionable and at times hypocritical choices in order to maintain
Speaker 1: the status quo, in order to I think very much
Speaker 1: in his mind as he discusses to keep the peace
Speaker 1: and to keep everything, to maintain stability. And if that
Speaker 1: means yeah, feeding a woman to a dragon every year,
Speaker 1: well that's just what you have to do. It's what
Speaker 1: we've done. It seems to be working. Let's not shake
Speaker 1: the boat, right. Peter Air probably best known for this film,
Speaker 1: but his extensive credits include nineteen nineties Mountains of the Moon,
Speaker 1: ninety two's Orlando, ninety three's The Remains of the Day
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ones from Hell, alongside such TV
Speaker 1: shows as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in Rome.
Speaker 4: He's got some interesting facial hair choices.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, they dress them up nicely for this. Now.
Speaker 1: His daughter in this picture is Princess Elsbeth played by
Speaker 1: Chloe Salomon. So this is the king's noble and idealistic daughter.
Speaker 1: More on her in a bit. But the actor here
Speaker 1: a British actor with extensive TV and stage roles, though
Speaker 1: this was her biggest film, and interestingly enough, this is
Speaker 1: Alec Guinness's niece.
Speaker 2: Oh, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: So in many ways, she's the heart and moral compass
Speaker 1: of the film, but that doesn't necessarily bode well for her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say her character's fate was one of
Speaker 4: the biggest surprises of the movie. Got incredibly grim there
Speaker 4: for a.
Speaker 2: Bit, all right.
Speaker 1: Now back to the sort of the villain realm our
Speaker 1: sort of villains and shades of gray. Here we have
Speaker 1: the character Tyrian, and this is the King's main enforcer,
Speaker 1: a cold man but also a practical man of the sword.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the same thing I said about the King
Speaker 4: I think applies to his character, but even more so,
Speaker 4: he is I would say, the human villain of the movie.
Speaker 4: But I kept waiting for him to do something more
Speaker 4: overtly villainous, more absolutely selfish, But he really doesn't. Unless
Speaker 4: there's something I'm forgiving, I don't think he ever really
Speaker 4: does something overtly all that selfish. Instead, it seems like
Speaker 4: he has a view about what would be the best
Speaker 4: way to protect the people of the kingdom, and he
Speaker 4: is following through on that view.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there is one murder.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, there's more than one murder, but there's there's
Speaker 1: one that's particularly cold blood. Well, we can get into that,
Speaker 1: and when we get.
Speaker 4: Into that, it is cold blooded, but it is part
Speaker 4: of his strategy for protecting his people.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying murders, Okay, I'm just saying like, you
Speaker 4: never end up seeing him doing something where he's just like, oh,
Speaker 4: trying to grab all the gold and take it away
Speaker 4: for himself or something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He makes some good points, as we'll get into. But
Speaker 1: this character is played by John Hallam, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one through two thousand and six. We've actually talked
Speaker 1: about him on the show before because he played Luro,
Speaker 1: the second in command Hawkman in nineteen eighty one's Flash Gordon,
Speaker 1: which means he was very hard to focus on since
Speaker 1: he was almost always in a scene with Brian Blessed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how could you even see him?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like, basically he's the other hawk Man that's not Brian Blessed,
Speaker 1: and that is somewhat less loud. His other credits include
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one's Life Valley with Michael Caine, Nicholas and Alexandria.
Speaker 1: From the same year, nineteen seventy three is the Wickerman
Speaker 1: eighty five's Life Force, Oh eighty five Santa Claus the
Speaker 1: movie and nineteen ninety one's Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of movies I've seen and I don't
Speaker 4: remember what he was in any of them.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: And one more cast member I want to mention here,
Speaker 1: and that is this I guess you would. He's kind
Speaker 1: of like a missionary, a Christian, an outsider that has
Speaker 1: brought Christianity to the local realm.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Brother jacopis here and he is played by Ian McDermott
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty five. So, yes, the man who would
Speaker 1: become Emperor Palpatine seen here in a small but solid part.
Speaker 4: Right, So he is the person who shows up at
Speaker 4: the village to tell them the good news of Jesus
Speaker 4: Christ and to inform them that the dragon is not
Speaker 4: a dragon but is Lucifer incarnate. And then he just
Speaker 4: gets like blasted with fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so instead of like twinkling depths of decrepit evil,
Speaker 1: we get reckless religious fanaticism. And in the process, I
Speaker 1: think we do get some hints of the tools, the
Speaker 1: acting tools he'd employ in his performances of Palpatine over
Speaker 1: the decades to come. But yeah, great tremendous actor in
Speaker 1: Star Wars and out of Star Wars. Outside of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars franchise, his credits include nineteen eighties The Awakening,
Speaker 1: eighty three's Gorky Park, eighty eight Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five's Restoration in nineteen ninety nine Sleepy Hollow. All right, now,
Speaker 1: going behind the scenes here. We don't always call out
Speaker 1: the cinematographer on a picture, but we absolutely have to
Speaker 1: hear because the cinematography in this film is amazing and
Speaker 1: it is by a legend in the business, Derek van Lint,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty ten.
Speaker 4: I agree this is a fantastic looking movie, and in
Speaker 4: all of its different ways. I liked that there is
Speaker 4: a lot of visual contra asked in the sets and
Speaker 4: the settings, Like you're constantly going back and forth between
Speaker 4: environments that are cramped and claustrophobic and slimy and ugly
Speaker 4: and suggest hell to and then going from there to
Speaker 4: beautiful open vistas and mountain landscapes and valleys and running
Speaker 4: water and all that. There is a there's a pleasing
Speaker 4: sort of rhythm of images, and I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come as no surprise, I think to a lot
Speaker 1: of people that His other main cinematography credit in feature
Speaker 1: film is for nineteen seventy nine's Alien, and I think
Speaker 1: you definitely see that in comparing like the caves environments
Speaker 1: and even the other interior environments that we explore in
Speaker 1: this film, comparing those to the you know, like the
Speaker 1: alien planet in Aliens or just that the depths of
Speaker 1: the Nostromo. But the curious thing is that outside of
Speaker 1: mostly dragons Alien, he worked mostly on commercials for Canadian TV.
Speaker 1: He was a Canadian, you know, there's and I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a complete list of everything he worked on, but
Speaker 1: he did like an Atari twenty six hundred commercial for
Speaker 1: Activision's Pitfall two and yeah, so not a lot of credits.
Speaker 1: But even then, from what I've read, he was highly
Speaker 1: influential within the business and actually turned down the work
Speaker 1: on subsequent big film projects with Ridley Scott and others.
Speaker 1: He directed a single feature link film himself the year
Speaker 1: two thousands, The Spreading Ground, starring Dennis Hopper, which was
Speaker 1: also co written by Mark Berman. Oh, I haven't seen that,
Speaker 1: so anyway, He's one of the many reasons you should
Speaker 1: definitely see this film in the best quality possible in
Speaker 1: a nice dark room.
Speaker 2: Good TV.
Speaker 4: It looks fantastic.
Speaker 1: Now, the composer on this film is another legend in
Speaker 1: the business, and that's Alex North, who lived nineteen ten
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety one American composer and fifteen time Academy
Speaker 1: Award nominee. His most famous scores include those for nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two is a Street Car Named Desire, and Death
Speaker 1: of a Salesman nineteen fifty six is Unchained. That's where
Speaker 1: We get Unchained Melody nineteen sixty one Spartacus sixty four
Speaker 1: is Cleopatra eighty five's Under the Volcano. He completed a
Speaker 1: score for two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey, but
Speaker 1: Kubrick rejected it in favor of a needle drop classical
Speaker 1: music score, and I'm to understand he actually reused some
Speaker 1: material from the two thousand and one project in this
Speaker 1: film HM Now. He received an OSCAR nomination for Dragon Slayer,
Speaker 1: but lost out to Vangelists for his work on Chariots
Speaker 1: of Fire. John Williams was also nominated that year for Raiders,
Speaker 1: But I mean Chariots of Fire is an all timer,
Speaker 1: so I mean, if you got to lose to Chariots
Speaker 1: of Fire.
Speaker 2: It's perfectly fine.
Speaker 4: I think the music in Dragon Slayer works quite well,
Speaker 4: especially right at the beginning of the movie. There's it's
Speaker 4: you know, classic dark fantasy opening. It opens with like
Speaker 4: a black screen and these just lead heavy horns really
Speaker 4: working the brass section. It's dark, deep, ominous. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, highly effective. All right, Now, this is a special
Speaker 1: effects movie. This is got This has tremendous special effects
Speaker 1: and we're not going to be able to do complete
Speaker 1: justice to them here. But the dragon does not play himself.
Speaker 1: This was the work of a vast industrial light and
Speaker 1: magic crew, featuring such names as Dennis Murran, Phil Tippett,
Speaker 1: Ken Ralston and Brian Johnson. The film was nominated for
Speaker 1: a Special Effects OSCAR that year, but lost out too.
Speaker 1: The only other nominee which was also an ILM project,
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film so they used
Speaker 1: various methods to bring the dragon to life. The film
Speaker 1: makes use of the go Motion system to create realistic
Speaker 1: motion blur and smooth character articulation for the dragon, as
Speaker 1: well as related miniature elements, and according to ILM on
Speaker 1: their website, the film inspired the development of the GO
Speaker 1: emotion system. I think Tipet had previously employed some of
Speaker 1: the techniques on The Empire Strikes Back, but this was like,
Speaker 1: this was a big go motion picture. And if you
Speaker 1: want more details on what that consists of, again, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend the making of documentary that is on the
Speaker 1: Blu Ray.
Speaker 4: I was curious about how they achieved the shots of
Speaker 4: the dragon moving because it does look unlike really any
Speaker 4: other special effects shots of that type I can think of,
Speaker 4: and it looks wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's so these different types of effects. Obviously,
Speaker 1: see have large scale pneumatic limbs. You got a large
Speaker 1: scale heads, stop motion, go motion miniatures, flying miniatures that
Speaker 1: are brought to life in a very kind of like
Speaker 1: Star Wars spaceship fashion, and then puppetry, flamethrowers and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I imagine the scenes you're thinking of are particularly
Speaker 1: like the crawling around the cave sequences, and I believe
Speaker 1: that what we're talking about here are those go motion
Speaker 1: sequences that Phil tip It was in charge of, and
Speaker 1: indeed these are just just so magical, it just absolutely
Speaker 1: feels alive. I mean, there's a reason that del Toro
Speaker 1: himself says like this not only is this the best
Speaker 1: Dragon that had ever been done? This is the best
Speaker 1: Dragon that has ever been done in.
Speaker 4: Cinema still to this day. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't know what I would think was better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even I've read other productions talking about
Speaker 1: their dragon and it's like they oftentimes acknowledge the DNA
Speaker 1: of Dragon Slayer in what they do. You know, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we looked to Dragon Slayer, we looked at what worked,
Speaker 1: and we tried to build off of that.
Speaker 4: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Let's dive in.
Speaker 4: So we begin in darkness, as I said earlier, with
Speaker 4: those the heavy, scary kind of horn melodies playing, and
Speaker 4: then eventually out of the blackness we see a burning
Speaker 4: torch emerge, and then there's another and another, and the
Speaker 4: picture kind of differentiates from just pure black into an
Speaker 4: indigo nighttime sky in the background, and then the dark
Speaker 4: shapes of dead trees in the foreground. So a group
Speaker 4: of people are making their way across a hillside by
Speaker 4: torchlight in the dead of night. And then somewhere else
Speaker 4: we see an old man in a dim cave like
Speaker 4: room surrounded by arcane instruments, engaged in magic and alchemy,
Speaker 4: and he sort of waves a fire of sorcery into
Speaker 4: existence in a metal bowl and then stares into the
Speaker 4: flame like he is divining a scene from elsewhere or
Speaker 4: from the future, and we hear screams and the sound
Speaker 4: of metal clashing violence, all this echoing in his mind.
Speaker 4: And then the party we saw traveling by night, they
Speaker 4: arrive at the heavy door of a hilltop castle and
Speaker 4: they knock and somebody answers the door. I believe it's Hodge.
Speaker 4: Here are sort of like a strange old man, and
Speaker 4: he tries to turn them away, but we learned that
Speaker 4: this is the dwelling of Ulrich of Kraganmore. He says, yes,
Speaker 4: you've come a long way, Yes, your business is urgent.
Speaker 4: It does not matter. He sees no one, and there's
Speaker 4: grumbling from within the party. They are being led by
Speaker 4: a young man named a Valerian, and some of the
Speaker 4: unhappy travelers are like, what now, boy? In fact, I
Speaker 4: think it's the guy who's going to later convert to
Speaker 4: Christianity that's being really grumpy. But eventually they get led
Speaker 4: inside the castle and the master of the castle is
Speaker 4: the great wizard Ulric of kraganmore and he has foreseen
Speaker 4: that he must meet with them. He also tells his
Speaker 4: young apprentice Galen that he foresees his own death and
Speaker 4: matters that will be of great importance to Galen as well.
Speaker 4: We learned that Galen is an eager young student. He
Speaker 4: wants to basically what he wants more than anything else
Speaker 4: in the world is to become mighty in the ways
Speaker 4: of sorcery. But he is still learning. And then we
Speaker 4: get to the scene where Ulric comes out to meet
Speaker 4: the travelers, and I thought this was really funny. I
Speaker 4: love the use of what you might call diegetic special
Speaker 4: effects in this scene. So, you know, in many cases
Speaker 4: you might say that the mechanisms of special effects are
Speaker 4: non diegetic because they're just supposed to appear on screen
Speaker 4: as if they are representing some kind of real magic.
Speaker 4: But here, as Ulric comes out to meet the guests,
Speaker 4: Galen is like shaking some sheet metal to generate a
Speaker 4: sound of thunder, and then he throws exploding powder on
Speaker 4: the floor to create a flash of light and smoke
Speaker 4: as Ulric enters the room, so it's like he's still
Speaker 4: sort of got the sorcery training wheels on, you know,
Speaker 4: he's like using these materials.
Speaker 1: It also reminded me a bit of some of the
Speaker 1: themes they're explored in The Last Unicorn, like the idea
Speaker 1: of having to put a like a fake horn on
Speaker 1: a real unicorn. Normal people could see it like a
Speaker 1: we're living in a world here where magic is leaving
Speaker 1: the world. There's less magic available, but also legitimate sorcery
Speaker 1: as we see it in the film has kind of
Speaker 1: like this kind of subtle quality to it, and there's
Speaker 1: kind of this sense that just normal folk might miss it,
Speaker 1: they might not understand what they're seeing. So perhaps you've
Speaker 1: got to spice things up a little bit with some
Speaker 1: stage effects and so forth.
Speaker 4: But of course Ulrich is the real deal, because when
Speaker 4: he comes into the room, we see him immediately using
Speaker 4: real magic, like he raises flames on the candles and
Speaker 4: in the hearth with a word. And so he meets
Speaker 4: with the travelers. We learn they are a delegation from
Speaker 4: or Land, which is beyond Valvatia, and he says, let's
Speaker 4: see the artifacts, as if this is almost like a routine,
Speaker 4: kind of recurring type of meeting. He's just like, we
Speaker 4: go through the steps here, show me the artifacts and
Speaker 4: they share with him scales and an enormous tooth. Ulric
Speaker 4: it first seems a little intimidated. He says, the beast
Speaker 4: that this came from must be enormous, and he suggests
Speaker 4: they try someone else. He says, try the Meridid sisters
Speaker 4: or Rimbau. These are other sorcerers that apparently have experience
Speaker 4: fighting dragons, but Valerian says, nope, they are all dead.
Speaker 4: Ulrich seems to be the only great sorcerer left in
Speaker 4: the land. Ulrich then discovers more of their plight. The
Speaker 4: king of Orland, Cassiodorus, has made a pact with the monster.
Speaker 4: The dragon agrees not to attack the villages and burn
Speaker 4: the crops of Orland, but this is only as long
Speaker 4: as at the spring and autumn equinox he receives a
Speaker 4: human sacrifice. They will send him a virgin selected by lottery.
Speaker 4: Ulrich judges this arrangement barbaric, and then Valerian says to him,
Speaker 4: are you afraid of dragons? And Ulrich says, I'm going
Speaker 4: to quote him here. He says no. In fact, if
Speaker 4: it weren't for sorcerers, there wouldn't be any dragons. Once
Speaker 4: the skies were dotted with them, magnificent horned backs, leathern wings, soaring,
Speaker 4: and their hot breath wind. Oh, I know, this creature
Speaker 4: of yours vermic thracks, pejorative. Look at these scales, these ridges.
Speaker 4: When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain,
Speaker 4: constant pain. It grows decrepit, crippled, pitiful, spiteful.
Speaker 1: It's a great moment because, I mean, obviously he's not
Speaker 1: just describing the dragon here, he's also talking about himself.
Speaker 1: He's talking about the ravages of age.
Speaker 4: That's right, So that's interesting. But also it's a strange
Speaker 4: take on the dragon. So you know, we were saying
Speaker 4: earlier that the dragon in this movie is very much
Speaker 4: a monster and is not one of the noble, intelligent,
Speaker 4: you know, higher dragons of some other fantasy stories. But
Speaker 4: it almost sounds like maybe this same dragon would have
Speaker 4: been many many years ago. But dragons, when they become
Speaker 4: old to become twisted and cruel. Yeah, and it's because
Speaker 4: they themselves are in pain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a bit of examples
Speaker 1: we've talked about in the natural world concerning meat eaters,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly a man eaters, large predators that have
Speaker 1: just have turned to killing and consuming human beings, and
Speaker 1: in many cases that's not because you have a creature
Speaker 1: in its prime. You have a creature that's aging, that
Speaker 1: maybe has dental problems and so forth, and therefore has
Speaker 1: kind of been reduced to this status.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's having trouble surviving in the way it always
Speaker 4: has before, and so is trying new things out of desperation.
Speaker 4: So Ulric agrees to help them. He suits up to travel,
Speaker 4: and he says goodbye to Galen and Hodge. Hodge is
Speaker 4: his retainer there at the castle, Galen's little magical assistant.
Speaker 4: That's that's Peter McNichol. As he's leaving, he says to Galen,
Speaker 4: keep your hands out of my reagents. Ooh, then we're
Speaker 4: about to get a really great villain introduction. As the
Speaker 4: party is preparing to leave the castle of Kraganmore, they
Speaker 4: are intercepted by armed men led by Tyrian, the captain
Speaker 4: of Cassiodorus's royal guard, his king's guard, if you will.
Speaker 4: Tyrian is a large man. He is sneering and seemingly dangerous.
Speaker 4: He has that energy of someone who is calm for
Speaker 4: the moment, but could suddenly become violent. However, once he
Speaker 4: starts talking, I gotta admit Tyrian makes some good points.
Speaker 4: He says, look, I know what you're up to. You
Speaker 4: know you're gonna get a wizard to go kill this dragon. Well,
Speaker 4: I don't love the dragon either, but if you try
Speaker 4: to kill it and fail, you are going to stir
Speaker 4: up a huge mess of trouble and it may that
Speaker 4: may be disastrous for the people of the kingdom. So
Speaker 4: if you're gonna try to kill the dragon, you better
Speaker 4: be sure that your wizard is up to the job.
Speaker 4: And then Hodge responds to this, saying, ah, so it's
Speaker 4: a test you're looking for. We don't do tests, and
Speaker 4: Tyrian's response is no, of course not. They never do tests.
Speaker 4: Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother's
Speaker 4: shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two.
Speaker 4: But comes a doubter. Why then it's the wrong day,
Speaker 4: The planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable.
Speaker 4: We don't do tests. And so Tyrian comes off like
Speaker 4: a villain in the scene, but he's making a lot
Speaker 4: of sense. You do not want to send Uri Geller
Speaker 4: up to fight the monster that is going to react
Speaker 4: with swift and terrible revenge.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does make some great points here. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, again kind of in support of the status quo,
Speaker 1: but it's like, are you going to actually solve any
Speaker 1: problems with this or are you just going to make
Speaker 1: things worse. He's very much of the mindset I think,
Speaker 1: you know, better one hundred years of tyranny than a
Speaker 1: day of chaos, that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: But they have sperience to base this on because they
Speaker 4: will reveal later that the king's brother long ago did
Speaker 4: try to go slay the dragon to free the people
Speaker 4: from its from its oppression, and in response to this attack,
Speaker 4: the dragon burned all their crops and attacked their villages
Speaker 4: and many were killed and it was horrible. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 4: Ulric says, yeah, okay, Tyrian, I will consent to a test.
Speaker 4: And it's what test is it? It's the old stab
Speaker 4: me with the magic dagger test. So Ulric assures Tyrian.
Speaker 4: He like gets Peter McNichol to go get a special
Speaker 4: dagger for him, and he puts the dagger against his
Speaker 4: chest and says, go on, you can't hurt me. And
Speaker 4: then Ulrich he uses magic to trap Galen inside his
Speaker 4: workshop to prevent him from intervening, and Tyrian does the
Speaker 4: test and oh no, Ulric is killed.
Speaker 1: This is a really great scene and one that I
Speaker 1: enjoyed rewatching with commentary. So Richardson really does a lot
Speaker 1: of s all fascinating work here, Like there's kind of
Speaker 1: like ritualistic handling of the dagger leading up to the test,
Speaker 1: the bearing of his breast for the dagger, and there's
Speaker 1: and the look in his eyes, you know, with this
Speaker 1: at first with the boldness and assuredness of a powerful wizard,
Speaker 1: but then it you know, it kind of transitions into
Speaker 1: like the certainty, the the the mundane nature of death,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And del Toro talks about this a
Speaker 1: bit on the commentary track, compares the overall blocking and
Speaker 1: cinematography of the scene to like arim Brandt painting.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's really a great sequence and really a
Speaker 1: showcase for Richardson's acting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there are a lot of things about
Speaker 4: this movie I think you could regard as as a
Speaker 4: bit rim brandy. There are these scenes of orange light
Speaker 4: and shadows, but also yeah, the blocking, like the way
Speaker 4: the wizard kind of collapses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because he does do like the death here
Speaker 1: does not feel magic. It feels like an old man
Speaker 1: foolishly getting himself stabbed through the heart and just dying
Speaker 1: there in the mud.
Speaker 4: It makes you wonder did he actually have any powers
Speaker 4: at all? I mean, we saw him light some candles
Speaker 4: and stuff, but was that it?
Speaker 1: And it seems very much a world where that is
Speaker 1: a strong possibility that he had no magic left in him.
Speaker 1: There was no great magic left for this guy to do.
Speaker 4: So we see funeral rights for Ulrich. Galen burns his
Speaker 4: body on a pyre. There's a green flame that emerges,
Speaker 4: and Galen looks on with terrible sadness. We see shooting
Speaker 4: stars streaking across the heavens. And the next morning Hodge
Speaker 4: comes in and scrapes up the ashes from the funeral
Speaker 4: pyre into a leather pouch, and we see Galen kind
Speaker 4: of moping around, covering up Ulric's things with cloth and
Speaker 4: wondering what to do with himself. But his adventure is
Speaker 4: just beginning because some magical selection is at work here.
Speaker 4: Galen finds Ulric's enchanted amulet burning for him, burning with
Speaker 4: this eager orange light in his presence. It has chosen
Speaker 4: him as its next owner. You are the wizard now, Galen, and.
Speaker 1: Just fills him with the foolish self confidence he needs
Speaker 1: to set out to slay the dragon.
Speaker 4: That's right. So we see Galen and Hodge on the
Speaker 4: journey to Orland. They're making the journey and they're like
Speaker 4: catching up to the party of visitors that came to
Speaker 4: them earlier. Galen seems excited and a little bit overwhelmed
Speaker 4: by his new power, like he's levitating an egg in
Speaker 4: his hands while they walk across the country. This is
Speaker 4: the first time we see like some really gorgeous exterior
Speaker 4: location shots. They're going through a green valley framed by mountains,
Speaker 4: and they make their way through these misty, sun dappled woods.
Speaker 4: It's very beautiful. But Galen is also he's playing with
Speaker 4: and arguably abusing his wizard powers. Hodge is complaining and
Speaker 4: Galen starts like magically stealing his cloak and stuff. Eventually,
Speaker 4: Galen and Hodge catch up to the traveling party and
Speaker 4: Galen introduces them to his new powers. Says, you know,
Speaker 4: he's saying, I take on the burden of your request.
Speaker 4: I am Galen, I am the inheritor of Ulrich's knowledge,
Speaker 4: and I am the sorcerer you seek. Now Here we
Speaker 4: cut away to somewhere else in Orland, where we are
Speaker 4: going to witness a sacrifice to vermic Thrack's pejorative the dragon.
Speaker 4: I don't know if we even took a moment to
Speaker 4: comment on the dragon's name yet, did we know?
Speaker 1: But it is such a wonderful name, and it is
Speaker 1: kind of left a little vague whether this is thought
Speaker 1: of as an individual name or like a species sort
Speaker 1: of name, given the Wizard's identification of it earlier.
Speaker 4: Oh, I hadn't thought of it as a species name.
Speaker 4: I thought of it as like a proper name. But
Speaker 4: you could be right, it works either way, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 4: But how does anybody know this is the dragon's name?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Does the dragon use this name itself?
Speaker 1: We never hear it talk, I do know. If it
Speaker 1: can talk, it doesn't, or it no longer speaks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not a dragon with anything to say and
Speaker 1: say with words. It speaks instead with flames and violence.
Speaker 4: Right, So we see a procession of soldiers, carts robed
Speaker 4: priests winding up a mountain path of dark rocks. They
Speaker 4: are escorting a prisoner, a young woman dressed in white
Speaker 4: with flowers in her hair. She is a sacrifice that
Speaker 4: is meant for the dragon. So they take her up
Speaker 4: the mountain and they leave her chain to a stake
Speaker 4: near the mouth of a cave, and the priest produces
Speaker 4: a scroll and begins reading an official decree commemorating the sacrifice.
Speaker 4: Though while he's reading this, there begins a great deep rumbling,
Speaker 4: and the soldiers and the teamsters with the carts, they
Speaker 4: all panic and they start just trying to get out
Speaker 4: of there as fast as they can before the cleric
Speaker 4: even finishes reading the statement, which is really funny. Everybody's
Speaker 4: trying to run away, like the carts are getting stuck
Speaker 4: in the mud, and people are freaking out. But this
Speaker 4: scene is actually quite scary. Yeah, the young woman being sacrificed,
Speaker 4: she struggles to free herself from her manacles. We hear
Speaker 4: these heavy footsteps approaching. We don't see the dragon yet,
Speaker 4: but these sounds are coming from the yawning mouth of
Speaker 4: the cave. There's steam rushing up from the gaps in
Speaker 4: the rocks, and then we see a giant, clawed pair
Speaker 4: of toes curling around the corner of the rock, and
Speaker 4: the beast reveals itself in full to her, but not
Speaker 4: to us. Yet we get the feeling we sort of
Speaker 4: see from its point of view and get the feeling
Speaker 4: that it is towering, monstrous. We do see that it
Speaker 4: has a slimy tail covered in these spikes protruding bones.
Speaker 4: Not like the elegant sort of patterns of ridges and
Speaker 4: bumps who you see on smoother dragons of recent media.
Speaker 4: This looks more like a gigantic spot of fish bones,
Speaker 4: you know, like broken in places, irregular modeled, with age,
Speaker 4: covered in scales and mucus. Just horrible in every way.
Speaker 1: And again we don't see it in full us the viewer.
Speaker 1: We see bits and pieces of it. The full shape
Speaker 1: of the dragon is implied rather than stated overtly.
Speaker 4: Right, So, the young woman, actually the last moment, does
Speaker 4: manage to free herself from her from her manacles, but
Speaker 4: it's too late. The dragon is there. It's looming over her,
Speaker 4: a giant, stinking, hateful mass. And then finally it just
Speaker 4: unleashes a breath of fire. It's an incredibly effective scary scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like a horror movie sequence right here,
Speaker 1: and it uses the tools of horror quite well. Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, her trying to free herselves from herself from
Speaker 1: the manacles, and of course that they're cutting up her wrists,
Speaker 1: she's straining and having to squeeze, like and it's one
Speaker 1: of those small touches, you know, where we can more
Speaker 1: easily imagine that pain, in that desperation, then we can
Speaker 1: like the larger, more fantastic aspects of and extreme aspects
Speaker 1: of the situation, and therefore, like the familiar makes the
Speaker 1: fantastic more real to us. So it's excellently done. And yeah,
Speaker 1: when we start seeing these glimpses of the dragon, just
Speaker 1: utterly terrifying. On the commentary track, del Toro just loses
Speaker 1: his mind over this sequence. He's just he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: what of what I wouldn't give for a scene like this?
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, find someone in your life who
Speaker 1: loves you as much as del Toro loves these dragon sequences.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a good point you make about the
Speaker 4: way that it combines different types of horror in the
Speaker 4: same scene. For this this greater than the sum of
Speaker 4: its parts effect, so that the horrors of the scene
Speaker 4: are both large and small, both sort of concrete and familiar,
Speaker 4: and then fantastical and magical.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyway, after this terrifying sequence, we see Valerian wake from
Speaker 4: a nightmare in a cold sweat at their camp in
Speaker 4: the forest, and then here at the river beside the camp,
Speaker 4: Galen wakes up and he decides to go bathing in
Speaker 4: the water, which Valerian is also doing as well, and
Speaker 4: in this process he discovers that Valerian is not a
Speaker 4: young man but a young woman in disguise, and this
Speaker 4: is where we get the story she fills him in.
Speaker 4: We find out that she has lived her whole life
Speaker 4: in public disguised as a boy to hide from the
Speaker 4: Vermathrax sacrifice lottery, and Galen promises he'll help her keep
Speaker 4: her secret. He's not going to tell anybody, and they
Speaker 4: have a conversation where Valerian reveals also that it's only
Speaker 4: the daughters of the common people who are in danger.
Speaker 4: If you're rich enough, if you're the daughter of the king,
Speaker 4: you can avoid the lottery. But of course Valerian's father
Speaker 4: is just a blacksmith. He's poor.
Speaker 1: Now on the commentary tract, they do point out like
Speaker 1: the obvious connection here to the military draft, particularly during
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties in the United States, and so there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's this is one of the many moments
Speaker 1: in the film where there's actually some there's a lot
Speaker 1: of food for thought in the scenario that's being drawn
Speaker 1: out for us here. You know, it's it's it's fantasy, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's supposed to be centuries ago in this,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere a little adjacent to history. But he
Speaker 1: does have you know, there are various comparison points for
Speaker 1: modern life in the modern world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So also in the scene, though, Galen sees
Speaker 4: a vision in the water, his like amulet activates and
Speaker 4: he starts to use the water surface as a divining mirror.
Speaker 4: And he sees soldiers riding on the road and Tyrian,
Speaker 4: the captain of the King's guard, overlooking the camp, drawing
Speaker 4: his bow. And now he sees Tyrian has shot Hodge
Speaker 4: with an arrow. So Galen is like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: and he runs to intervene, but it's too late. Galen
Speaker 4: finds Hodge dying of his wound, and Hodge instructs Galen.
Speaker 4: He says, our master had dying wishes take the this
Speaker 4: pouch of Ulrich's ashes, find the lake of burning water
Speaker 4: and throw the ashes in, and then Hodg dies. Galen tries,
Speaker 4: I think, to resurrect him with magic, but this fails.
Speaker 4: So the stakes are up and this sort of marks
Speaker 4: roughly the end of act one.
Speaker 2: Ish Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4: So Galen, Valerian, and the rest of the Erlanders make
Speaker 4: their way back to Dragon Country, and again lots of
Speaker 4: absolutely gorgeous outdoor location shots here, the landscape, the rocks
Speaker 4: covered in moss, waterfalls, mountains of gray boulders, and on
Speaker 4: the way they pass by the layer of Vermathrax pejorative
Speaker 4: and Galen wants to go straight to it. I think
Speaker 4: they're like, well, let's go home first. Somebody's like, no,
Speaker 4: get me there right now. So they go to the
Speaker 4: cave mouth. Galen is just he has so much zeal
Speaker 4: he just goes straight inside, against the warnings of Valerian
Speaker 4: and the others. It's very tense when he goes in
Speaker 4: the atmosphere and the dragon's cave is wonderful, and he
Speaker 4: tries to call out vermoth racks and there are these
Speaker 4: blasts of smoke and dust, but the dragon does not appear.
Speaker 4: So Galen comes back out of the cave and he's
Speaker 4: been told by the others that there is only one
Speaker 4: entrance and exit to the cave. There's no other way
Speaker 4: in or out, so seemingly kind of chastened by fear
Speaker 4: a little bit. Instead of going in to fight the
Speaker 4: dragon inside, he does a magical incantation to cause a
Speaker 4: boulder to fall down and plug the mouth of the cave. Again,
Speaker 4: we've been told this is the only entrance, but it's
Speaker 4: almost like he doesn't know his own strength because it
Speaker 4: ends up causing a gigantic rock slide with all of
Speaker 4: these rocks coming down and piling up over the mouth
Speaker 4: of the cave, and it seems to have worked. The
Speaker 4: mouth of the cave of Vermathrax is filled in with rocks,
Speaker 4: and they say he's done it.
Speaker 1: All right, mission accomplished, kind of like a lucky first
Speaker 1: blow there.
Speaker 4: All right, yeah, good thing, the movie's over. But it's
Speaker 4: not so. Back at the village, everybody is celebrating being
Speaker 4: freed of the dragon. There's a bonfire. They're burning the
Speaker 4: cult effigies of the dragon that they'd previously care eat
Speaker 4: up the mountain in fear. Galen is telling stories to
Speaker 4: the children, and we meet Valerian's father, who is the
Speaker 4: village blacksmith, and Valerian finally now free of the dragon's curse.
Speaker 4: She in this scene puts on address and reveals to
Speaker 4: everyone that she is a girl. And there's also a
Speaker 4: funny development in the scene, which is where we meet
Speaker 4: the Christian missionary and it's Ian McDermid and some of
Speaker 4: the villagers are talking. I think I forget the villager's name,
Speaker 4: but it's the one who seems to be really into
Speaker 4: what the Christian is saying. He's like, don't you think
Speaker 4: it's strange that there's a holy man in the village
Speaker 4: at the same time that the dragon was defeated?
Speaker 1: Makes you think, yeah, I think this is the character
Speaker 1: Griel played by Albert Salmi who lived nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety. He was an American character actor. It
Speaker 1: was in a bunch of things. He was in Caddy Shack,
Speaker 1: He was on episodes of the original Twilight Zone and
Speaker 1: Night Gallery. And I think his voice is dubbed in this,
Speaker 1: but he has a very recognized.
Speaker 4: M yeah, but record scratch. The party stops when soldiers
Speaker 4: come riding into the village on horseback, led by Tyrian,
Speaker 4: the captain of the King's Guard, and they're like, we
Speaker 4: need to take Galen off to meet the king. The
Speaker 4: king wants to meet the wizard who delivered them all
Speaker 4: from the power of the dragon, And so we see
Speaker 4: Peter McNichol in front of the king trying to do
Speaker 4: demonstrations of magic. It's not going super well, like he
Speaker 4: tries to levitate a table and just kind of knocks
Speaker 4: stuff all over.
Speaker 2: The place a little bit. Nothing convincing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but this is where we hear the stories that
Speaker 4: I alluded to earlier, where the king explains like, look,
Speaker 4: we have tried to kill the dragon before, my brother
Speaker 4: tried to do it and all it led to was
Speaker 4: horrible reprisals from the dragon. So we have to make
Speaker 4: sure did you really kill the dragon? Is it really dead?
Speaker 4: Galen promises, yes, it is, but the king is suspicious
Speaker 4: of him. He doesn't believe it, so he takes Galen prisoner,
Speaker 4: throws him in the dungeon, takes away his magical ambulet,
Speaker 4: and in the dungeon, Galen meets Princess Elspeth as she
Speaker 4: comes in, saying like, oh, I heard you muttering spells
Speaker 4: in Greek and Latin. It seems like that's not working
Speaker 4: because you know of your amulet. But I speak Greek
Speaker 4: and Latin too. And in this scene they sort of
Speaker 4: talk about what goes on with the dragon, and it's
Speaker 4: revealed that she is naive about how she's been avoiding
Speaker 4: the Dragon's lottery. Galen fills her in like, yeah, your
Speaker 4: dad's covering for you, like your name's not going into
Speaker 4: the lottery.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Where she thinks, I've just I've had the same risk
Speaker 1: the whole time, and you know, I've been lucky.
Speaker 2: But he's like, no, that's.
Speaker 1: That's complete, complete BS. The fix is in obviously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And she goes directly to her father, King Cassiodorus
Speaker 4: and confronts him about this, and so he's he's about
Speaker 4: to sort of have to answer for misleading her about this,
Speaker 4: letting her think that she'd been competing fairly not competing,
Speaker 4: and that she'd had the same fair risk as all
Speaker 4: the other girls. But instead they're interrupted. There's like the
Speaker 4: qua of the Earth and O no Vermothrax is alive
Speaker 4: And in the in the middle here Galen escapes the
Speaker 4: dungeon because the princess comes and frees him. She's she's
Speaker 4: sort of like his revelations have rocked her world, and
Speaker 4: she's like Okay, I gotta let him out of the dungeon,
Speaker 4: and I'm in rebellion mode. Now Galen gets on a
Speaker 4: horse and runs away from the castle. Meanwhile, the villagers
Speaker 4: are led up the mountain in terror by the Christian monk,
Speaker 4: by brother Jacopis, and the Christian tells them this is
Speaker 4: not a dragon, it's a lucifer. But Vermothrax comes out
Speaker 4: of the earth and faces off against the Christian wizard
Speaker 4: here and it is no contest. There is a breath
Speaker 4: of hot wind, and the dragon is so scary.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is another great sequence. This is
Speaker 1: another sequence that del Toro loses his mind over because
Speaker 1: it's just just it's the way it's blocked, the way
Speaker 1: it shot, the way Vermothrax rises up out of these
Speaker 1: flaming pit, this flaming pit with it with these horns,
Speaker 1: like some sort of Satanic figure emerging out of hell,
Speaker 1: and then like it. Very quickly, I think becomes obvious
Speaker 1: to our Christian missionary friend here that he is out
Speaker 1: of his element, that this is not something that he's
Speaker 1: going to be over to be able to overcome with
Speaker 1: his religion and his faith.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is. He is vanquished by the power of evil.
Speaker 4: So we cut to sometime later where we see Tyrian
Speaker 4: arrive at the house of Valerian and her father, and
Speaker 4: Tyrian and his men are searching the village for Galen.
Speaker 4: So they're going around the house like looking in baskets
Speaker 4: and stuff, being like, oh, it's the wizard hiding in here,
Speaker 4: And Tyrian threatens that you know what, because the dragon
Speaker 4: is now so angry that somebody tried to go kill him,
Speaker 4: there's going to need to be an early sacrifice ahead
Speaker 4: of schedule. And you know what, now that everybody knows
Speaker 4: about your daughter, she's going to have to be in
Speaker 4: the lottery too. And they try, they try to find Galen,
Speaker 4: but they don't find him anywhere, so they leave and
Speaker 4: it turns out to he was hiding in like a
Speaker 4: secret compartment under the anvil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, standard issue.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, But here we get a forging the
Speaker 4: weapon sequence where we find about how we find out
Speaker 4: that Valerian's father has created a secret dragon slaying weapon
Speaker 4: that he's got like hidden in this cage that's hidden
Speaker 4: behind a waterfall. That this is really cool. It's like
Speaker 4: this giant spear that he's made. But he never had
Speaker 4: the courage to use it himself. And Galen sees it.
Speaker 4: He says, it's a beautiful weapon, but it will be
Speaker 4: useless unless he unless he has the ambulet back. That's
Speaker 4: the only way he can, like, I think, infuse it
Speaker 4: with the power it needs to fight the dragon.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 4: Then we get the big lottery scene where they're going
Speaker 4: to select who has to face the dragon next and
Speaker 4: who gets picked when they pull the tiles out of
Speaker 4: the big pot. Why it's el Smeth, the princess. The
Speaker 4: king tries to say, like, no, no, no, my minister
Speaker 4: read the name on the tile wrong. Let us draw
Speaker 4: another tile. But all the tiles say Elsbeth. In fact,
Speaker 4: she arranged it that way because she thinks it's only
Speaker 4: fair given that she has been protected unfairly all these
Speaker 4: years past. There's no changing it. She's now selected. The
Speaker 4: king is desperate, trying to talk anybody into helping him
Speaker 4: get out of this, Like he tries to talk Tyrian
Speaker 4: into saying, let's figure something else out. It can't be her,
Speaker 4: But Tyrian's like, yeah, it seems fair to me.
Speaker 1: This is a great sequence, and I love how I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, for plot reasons, they do it this way.
Speaker 1: But also I think it plays into the overall theme
Speaker 1: of the picture. There's this sense that the lottery is
Speaker 1: this thing that, once it has been created, is no
Speaker 1: longer entirely in control, in the control of the king
Speaker 1: and his men, you know, Like there's this energy between
Speaker 1: the king and his men and the crowd, like they're channing,
Speaker 1: stir the tiles, stir the tals with kind of urgency,
Speaker 1: like you know, obviously like stir it up. You've got
Speaker 1: to make sure it's fair, got to make sure it's fair.
Speaker 1: Like it's this great kind of semi chaotic feeling that
Speaker 1: things could get out of hand very easily.
Speaker 4: That's right. It's almost like the people themselves have a
Speaker 4: frenzy for the outcome of the lottery selection. So the
Speaker 4: king feels utterly helpless, like he can't really and it's
Speaker 4: happened in public, so he can't really undo it. So
Speaker 4: he thinks, of the only other thing that occurs to
Speaker 4: him is we have to actually kill the dragon. So
Speaker 4: he catches Galen, having snuck back into the castle looking
Speaker 4: for his amulet. He catches him and he begs him,
Speaker 4: and he says, you can have your amulet back. If
Speaker 4: you kill the dragon and save el Smith. So Galen
Speaker 4: has been given like official sanction. Now we see him
Speaker 4: in the Blacksmith trying to like magically fire the dragon
Speaker 4: slayer weapon, like using the amulet to power up the spear.
Speaker 4: I love the following scene, by the way, there's a
Speaker 4: scene where Valerian goes up up the mountain to collect
Speaker 4: scales from the dragon to make for Galen a dragon
Speaker 4: scale shield that he can use to face firm a threat.
Speaker 4: Oh and also while she's up there, she discovers there
Speaker 4: they're baby dragons in the cave and they are also
Speaker 4: scary and must also be destroyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are not cute, and they, and I say
Speaker 1: this lovingly, they have some real Gromlin energy.
Speaker 2: They did. It's great.
Speaker 1: So this is a definite puppetry used here, but to
Speaker 1: great effect.
Speaker 4: These Verma Thras babies would be popping out of a
Speaker 4: toilet in another movie or another movie cover some VHS
Speaker 4: box art. But also, oh, here we get the culmination
Speaker 4: of a I think, if I'm going to be fully honest,
Speaker 4: a somewhat underdeveloped love story. But you know what, it's fine.
Speaker 4: It's fantasy adventure.
Speaker 1: There's just kind of like acknowledge it, like we we're
Speaker 1: most of the way into this picture. We love each other, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course we.
Speaker 4: Did, right. Galen and Valerian they announced their love with
Speaker 4: the in love with each other. Valerian initially thinks, oh, Galen,
Speaker 4: you must be in love with the princess, but he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I love you a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, silly duck. That relationship hasn't been established either.
Speaker 4: This all leads up to the Great Final Confrontation, where
Speaker 4: Elsbeth is taken up to be sacrificed to the dragon.
Speaker 4: Galen appears and announces his intention to kill the dragon first,
Speaker 4: and everybody runs away in fear, everyone but Tyrian, and
Speaker 4: Tyrian says, you know this is the way, and if
Speaker 4: you intend to interfere with the sacrifice, I will stop you.
Speaker 4: And they fight and initially Galen is not a fighter,
Speaker 4: he's not trained to fight a captain of the King's Guard,
Speaker 4: but through a combination of pluck and luck, he does
Speaker 4: prevail in this duel.
Speaker 1: He also has a magical spear weapon, which he doesn't
Speaker 1: completely know how to use, but it is a magical weapon,
Speaker 1: so he's got like a plus three on this baby.
Speaker 4: Exactly, so the princess. Yeah, it's funny. It's like it's
Speaker 4: a hand to hand combat battle between what would you say,
Speaker 4: like a level six fighter versus a level two sorcerers. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but yeah, he has a magical weapon, so it makes
Speaker 4: up the difference. But it was kind of all for
Speaker 4: nothing here because the princess determined to be a sacrifice.
Speaker 4: She's like, no, it's got to happen. She runs into
Speaker 4: the cave and then Galen runs in after her, and
Speaker 4: in a really shockingly unexpected and horrifying scene, the princess
Speaker 4: is in there just being like eaten up by baby dragons.
Speaker 4: They're just like tearing off her limbs and eating them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have what They've killed her and are now
Speaker 1: like taking her apart.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these little like disgusting little gromlins. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really a daring choice for again, a Disney co produced
Speaker 1: fantasy answer to Star Wars picture. I remember the Yeah,
Speaker 1: the director in commentary with del Toro kind of said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of stuff we got away
Speaker 1: with in this in part because we were making a
Speaker 1: film abroad and you know, so far from from studio heads,
Speaker 1: and so they you know, they weren't getting dailies.
Speaker 2: They didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You know, we had, you know, the way we were
Speaker 1: shooting some of these choices.
Speaker 4: Well, the movie is the more remarkable for it these
Speaker 4: are choices.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Galen goes in and fights the baby dragons, uh,
Speaker 4: and he defeats them pretty easily. But then he goes
Speaker 4: deeper into the cave and finds a burning lake. Now
Speaker 4: that meant something to me when I saw it, but
Speaker 4: apparently Galen doesn't really remember at this point, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: that's significant. It will come up again. But there's a
Speaker 4: big confrontation here between Galen and Vermathrax. They have their
Speaker 4: first big fight and the dragon and the scene is
Speaker 4: finally revealed in all of its hideous glory, and wow, Rob,
Speaker 4: would you like to say anything about what what Vermothrax
Speaker 4: looks like when revealed?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I mean there's so many ways to approach it. I
Speaker 1: mean the simple thing to say is like, this is
Speaker 1: a real dragon, like you feel, Yeah, you can put
Speaker 1: your mind in the appreciating the spec effects and trying
Speaker 1: to see all the things they've done to bring this
Speaker 1: dragon to life. But for most of this it just
Speaker 1: feels like a real creature, and they make so many
Speaker 1: wonderful choices in the design to make that possible, things
Speaker 1: like making sure that is a quadruped that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have like four limbs plus wings. Its front limbs are wings.
Speaker 1: And therefore when it's crawling around in the cave, it's
Speaker 1: moving like a bat.
Speaker 2: On the ground.
Speaker 4: The bat comparison. That's great. The way the wings are
Speaker 4: folded as it crawls.
Speaker 1: Ugh, yeah, yeah. And then the way they've shaped the head.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of a lot of folks
Speaker 1: have pointed out like it has this kind of brow,
Speaker 1: so it has a lot of like I want to say, personality,
Speaker 1: but personality befitting a great beastly dragon like this. You know,
Speaker 1: there is an animal intelligence there.
Speaker 4: It reminds me a bit of a Skexis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a solid comparisons.
Speaker 4: So they fight and they there's a bunch that goes
Speaker 4: on in this fight. They get their jabs in, it
Speaker 4: blows fire and all that, but it's a stalemate here.
Speaker 4: The fight is not fully resolved. And the next day
Speaker 4: Valerian goes up the mountain and she finds Galen unconscious
Speaker 4: on the rocks. She wakes him and takes him back,
Speaker 4: but he is still alive, and so is the dragon.
Speaker 4: So at this point, Valerian's father talks them into leaving
Speaker 4: or Land. He's like, you know, y'all are young, you're
Speaker 4: in love. Just live in peace, go somewhere else and
Speaker 4: share your love, he says. He says, magic magicians, it's
Speaker 4: all fading from the world, all dying out. That makes
Speaker 4: me happy. That means the dragons will be dying out too.
Speaker 4: And they try to leave. They take their stuff and
Speaker 4: they start loading up a boat to go live their
Speaker 4: lives somewhere else. But then something changes. There's a darkness
Speaker 4: growing in the sky and it is a total solar eclipse. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and here's your eclipse tie in the eclipse. I don't
Speaker 4: know if maybe I miss something about this, if they
Speaker 4: said it had any particular magical effect on the dragon.
Speaker 4: But one thing it does seem to do is cause
Speaker 4: Galen to remember that his master Ulric wanted his ashes
Speaker 4: to be thrown into the burning lake, and he remembers
Speaker 4: there was a lake of fire inside the dragon's cave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. My wife watched this movie with me
Speaker 1: for rewatch it. She had seen it before many years ago,
Speaker 1: and afterwards we were like, yeah, did anybody say there
Speaker 1: was going to be an eclipse? Is that factored into
Speaker 1: the plot at all? It does very much feel like
Speaker 1: and then a total So a total solar eclipse happens
Speaker 1: because it looks awesome.
Speaker 4: It does look awesome, and there is a total solar
Speaker 4: eclipse going on for the entire rest of the Showdown
Speaker 4: with the Dragon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's a good, solid twenty minutes of totality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Galen does remember this. He does as he
Speaker 4: was instructed. He goes back up to the Dragon's cave,
Speaker 4: goes inside, throws the ashes into the water, and in
Speaker 4: a cradle of green fire, Ulric is resurrected. He's back.
Speaker 4: The power of the Dragon's fiery lake like brought him
Speaker 4: back from the dead, at least temporarily, so he can
Speaker 4: face the dragon with them.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I wasn't sure this was gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's easy to in retrospect expect this to happen, but
Speaker 1: Ulric's death early in the picture just felt so final
Speaker 1: and so yeah, Mundane like it just the film worked.
Speaker 1: The trick worked here, and I really wasn't expecting him
Speaker 1: to come back.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, you know, back down in the village, this is
Speaker 4: when one of the guys is converted to Christianity, the
Speaker 4: gray old guy, and he's baptizing everybody. Yeah, and then
Speaker 4: we get the final showdown. So now it is Vermathrax
Speaker 4: versus the three of our heroes, Galen, Valerian and Ulrich,
Speaker 4: and so Ulrich goes up on like a mountain peak
Speaker 4: and he's casting down lightning bolts at the dragon and
Speaker 4: the dragon is dive bombing him. Vermathrax is like flying
Speaker 4: by the dragon in the scene, has a kind of
Speaker 4: jet fighter quality to him, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I believe it was one of the
Speaker 1: extras with Phil tipp that talking about, though it might
Speaker 1: have been Phil Tippitt, but I don't think Phil Tippet
Speaker 1: did these effects sequences so much. I mean he was,
Speaker 1: I think therefore it, but he was. I think he
Speaker 1: did with some of the other stuff more. But they
Speaker 1: did talk about how, like most of the scenes of
Speaker 1: the dragon in flight, you're not getting that flapping, sort
Speaker 1: of labored takeoff effect that we've seen in other Dragon films.
Speaker 1: This is a dragon like swooping down from peaks and
Speaker 1: indeed flying with this kind of like fighter jet kind
Speaker 1: of severity, so we have very effective It's.
Speaker 4: Almost like you can hear a jet engine roaring as
Speaker 4: he goes by, and he goes by so fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: A lot of other movie dragons have more of a
Speaker 4: helicopter quality, you know, they just kind of like hover
Speaker 4: around somewhere. This one like swoops, he goes really fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And what Galen and Valierian have been told to do
Speaker 4: is to smash the magical amulet at the right time.
Speaker 4: They're going to know when it's the right time, and
Speaker 4: ultimately Ulric is snatched up by the dragon. He's being
Speaker 4: carried away. They know, okay, it's the time. Now, they
Speaker 4: smash the amulet, and this apparently has like a detonation
Speaker 4: effect on Ulric. That's like the detonator for Ulric's resurrected form,
Speaker 4: and it blows up the dragon. The eclipse ends. Vermicthrax
Speaker 4: is dead. There's a big, gory, charred skeleton laying on
Speaker 4: the ground. And who gets credit. Well, they bring the
Speaker 4: king in. They bring him up in a carriage and
Speaker 4: they hand him a sword and he stands there and
Speaker 4: he just kind of pokes the corpse of the dragon
Speaker 4: and they're like, congratulations, sire.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: He ends up appropriating the church, the Kingship, the rulers,
Speaker 1: as Del Toro puts it, the man co ops everything completely,
Speaker 1: completely claims all the.
Speaker 2: Credit for the victory over the dragon.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right. The now baptized villagers come up and say,
Speaker 4: ah does the church that saved us from the dragon.
Speaker 4: But there's also a nice ending where we see Galen
Speaker 4: and Valuria and they're still in love. They've survived this
Speaker 4: and they get to travel on together and who knows
Speaker 4: what kind of adventures of pagan sorcery they can get
Speaker 4: up to in this rapidly christianizing land.
Speaker 1: The end, yeah, their final there's this final bit where
Speaker 1: they sort of accidentally summon a horse, like a really
Speaker 1: beautiful horse, which is, you know, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: kind of like cheesey ended on a nice note, but
Speaker 1: also I like it. I was talking about this with
Speaker 1: my wife's she was like, yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: there is still magic, it's just a different type of magic,
Speaker 1: you know. And so the world, at least for these
Speaker 1: two characters, is not going to be devoid of magic,
Speaker 1: but maybe magic ends up taking a different form.
Speaker 4: Maybe it increasingly looks less and less like hidden forces
Speaker 4: operating and more and more like luck. Yeah, anyway, that's
Speaker 4: what I have on Dragon Slayer. But I'm glad you
Speaker 4: picked this one, Rob. I really really liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean credit to my wife for that.
Speaker 3: Was.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a number of things for this week,
Speaker 1: and she was like, well, we got to watch an
Speaker 1: Eclipse movie, dude, dragon Slayer, and so I was like like,
Speaker 1: well maybe, and she's like, I'll watch it with you.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, So she doesn't always always watch him
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to ask. So so yeah, this was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Oh and you know, I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention and mention the special effects. I do want
Speaker 1: to call out that one of the main individuals credited
Speaker 1: with the design of the dragon and also the typeface
Speaker 1: was man by the name of David Bunnett, who you know,
Speaker 1: I think also worked in like the video game industry.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's even said that if you look at
Speaker 1: a picture of this guy, the dragon kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a self caricature, Like there's sort of elements of
Speaker 1: his face, like his brow and the dragon. So anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a credit where credit is.
Speaker 2: A du there.
Speaker 1: He had a hand in designing this tremendous dragon whoa
Speaker 1: vermathrax pajorative.
Speaker 4: A finer name has never been conjured.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll go and close it up here then,
Speaker 1: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do
Speaker 1: you have memories of seeing dragons Layer for the first time,
Speaker 1: be that in a theater, on video or like on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon on A and E. I think they
Speaker 1: were they aired it there. I remember seeing promos for it.
Speaker 2: Write in.
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Speaker 1: want to see a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com. It's
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