Reeling Backward: "Dragonslayer" (1981)

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a brief golden period for fantasy filmmaking. It arrived just I was coming of age, playing Dungeons & Dragons and delving into movies, novels and comic books.

It was a great time to be a kid with an imagination bent toward orcs and magic chainmail armor.

(I mean, wasn't every 8-year-old checking out books on Norse mythology from the adult section of the library?)

The content of these movies straddled the line between fluffy fantasies geared toward kids and hard-R adult adventures -- with "Conan the Barbarian," "Excalibur" and "Highlander" representing the apotheosis of the mature fare in terms of budget and ambition.

A lot of the kiddie stuff was just dreadful, which I think ended up dooming the genre as popular entertainment for a good long while. Parents were uncomfortable with small children watching movies replete with death and magic, and teens and young adults were turned off by the rigorously family-friendly nature of stuff like "The NeverEnding Story."

Straddling the line between these polar ends with the perfect mix of whimsy and terror was "Dragonslayer."

A terrible commercial flop when it came out, it was a Disney film at a time when they were branded entirely as a production house for children's movies. So despite its tame PG rating -- prior to the advent of PG-13 three years later -- the healthy servings of violence, blood, vaguely anti-religious themes, fearsome special effects creatures and even a little gore and nudity came as a shock to parents who brought their families expecting another "Herbie Goes Bananas."

It's largely remembered now for its pre-CGI dragon special effects, which still look amazing despite the occasional herky-jerkiness of stop-motion animation. Fully one-quarter of the film's $14 million budget went toward the dragon, designed by David Bunnett and a notable early achievement by George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic work on a non-Star Wars film.

The dragon was even given its own name: Vermithrax Pejorative, which roughly translates from Latin as "the worm of Thrace who makes things worse." Director Matthew Robbins, who co-wrote the screenplay with Hal Barwood, expertly teases out our early glimpses of the black beast, much as Steven Spielberg did with "Jaws," only revealing bits at a time till near the end.

It's hard to look at more recent depictions of dragons such as in "Game of Thrones" or "The Hobbit" without seeing the snaky, horned influence of Vermithrax. Cinematically speaking, he is the godfather of flying wyrms.

The story has a theme common to old-school fantasy fiction: the idea that the innate magic of the world is fading, and we are passing from colorful mythology into staid history. There are no hobbits or elves in this story, and all the great sorcerers have died save Ralph Richardson's Ulrich of Cragganmore. The robed priests of the "new" religion, aka Christianity, are becoming commonplace.

One thing I had never noticed before this most recent viewing is that actor Ian McDiarmid, aka Emperor Palpatine himself, plays the arrogant priest who defies the dragon in an early scene and is burnt to a crisp for his efforts. His growl when he curses Vermithrax as a "foul beast" gave him away.

The star of the show is Peter MacNicol playing Galen Bradwarden, the young apprentice to Ulrich. MacNicol had that look very popular for sensitive male movie characters of the time: high-voiced, effeminate features, meek stature and a nimbus of light-brown-to-dark-blond curls -- a sort of golden halo/afro. See Christopher Makepeace, Chris Atkins or Dennis Christopher from "Breaking Away."

MacNicol actually auditioned for the latter role, but ended up making his film debut in "Dragonslayer." He's been a busy actor in film and television ever since.

I like his mix of brash confidence and crippling sense of self-doubt, using one to hide the other. Galen is utterly subservient to Ulrich, but when the master is killed the apprentice becomes a case study in unearned courage.

The story is pretty straightforward: a delegation of peasants from the kingdom of Urland travel to Cragganmore to enlist the aid of Ulrich to kill the dragon, which has plagued their land for generations.

After multiple failures at killing the beast failed, the calculating current king, Casiodorus (Peter Eyre), has implemented a lottery system in which virgin girls are sacrificed to the dragon twice a year. The common people have grown fed up with this arrangement -- especially as none of the royal or rich folks' daughters have ever been picked over the ensuing decades.

Vermithrax is never depicted speaking, but appears to have at least a base level of intelligence above that of a simple beast. It apparently abides by the lottery, refraining from raiding the countryside as long as regular meals show up.

I say "it" because the dragon's gender is never clearly defined. It's eventually revealed to have a trio of young offspring, so Vermithrax could be female -- raising the question of when it mated with a male -- or dragons reproduce asexually. It seems the dragon is cagey enough to accept the lottery arrangement to mitigate any threats while raising its brood to maturity.

Examining scales and a tooth collected from the mouth of the lair by the leader of the peasants, the willful boy Valerian, Ulrich deduces that the dragon is quite ancient:

"When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain, constant pain. It grows decrepit, crippled, pitiful... spiteful!"

This would seem to set up an epic clash: the last of the great wizards versus the last of the mighty dragons.

Of course, things change when the king's malevolent general, Tyrian -- played by John Hallam, with a creased, dark visage made for cinematic villainy -- shows up to nip this little insurgency in the bud. He challenges Ulrich's bonafides, prompting the old magic user to cast a spell on a dagger and invite Tyrian to plunge it into his breast.

Ulrich falls dead, his body is cremated in a sorcerous green fire, and Galen decides to take up the crusade for himself. The villagers are contemptuous of the young upstart, but are impressed when he manages to cause a rockslide to bury the solitary opening to the dragon's lair, trapping it. (Though not for long, as we shall see.)

I'm always intrigued how the logistics of magic use are depicted in various works of fantasy fiction. In some, such as Middle-Earth, there seem to be no specific limits on a wizard's abilities, other than what the storytelling situation demands. Others, like the Harry Potter series, establish a lot of rules and then ignore or break them as needed.

The spellcasters of "Dragonslayer" lie somewhere in the middle. They effect their magic through Latin incantations and hand-waving prestidigitations. Through this they can do simple things like telekinesis, lighting or snuffing out fires, etc. For more complex divinations, they employ chemical reagents, staves and the like.

The single "magic item" in this universe is Ulrich's amulet, which appears as an unassuming whitish hexahedron jewel with a dragon's claw setting and a leather loop to be worn as a necklace. Before allowing himself to be slain, Ulrich hands the amulet over to Galen. When the youngster assumes the quest, he uses the artifact to focus and/or magnify his own nascent powers.

There are no spoiler warnings after nearly 40 years, so I'll cut to the chase to talk about how Ulrich is resurrected through the power of the amulet, and its destruction results in the magnificent explosion of his body, dealing the killing blow to Vermithrax. It turns out Ulrich's entire enlistment of Galen was a ruse, as he knew his aging body could not make the long journey to Urland.

When you think about it, he used Galen quite badly, leveraging the boy's ambitions to be the inheritor of Ulrich's power in service to his own methods. Galen ends the movie dispossessed, his dreams snuffed... though he garners other rewards.

I wonder if this is what Ulrich planned all along, or if the appearance of Tyrian unexpectedly presented an elegant mode to transport his form from here to there.

Ulrich is shown having a certain amount of foresight -- he knows who the villagers are and what their mission is before they can say more than a handful of words -- so my guess is he had been planning for these events for some time. I would bet he created the amulet not too long before in order to temporarily house his essence.

The other big reveal of the movie is that Valerian, played by stage actress Caitlin Clarke, is actually a young woman. Her widower father, the blacksmith Simon (Emrys James), disguised her at birth as a boy in order to avoid the virgin lottery. It's an arguably passable depiction with Clarke's lovely, slightly androgynous features, paigeboy haircut and deep, resonant voice.

Once the ruse is abandoned, during the brief time the dragon is believed dead, many other Urlanders comment upon the cleverness of Simon's trick. But my guess is there would've been dozens or even hundreds of such cross-gender imposters.

It's left fuzzy why only females are chosen for sacrifice -- I doubt Vermithrax would be so choosy about its twice-annual meals. Certainly it would not care if they're virgins -- speaking of which, how in the world is that standard held to account?

This ingenious lottery system would seem to have the effect of prompting girls to cross-dress, marry quickly, have sex at an early age or lie about it.

It's a fairly small cast of characters for a movie with a relatively epic scale. The only other three notable ones are Sydney Bromley as Hodge, Ulrich's equally ancient, cantankerous serving man; Albert Salmi as Greil, a testy, doubting Thomas villager who ends up taking on the mantle of the local priest with greater success than his predecessor; and Chloe Salaman as Princess Elspeth, Casiodorus' surprisingly idealistic daughter.

The depiction of women in the movie is a mix of progressive and reactionary values indicative of the early 1980s. In their own ways Valerian and Elspeth are quite headstrong and contemptuous of the traditional power structures of men.

Elspeth acts with her own agency, freeing Galen from her father's dungeon upon learning the lottery is rigged. She also sacrifices herself to the dragon in the name of equanimity, conspiring to put her name on all the tiles of the lottery to make up for having been held off it for so long.

Valerian retains a certain glum charm, although the character loses a lot of steam after "converting" to womanhood. She grows resentful of Galen's admiration of Elspeth's virtue, exhibiting passive-aggressive behavior toward the boy she likes until he finally gives in.

The penultimate battle between Galen and Vermithrax, and the final one with Ulrich tagging in, retain every ounce of the power and glory they had in 1981. Stripped of the amulet, Galen uses a heavy metal spear forged long ago by Simon -- which he dubs Sicarius Dracorum, thus providing the film's title -- and a shield of dragon scales made by Valerian.

There's quite a healthy disgorgement of the dragon's blood after Galen stabs it in the back of the head and neck, which along with the earlier revelation of Elspeth's dismembered body, heartily test the limits of that PG rating.

Ulrich, revived from his ashes in the lake of burning water where Vermithrax resides, does battle from atop a high mountain, calling forth lightning to wound the creature and even resisting its fiery breath. Of course, he's just trying to goad the beast into carrying him away in its talons, presumably for a savored meal.

A lot of movies age poorly -- like Ulrich and Vermithrax, their power fades with time and the advent of the latest usurpers. But for my money "Dragonslayer" is every bit the thrilling piece of imagination it was almost four decades past.

It may be too gruesome to deserve the label of "family entertainment." But like the best fantasy it plucks at our dreams of what could be.

Reeling Backward: "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings" (1976)

"The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings" is a notable watershed film, and not just for having one of the longest titles anyone has ever seen.

This 1976 drama/comedy highlighted largely forgotten portions of the history of cinema, baseball and the city of Indianapolis. For starters, it's one of the few modern mainstream movies you can point to in which every single major character is black. A few white people appear, but they're tiny supporting parts or backgrounders (often stepping forward to spew a racial epithet and then leave).

Even the villainous roles are filled by black actors, from the odious power-hungry team owner to the grim-faced goons he employs to keep the uppity players in line. 

Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor provide the star power, with the likes of Stan Shaw and Mabel King rounding out a strong supporting cast.

A lot of people know about Negro League baseball, but not how it ended. With the integration of the sport accelerating rapidly, the league largely ended as a competitive endeavor by the mid-1950s. Many operations continued as barnstorming entertainment spectacles, however, often featuring ex-Negro League stars like Satchel Paige.

Writer William Brashler based his novel on one such outfit, the Indianapolis Clowns. The  Clowns were the last surviving team of the Negro Leagues, and continued performing exhibition games until the mid-1980s. A young Hank Aaron played on the team before being called up to the big leagues. The Clowns operated as sort of a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters, doing tricks and jokes in between the baseball, fully living up to their name.

(If you're offended at the team moniker, remember that a lot of Negro League teams had overtly racial names: the Birmingham Black Barons, Atlanta Black Crackers, Winfield Devils, etc.)

Writing partners Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins were brought in to turn the book into a script. They had just gotten their big break with "The Sugarland Express" for Steven Spielberg; other notable credits include "MacArthur" and the immortal "Dragonslayer."

Director John Badham started out in television, and this film marked his feature film directorial debut. The following year he made "Saturday Night Fever," and would go on to a busy career in the 1980s and '90s, including "Short Circuit," "WarGames," "Stakeout" and "Blue Thunder." Closing in on age 80, he's still busy in TV today, including directing a number of episodes of the series "Supernatural."

It should be noted the entire creative team was white guys, though Berry Gordy served as producer for the film, which was a joint production of his Motown Productions and Universal Pictures.

Set in 1939, the story is about a pair of Negro League stars who chafe at the onerous treatment of their team owners and resolve to start their own exhibition team, with all proceeds split equally amongst the members. Williams plays Bingo Long, a veteran star pitcher loosely based on Satchel Paige. He's in his prime but feels the pull of the years, and jumps at the chance to have something of their own.

The impetus is the latest assault by St. Louis Ebony Aces owner Sallison Potter (Ted Ross), a mortuary man who gives his players only slightly better treatment than the stiffs who come in his door. Rainbow (DeWayne Jessie), a young hitter, is knocked out cold by a beanball pitch and rendered unable to play or even speak. Potter collects $5 each from the pay of each player to buy the bus ticket home for Rainbow, without even so much as a thank-you or may-I.

Bingo's best friend is Leon Carter (Jones), a catcher and power hitter inspired by Josh Gibson. He's a bit older and a bit wiser, and first plants the seeds of this diamond field rebellion by quoting from W. E. B. Du Bois about controlling the means of production.

Before you know it, they're all piled into Bingo's fancified jalopy, with rainbow-colored uniforms and a two-stepping march worked up for the ride into each new town to draw a crowd and parade them to the baseball field. Walter Murchman (John McCurry) is also invited along even though all the other players hate him, because he has the second car they'll need to get around.

Other All-Stars include "Fat" Sam Popper (Leon Wagner), who's barely even pudgy by today's standards; Champ Chambers (Jophery C. Brown); Tony Burton as Isaac, a bald-headed player whose duties on his previous team included catering to the very personal demands of the female team owner; and "Esquire Joe" Calloway (Stan Shaw), a 19-year-old wunderkind they pick up along the road, who ends up being called up to a white farm team in the end.

Pryor has a supporting role as Charlie Snow, who straightens his hair and tries to pass himself off as a Cuban named Carlos Nevada, figuring he'll have a better shot at breaking into the white leagues that way. He serves mostly as comedic relief, including a bit where he attempts to lay a white prostitute and gets chased around the hotel Keystone Cops-style.

But Charlie/Carlos is laid low about halfway through when Potter's mercenaries corner him under the grandstand. The film is an interesting mix of laugh-a-thon hi jinks and more sobering sequences like this, where Carlos is mutilated with razor blades and the team has to sink all their funds into the doctor's bill to help him.

Probably the low/high point of the film's "message" portion is when the team seems to be falling apart, and Bingo has to put Rainbow on a bus home himself -- even temporarily adopting the harsh language and demeanor of their old slave master Potter.

Mabel King plays Bertha Dewitt, the aforementioned female owner and sexual powerhouse. She's an interesting character -- a mountain of a woman who's just as greedy and conniving as her fellows, but at least has sense enough to suggest enlisting Bingo Long's All-Stars to play their own teams, filling the stands rather than trying to destroy them. She acts as Potter's main adversary, continually trading insults about how fat and unattractive the other one is.

The actors employ a great deal of authentic vernacular in the movie, and I wonder how much of it is in the book/script and how much the cast themselves contributed. Even Leon, who's clearly presented as the cagiest and most learned of the All-Stars, says things like "I loves you and I's proud o' you." Jones and the other actors never try to play down to their characters, simply reflecting how black people spoke in the 1930s.

Even if, like me, you're not a baseball fan, there's a whole lot of the flavor of the game to be savored in "Bingo Long." Though the actors don't necessarily pass themselves off as accomplished pitchers or hitters, they're convincing enough for the close-ups. I love the scenes of the stands filled with black folks, stamping their feet, chattering and laying bets on each at-bat.

Bingo has a tradition before each home game of throwing to the first hitter without his team taking the field -- daring them to put wood to ball with no one there to field it. He makes a real show of it, doing a call-and-answer with the crowd: "Who... gonna hit... my... invite pitch?!?"

I'm truly glad I got to see "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings." It may not be the best film ever made, but it's one of those movies that enlightens while it entertains. Go catch it yourself.

Reeling Backward: "The Sugarland Express" (1974)

In 1974 Steven Spielberg was a nobody and Goldie Hawn was a bonafide star stuck in a rut of ditzy blonde roles. They tag-teamed to launch the career of arguably the most successful -- depending on how you want to define it -- director over the last 40 years.

Coppola had a heyday that few will ever match, and Scorsese has made a handful of films that will stand the test of time as cinematic watersheds. But nobody in the modern era has been as prolific and as consistently good as Spielberg.

I cannot name a single Spielberg picture I do not like. Even stuff that many people disparage, like "Hook" and "1941," I can find something to like about them enough to recommend. At his worst -- say, "The Terminal" -- he's left me merely indifferent. My favorite, incidentally, is the one most people have never heard of: 1987's "Empire of the Sun."

With "The Sugarland Express," I can now say I've seen all 24 of his feature film directorial efforts (not including movie sequences, TV shows, etc.). His first effort at the age of 28, one year before "Jaws" would change the map of Hollywood forever, is a sweet cross-country caper with a tragic undertow.

It's not terribly original -- "Bonnie and Clyde," "Badlands" and "The Getaway" are indelibly marked in its DNA -- but shows an already dazzling young filmmaker honing his skills and vision. Spielberg came up with the story, based on a real-life event in 1969, along with screenwriters Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.

Hawn plays Lou Jean Poplin, a 25-year-old who busts her husband out of jail so they can go rescue their baby boy, who's been handed off to foster care. As they drive around creation in a Texas Highway Patrol car, with the patrolman held hostage, they become instant folks heroes for breaking the law to keep their family together.

A few caveats, though. Lou Jean lost custody of their boy because was in jail herself on petty larceny counts. And hubby Clovis (William Atherton, forever "dickless" from "Ghostbusters") is actually held in a Pre-Release Center -- in other words, he's been selected for parole and is in a barely incarcerated state before getting out in four months.

But Lou Jean insists that Clovis bust out right now, even though there's no reason to believe the baby is going anywhere soon. She wears some of Clovis' clothes on top of her own, they switch out in the men's restroom, and they walk right out the gate. The guards aren't lax -- it's just that breaking out of pre-release is like throwing a race right before you cross the finish line.

They catch a ride with some old folks, who drive so slow on the highway they're pulled over by Patrolman Maxwell Slide, an eager young officer. After a chase and crash, Lou Jean lifts Slide's gun while he's carrying her out of the wrecked car, and soon the long chase is on.

Slide is played by Michael Sacks, who had a short but busy acting career in film and television. Two years earlier, he starred as Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five," and he was also in "The Amityville Horror" and "Hanover Street" with Harrison Ford, but by 1984 he was out of showbiz. He runs an online bond trading company now.

Slide is a quasi-willing victim, not making much of an attempt to wrest the single pistol and shotgun (both his) away from Clovis and Lou Jean, who are less than vigilant in keeping the cop covered. When the bandits become famous, drawing television crews and other media coverage, Slide gawks joyously at his picture in the newspaper, and even passes out kisses through the car window as they travel through a town of adoring fans.

The dynamic between Lou Jean and Clovis is interesting, and not entirely healthy. It's pretty clear that Clovis, while canny, is nowhere near his wife's match when it comes to getting what she wants. Lou Jean pushes Clovis' every button to get him to escape from prison, hold a gun on Slide, and pretty much every other nefarious activity. Of course, the police view him as the instigator and give deference to Lou Jean when it comes time to get rough.

In real life, Lou Jean -- all the characters' names were changed for the film -- served only five months in jail after they were captured, and eventually got her baby back through due process with the authorities. Clovis, if he really was her happy dupe, paid for it with his life.

The other main character is Captain Harlin Tanner, played by the great Ben Johnson. After a career of playing sidekicks and villainous cowpokes, Johnson won an Oscar for 1971's "The Last Picture Show" and suddenly found himself getting meatier roles. He plays Tanner as a tough old veteran who cherishes his role as a law enforcement officer, but also values human life and is reluctant to trade it away without exhausting every option.

At a time in history when the general public was tiring of youthful rebellion and ready for the cops to crack some skulls, Tanner is something of a gentle relic -- or a groundbreaking pioneer, depending on how you look at it.

"I've spent 18 years on the force without having to take a human life, and I'd just as soon keep it that way," he says.

Tanner calls in a pair of Texas Ranger snipers to take out the culprits, but calls them off when they tell him they only have 90 percent chance of success without hitting his officer. "Those are good numbers," his right-hand man insists, but Tanner is willing to gamble that he can talk Clovis down via the CB radio.

In one memorable bit, Tanner calls in a port-a-john to be brought into an empty field so Lou Jean can tend to her business. Of course, he plants an officer inside in an attempt to put an end to things. Clovis figures it out and puts an end to the attempted capture without violence, but doesn't bear any grudge against Tanner for trying.

It's telling that Tanner and Clovis reach a sort of understanding where the hunter and hunted respect each other's role while erecting certain lines of decency neither will cross.

Spielberg strikes a tone of fun-and-games, with clear portents indicating things will end badly. He plays with the audience's expectations -- at one point Clovis, who had been riding in the passenger seat, takes the wheel and wears Slide's hat and sunglasses. As they draw closer to the trapped house filled with marksmen, we expect the gunmen will shoot the patrolman by mistake. But no -- the sunglasses and hat disappear, taken by some roadside fans as souvenirs, and the tension eases.

John Williams provided the mournful score, as he has for all 24 Spielberg features -- an unprecedented collaboration between composer and director.

"The Sugarland Express" is a derivative film, but still an enjoyable one. Goldie Hawn proved she could handle grittier roles, and the movie was successful enough for Spielberg to get a greenlight for "Jaws." That was a disastrous shoot, but as is usually the case for the gifted filmmaker, he turned chum into screen gold.

3 stars out of four