Dragonslayer is a 1981 American dark fantasy film directed by Matthew Robbins from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood. It stars Peter MacNicol in his feature film debut, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, and Caitlin Clarke. It was a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, where Paramount handled North American distribution and Disney handled international distribution through Buena Vista International. The story is set in a fictional medieval kingdom where a young sorcerer encounters challenges as he hunts a dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative.
It is the second joint production between Paramount and Disney, after Popeye (1980), and is more mature than most contemporary Disney films. Because the audience expected the film to be solely children's entertainment, the violence, adult themes and brief nudity were somewhat controversial, though Disney did not hold the North American distribution rights. The film was rated PG in the U.S. Like The Black Hole (1979), the version of the film broadcast on the Disney Channel was edited to remove two scenes.
The special effects were created at Industrial Light and Magic, the first use of ILM outside of a Lucasfilm production. Phil Tippett had co-developed an animation technique there for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) called go motion, a variation on stop motion. This led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark, the only other visual effects nominee that year, whose special effects were also provided by ILM. Including the hydraulic model, the dragon consists of 16 puppets dedicated to flying, crawling, or breathing fire.Ronan, Margaret (1981), "The Vermithrax Pejorative Story: Behind the Scenes at the Making of Dragonslayer", Weird Worlds
The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but it performed poorly at the box office, grossing $14.1 million worldwide against a production budget of $18 million. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, which went to Chariots of Fire. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, again given to Raiders of the Lost Ark. On October 21, 2003, Dragonslayer was released on DVD in the United States by Paramount Home Entertainment. The film was re-released in remastered format on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on March 21, 2023, in the U.S. by Paramount Home Entertainment.
Plot Urland, a sub-Roman British kingdom near the River Ur, is besieged by the dragon Vermithrax Pejorative. To appease the dragon, King Casiodorus offers it virgin girls selected every equinox by lottery. A delegation led by a young Urlander named Valerian goes to Cragganmore to seek help from Ulrich, the last sorcerer. Tyrian, the captain of Casiodorus's Royal Guard, doubts Ulrich's abilities and challenges him to demonstrate his power. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers, but is killed in the process. Ulrich's servant Hodge cremates the sorcerer's body and places the ashes in a leather pouch.
Ulrich's young apprentice, Galen Bradwarden, is selected by the sorcerer's magical amulet as its next owner and he joins the delegation. En route to Urland, he discovers that Valerian is a woman, disguised to avoid being selected in the lottery. To discourage the expedition, Tyrian mortally wounds Hodge who, before dying, hands Galen Ulrich's ashes and reveals that the sorcerer wanted them spread over "burning water".
In Urland, Galen magically seals the entrance to Vermithrax's lair with a rockslide. Tyrian apprehends Galen and takes him to Castle Morgenthorme, where Casiodorus accuses the young sorcerer of having provoked rather than killed Vermithrax. Casiodorus confiscates the amulet and imprisons Galen. His daughter, Princess Elspeth, visits Galen, who mentions rumors that the lottery is rigged; it excludes her name and those others whose families are rich enough to bribe Casiodorus into disqualifying their daughters. Casiodorus cannot lie convincingly when Elspeth confronts him over this.
Meanwhile, Vermithrax escapes its prison, causing an earthquake which allows Galen to escape from his cell. A travelling holy man, Brother Jacopus, leads his congregation to confront Vermithrax, denouncing it as the Devil. Vermithrax incinerates him and then heads for Swanscombe, burning all in its path.
When the lottery begins anew to placate the dragon, Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen. Desperate, Casiodorus returns the amulet to Galen so that he might save Elspeth. To rescue Elspeth, Galen arms himself with a fireproof shield made from Vermithrax's shed scales and a magically enchanted spear called Sicarius Dracorum (). While attempting to save Elspeth, he fights and kills Tyrian. Elspeth, however, descends into Vermithrax's cave, wanting to make amends for her prior exclusion from the lottery. Galen follows her and finds young dragons feasting on her corpse. He slays them and proceeds to find Vermithrax resting within an underground lake of fire. He wounds Vermithrax, but the spear's shaft is broken in the battle and only his shield saves him from incineration.
Valerian convinces Galen to leave Swanscombe with her; as they prepare to depart, the amulet gives Galen a vision of the "burning water" within Vermithrax's cave. Galen realizes that Ulrich planned his own death and cremation, being too old and frail to make the journey himself. Galen returns to the cave and spreads the ashes over the fiery lake, thus resurrecting Ulrich. The old sorcerer reveals that his time is short, and that Galen must destroy the amulet "when the time is right". Ulrich then transports himself to a mountaintop, summons a storm and confronts Vermithrax. In the ensuing battle, Vermithrax snatches Ulrich and flies away with him. Cued by Ulrich, Galen crushes the amulet with a rock, causing the sorcerer's body to explode and kill Vermithrax, which falls from the sky.
Casiodorus arrives and drives a sword into Vermithrax's carcass to claim the glory for himself while the villagers, newly converted to Christianity, claim God as their hero. While leaving Urland with Valerian, Galen confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet, and regrets not having a horse. A white horse then appears, insinuating that the amulet's power is now within Galen. The couple mounts the horse and ride away.
Cast
Peter MacNicol as Galen Bradwarden Caitlin Clarke as Valerian of Swanscombe Ralph Richardson as Ulrich of Cragganmore John Hallam as Tyrian Peter Eyre as King Casiodorus Ulfilas Albert Salmi as Greil (dubbed by Norman Rodway) Sydney Bromley as Hodge Chloe Salaman as Princess Elspeth Ulfilas Emrys James as Simon of Swanscombe, Valerian's father Roger Kemp as Horsrick, Casiodorus's Chamberlain Ian McDiarmid as Brother Jacopus Ken Shorter as Jerbul
Production Conception According to Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins and he got the inspiration for Dragonslayer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence in Fantasia. They later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robbins rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world to give the film more realism: "Our film has no knights in shining armor, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead, they 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 end of Roman rule in Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline on June 25, 1979, and completed 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 Pictures, becoming the two studios' second joint effort after Popeye (1980).Fingeroth, Danny, 1981, The Making of Dragonslayer in Dragonslayer - The Official Marvel Comics Adaptation of the Spectacular Paramount/Disney Motion Picture, Marvel Super Special, 1, 20, Marvel Comics Group, 1981
Dragon
About 25% of the film's budget went into the dragon's special effects. Graphic artist David Bunnett was assigned to design the look, and was fed ideas on the movement mechanics, and then rendered the concepts on paper. They decided early to emphasize flying, because the most important sequence is the final battle. Bunnett gave it a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid the creature from Alien, which he believed was "too hideous to look at".
After Bunnett handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, the dragon design used a wide variety of techniques. The final creature is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett of ILM finalized the design, and sculpted a reference model, which Danny Lee of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for close-up shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished a 16-foot head and neck assembly, a 30-foot tail, thighs, legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a 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 on- and off-set effects with various 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 absolutely stunned."
After the completion of principal shooting, a special-effects team of 80 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 head measured 8 ft in length. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers, and by handthus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expressions. Real World War II-era flamethrowers were used for the dragon's fire-breathing effects. The animals used for the dragon's vocalizations included lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, alligators, pigs, camels, and elephants.
Phil Tippett built a model for the dragon's walking scenes. He did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model that would move during each exposure, rather than in between, as was once the standard. This process, named go motion by Tippett, was tested with motion control in The Empire Strikes Back. To make the motion even smoother, they decided to use a motorized rod puppet with a computer program that recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, which added motion blur and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop-motion films.The Best of Star Wars Insider Volume 4
Ken Ralston was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminum skeleton for a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying 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 to convey the sensation of flight.
Casting