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