Dragonslayer is a 1981 live action fantasy movie set in a fictional medieval kingdom. It follows a young wizard (played by Peter MacNicol) who experiences danger and opposition as he attempts to defeat a dragon.
A co-production between Walt Disney Productions and Paramount Pictures, Dragonslayer was more mature and realistic than other Disney films of the period. Because of audience expectations for a more child-friendly film from Disney, the movie's violence and adult themes were somewhat controversial at the time - even though Disney did not hold US distribution rights, which were held by Paramount (it was rated PG in the U.S.; TV showings after 1997 have carried a TV-14 rating).
The film was directed by Matthew Robbins (later director of *batteries not included), from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood. It starred Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, and Caitlin Clarke.
Dragonslayer also featured then-unknown actor Ian McDiarmid as the minor character Brother Jacopus. McDiarmid's next film role after Dragonslayer would be that of the villain Palpatine in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, a role which he would reprise in the subsequent Star Wars films.
The special effects were created at Industrial Light and Magic, where Phil Tippett co-developed an animation technique called go motion for the film. Go motion is a variation on stop-motion animation, and its use in Dragonslayer led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Visual Effects; it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark (another Paramount film). The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Original Music Score; Chariots of Fire took the award. Including the hydraulic 40 foot model, 16 dragon puppets were used for the role of Vermithrax, each one made for different movements; flying, crawling, fire breathing etc.[1]
The film was also nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Once again, it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In October 2003, Dragonslayer was released on DVD in the U.S. by Paramount Home Video.
Plot
A sixth century post-Roman kingdom called Urland[2] is being terrorized by a 400 year old androgenous dragon named Vermithrax Pejorative.[3] An expedition led by a young man called Valerian (Clarke) comes to the house of the sorcerer Ulrich (Richardson) of Craggenmoor, the last of his kind. They explain that their king, Casiodorus (Peter Eyre), who is desperate to appease the dragon, offers it a virgin chosen in a lottery twice a year. The wizard foresaw their arrival and his own death but agrees to help. Before he can do so, a brutish centurion from Urland named Tyrian (Hallam), who has followed the expedition under orders from the king, turns up to intimidate him. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. He dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol) and elderly servant Hodge (Sydney Bromley). They burn Ulrich's body and place the ashes in a leather pouch.
Galen decides to take the job himself when the wizard's magical amulet begins to obey his Latin incantations, and travels to Urland with the villagers and Hodge in tow. On the way, he accidentally discovers Valerian to be a female when he catches her bathing in the nude: her father passed her as a man to spare her the lottery. The poorer villagers suspect that the daughters of wealthy or powerful people are secretly kept out of it as well. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge. Galen witnesses the murder through a vision in water but is not fast enough to intervene.
Arriving in Urland, Galen inspects the dragon's lair and attempts to seal its entrance by causing rocks to fall from the cliff. Manipulating the amulet inexpertly he nearly kills the whole delegation and himself but apparently succeeds in entombing the monster. The village celebrates in the evening, and Valerian abandons her manly disguise. The feast is interrupted by Tyrian who drags Galen to the court of King Casiodorus. After seeing Galen's clumsy efforts at magic tricks, King Casiodorus guesses that he is not a real wizard and complains that his attack may have angered the dragon instead of killing it, as his own brother and predecessor once did. The king then confiscates the amulet and has Galen locked away. His daughter Elspeth (Chloe Salaman) comes to taunt Galen, but is shocked when he informs her of rumours the lottery is rigged. Casiodorus is unable to lie convincingly when she confronts him.
Meanwhile the dragon has stormed its way through the rubble and emerges from its lair with a vengeance. An earthquake ensues, and Elspeth releases Galen in the confusion. Galen narrowly escapes on horseback, but without the amulet. The village priest, Brother Jacopus (Ian McDiarmid), leads his congregation to confront the dragon, denouncing it as the Devil, but the dragon incinerates him and then heads for the village. When Galen returns to the village, he finds that Vermithrax has already begun to retaliate by setting it on fire. Valerian and her father, Simon the blacksmith (Emrys James), conceal Galen from the king's soldiers. Galen still wants to kill the dragon, but must steal back the amulet from the king to do so.
When the lottery begins anew, Princess Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen, in reparation. The King is appalled but unable to oppose her decision. When shortly afterwards Galen is caught searching the king's quarters for the amulet, the monarch returns it to him so that he might save Elspeth. Then, with Simon's help, Galen uses the amulet to enchant a heavy spear (dubbed Sicarious Dracorum, or "Dragonslayer") that the blacksmith has forged strong enough to pierce the dragon's armored hide. Meanwhile, Valerian gathers pieces of dragon hide and uses them to make Galen a shield. She discovers that Vermithrax has a brood of dragonets.
Galen sets out to kill the dragon and rescue the princess. Valerian tries to discourage him, but gives him the shield. They admit to having feelings for each other. As Galen attempts to rescue Princess Elspeth, he is confronted by Tyrian, who demands that the sacrifice be made to save the kingdom. Although Tyrian is more skilled, Galen uses the supernaturally sharp spear to impale him. The Princess however, instead of fleeing, has descended into the dragon's cave to her death. Galen follows her and finds the young dragons feasting upon her corpse. He kills them and then finds Vermithrax nesting by an underground lake of fire. He manages to wound the monster but the spear is broken and only Valerian's shield saves him from incineration. Vermithrax loses Galen but finds her children's bodies and flies away to rampage.
After his failure to kill Vermithrax, Valerian convinces Galen to leave the village with her, with her father's blessing. Simon believes the time for magic and dragons is over; like other villagers he is turning to the newly arrived religion of Christianity. As the two lovers prepare to leave, the amulet gives Galen a vision that explains his teacher's final wishes. Ulrich had asked that his ashes be spread over "burning water", and Galen realizes that the wizard had planned the whole thing. He was too frail to make the journey himself, so had his servants make the trip for him by carrying his ashes. Galen returns to the cave, spreads the ashes and speaks an incantation, and the wizard is resurrected from the flames of the burning lake.
Despite the disappointment of realizing he had no powers after all, but was merely channeling those of his master via the amulet, Galen is overjoyed to have him returned. Ulrich however reveals that he is only back for a short time and that Galen must destroy the amulet when the time is right. The wizard then transports himself to a mountaintop and attracts the dragon's attention. The sun is eclipsed. After a brief battle, the monster grabs the old man and flies away with him. Galen crushes the amulet with a rock, causing the wizard to explode and obliterate the dragon.
Inspecting the wreckage, the villagers credit God with the victory, while the king arrives and drives a sword into the dragon's broken carcass to claim the glory for himself. As Galen and Valerian leave Urland together, he confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet. But when he says, out loud, "I just wish we had a horse", as if on cue, a white horse appears to take the incredulous lovers away.
Cast
Production
Conception
According to Hal Barwood, he and Matthew Robins got the inspiration for Dragonslayer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence in Fantasia, and later came up with a story after researching St. George and the dragon. Barwood and Robin rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world in order to give the film more realism: "our film has no knights in shining armour, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphonous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead we set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the Roman departure from Britain, prior to the arrival of christianity. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline of the film on June 25, 1979 and finished it in early august. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, becoming the two studio's second joint effort after Popeye.[2]
Dragon design and realisation
Ken Ralston's flying model of Vermithrax Pejorative; "The Wyrm of
Thrace who makes things worse"
25% of the film's budget went into the special effects to bring the dragon to life. Graphic artist David Bunnet was assigned to design the look of the dragon, and was fed ideas on the mechanics on how the dragon would move, and then rendered the concepts on paper. It was decided early on in production that as the film's most important sequence would have been the final battle, it was deemed necessary to design a dragon with an emphasis on its flying abilities. Bunnet also designed the dragon to have a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid creating something like the titular creature from Alien, which he believed was "too hideous to look at". After Bunnet handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, it was decided that the dragon would have to have been realised with a wide variety of techniques: the resulting dragon on film is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett of ILM finalised the dragon's design, and sculpted a reference model which Danny Lee of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for closeup shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished building a sixteen foot head and neck assembley, a twenty foot tail, thighs and legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a thirty foot wide wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios outside London in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747. Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning both on and off-set effects with various special effects specialists. Dennis Muren,the effects cameraman stated "we knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absoloutely stunned". After the completion of principle shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers and by hand, thus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression. Phil Tippett built a model for the scenes in which the dragon would be required to walk. Tippett did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure rather than in between as was once the standard. This first time process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films. Ken Ralston was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminium skeleton in order to give it a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying in order to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles in order to convey the sensation of flight.[3]
Casting
Peter McNicol first met Matthew Robins while waiting to audition for the pilot film of Breaking Away, and agreed to take part in Dragonslayer, despite having a dislike for performing magic tricks. McNicol had to learn horse riding, both English style and bareback for the role. McNicol found this difficult, saying that "They took away my stirrups, they took away my reins and whipped the horse, and then they told me to windmill my arms and turn a complete circle in the saddle. Then they took away the saddle!" He later took on vocal coaching in order to disguise his Texas accent, and took magic lessons from British prestidigitator Harold Taylor, who had previously performed for the Windsor family.[2]
Caitlin Clarke was initially hesitant to involve herself in the film, as she was preparing to audition for a play in Chicago. Her agent insisted however, and after doing an audition tape, was called back for more tests. Clarke failed them however, but did managed to pass after doing another test at the insistence of Matthew Robins. She got on well with Ralph Richardson, and stated that he taught her more in one rehearsal than in years of acting classes.[2]
Set design
Elliot Scott was hired to design the sets of the film's sixth century world. He temporarily converted the 13th century Dolwyddelan Castle into Ulrich's ramshackle sixth century fortress, much to the surprise of the locals. Next, Scott proceeded to fabricate the entire village of Swanscombe on a farmside outside London. Although Scott extensively researched medieval architecture in the British Museum and his own library, Scott took some artistic liberties in creating the thatched roof houses, the granary, Simon's house and smithy and Casiodorus' castle, as he was unable to find enough information on how they would look exactly. Scott then built the interior of the dragon's lair, using 25,000 cubic feet of polystyrene and 40 tons of Welsh slate and shale. The shots of the Welsh and Scottish landscapes were extended through the use of over three dozen matte paintings.[2]
Shooting Locations in North Wales
Galen (Peter McNicol) & Hodge (Sydney Bromley) rehearsing for the pack levitation scene. Mathew Robbins (Director) can be seen monitoring through the camera.
Capel Curig,
North Wales
Nearly all of the outdoor scenes were shot in North Wales. The final scene was shot in Skye, Scotland.
- Dolwyddelan Castle was used for all outdoor shots of Ulrich's Castle. This includes the arrival of the delegation from Urland, the arrival of guards from Urland, Ulrich's first death scene and funeral burning.
Many locals were hired as extras during this scene.
- The external long shots of the dragon's lair were of the main face of Tryfan, from within yards of the A5, opposite Llyn Ogwen. The lair was shot looking upwards from the road, towards the broken face of Tryfan, Nant Ffrancon.
- Shots of Galen and Hodge on the trek to Urland were shot on the old road from Cobdens to Bryn Engan, in Capel Curig.
- The early morning camping scenes on the trek to Urland, Tyrian's shooting of Hodge, and Hodge's death scene all take place on a 500 yard section of Fairy Glen between Betws-y-Coed and Penmachno.
- Galen fleeing on horseback from Casiodorus's castle was shot high above Llyn Crafnant.
- The scene where Galen Bradwarden sees an apparition in the lake was shot at the bottom end of Llyn Crafnant.
- The scenes where Valerian delivers a shield made from the Dragon's scales and the intimate scene between Valerian and Galen were shot in the boulder field below Tryfan, about 300 yards from the A5 near the Llyn Ogwen Car Park.
- The procession scenes in which victims are transported to the Dragon's lair were shot on Gelli behind the main shop in Capel Curig.
Costumes
The costumes were designed by Anthony Mendelson, who consulted the British Museum, the London Library and his own reference files in order to make the clothing evoke the designs of the early Middle Ages. Mendelson designed the costumes to be roughly stitched and the utilised colours were ones which would have only been possible with the vegetable dyes then in use. The costumes of Casiodorus and his court were designed to be finely silked, as opposed to the coarsely woven clothes of the Urlanders.[2]
Musical score
The film's score was composed by Alex North, Dragonslayer being his final performance. The score's linear conception was developed through transparently layered, polyphonic orchestral texture dominated by a medieval style modal harmony. The score was largely based on five major thematic concepts: 1) the suffering of the Urlanders; 2) a "magic" motif; 3) the amulet; 4) the sacrificial virgins; 5) the relationship between Galen and Valerian. North was disappointed by the resulting dragon scenes, as they did not use the entirety of the pieces he composed for them. He later stated that he had written "a very lovely waltz for when the dragon first appears, with just a slight indication that this may not be a bad dragon". The waltz was scrapped in favour of tracks used earlier in the movie. Despite this, the score was widely praised. In an article of the New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the score was a "beauty", and that "at times, the music and the fiery dragon seem one". Royal S. Brown of the Fanfare magazine praised the soundtrack as "one of the best scores of 1981".[4]
Box office and reception
The film grossed just over $14 million in the U.S.[5] with an estimated budget of USD$18 million. Often regarded as a commercial failure, it later became a cult classic on home video.
Novelization
A novelization was written by Wayland Drew which delves deeper into the background of many of the characters. Expansions upon the film's plot include details such as these:
- As an infant, Galen was handed to Ulrich by his parents due to their fear of his magical abilities. Ulrich took him as an apprentice, but was concerned with the lad's lack of focus, which usually resulted in the unintentional creation of bizarre, dream-inspired creatures.
- A vision glimpsed by Ulrich in his scrying bowl implies that sorcerers could have been responsible for the creation of dragons. This is only briefly alluded to in the film. It is further mentioned that the sorcerer who created dragons also fashioned the magical amulet which Galen wears through most of the story.
- The revelation that Vermithrax, while physically androgynous, nevertheless required copulation with another dragon for fertilization.
- It is revealed that the lottery's standards for eligibility fluctuated, and several married women and mothers were sacrificed too, Valerian's mother being among them. Her death was the price Simon had to pay in order to fashion Sicarius Dracorum, which was done with the assistance of Ulrich himself.
Impact
During the filming of Return of the Jedi, the ILM crew jokingly placed a model of one of the dragons from Dragonslayer in the arms of the rancor model and took a picture. The picture was included in the book Star Wars: Chronicles. A creature based on the appearance of this dragon appears in one of Jabba the Hutt's monster pens in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.
Guillermo del Toro has stated that along with Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Vermithrax is his favourite cinematic dragon.[6] He further stated that “One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer [a 1981 movie]. The design of the Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."[7]
External links
References
- ^ Weird Worlds, 1981
- ^ a b c d e f No Land is an Urland- The Creation of the World of Dragonslayer by Danny Fingeroth from Dragonslayer- The Official Marvel Comics Adaptation of the Spectacular Paramount/Disney Motion Picture!, Marvel Super Special Vol.1, No. 20, published by Marvel Comics Group, 1981
- ^ a b Enter: The Dragon by Danny Fingeroth from Dragonslayer- The Official Marvel Comics Adaptation of the Spectacular Paramount/Disney Motion Picture!, Marvel Super Special Vol.1, No. 20, published by Marvel Comics Group, 1981
- ^ Alex North, film composer: a biography, with musical analyses of a Streetcar named desire, Spartacus, The misfits, Under the volcano, and Prizzi's honor by Sanya Shoilevska Henderson and John Williams, McFarland, 2003, ISBN 0786414707
- ^ Dragonslayer (1981)
- ^ An Unexpected Party Chat transcript now available! from Weta Holics
- ^ The Best (and Worst) Movie Dragons of All Time! Posted on 09 March 2009 by Brent Hartinger, Editor
