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 Heiress" (1949)

"The Heiress" is an interesting rumination on physical beauty. The protagonist, Catherine Sloper, is a plain woman who has been unable to attract suitors despite the fact that her father is a fabulously wealthy doctor. She is also painfully shy, but it's pretty clear that the one flows from the other -- Catherine is aware of her lack of looks, and has convinced herself (with no small help from her father) that this is indicative of the absence of any other attributes.

Of course, Catherine is played by Olivia de Havilland, one of the great actresses -- and great beauties -- of Hollywood's Golden Age. The filmmakers do a convincing job of making her less attractive, including an unflattering braided hairstyle and a lack of makeup. De Havilland also holds her face in unflattering positions to accentuate the change.

When a suitor does finally arrive, it's in the form of Morris Townsend, a slick young man lacking any money or prospects. Dr. Sloper (played by Ralph Richardson, forever the aged sorceror from "Dragonslayer") immediately suspects that Morris is a mercenary after Catherine's inheritance. It takes Catherine herself much longer to make her own decision, but her father has planted the seeds of doubt in her mind.

Morris is played by Montgomery Clift, in one of his earliest roles. Clift was a moody actor who did not wear his mantle of stardom well, clashing with most of the directors, screenwriters and actors he worked with. His career never really recovered from a serious 1956 car accident that ravaged his face, and he died young and alone.

But Clift was also one of the most physically striking actors ever to grace the silver screen, and his handsomeness is fully exploited by director William Wyler. Every cinematic trick used to make de Havilland seem uglier is turned around to make Clift seem to positively glow in every scene.

Part of Catherine's initial hesitancy is based around the dichotomy of their looks: She simply cannot believe that such a good-looking, well-spoken young man could possibly fall for her. Interestingly, her resistance falls after their first kiss. In the mid-1800s, the mannerisms of the New York upper crust were firmly set in a labyrinth of arcane rules and unspoken codes, including not letting a male suitor to be in the same room alone with a young lady. Catherine's Aunt Lavinia (Miriam Hopkins), who encourages the romance, helpfully obliges by getting the vapors whenever an opportunity presents itself. It seems clear that it was physical passion that overcome Catherine's sense of logic.

The film is adapted (by Ruth and Augustus Goetz) from the play "Washington Square," which in turn was based on the Henry James novel. It was nominated for a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture, and de Havilland took home her second Academy Award for her performance.

Though at times a staid melodrama, it also has several scenes with genuine emotional punch. The watershed moment is when Catherine, after returning from a six-month European visit insisted upon by her father as a ploy to make her forget about Morris, resolves to run away and elope on the first night of their return. Dr. Sloper has made it clear how much he truly disrespects his daughter, and she promises never to see him again.

Morris is appalled, not wanting her to be disinherited from her father's $20,000 a year of income upon his death. But she says they will still be wealthy enough with the $10,000 a year she already inherited from her mother.

Catherine sits all through the night waiting with Aunt Lavinia for Morris' carriage to show up, but of course it never does.

(I'm curious why in stories set in the 19th century or earlier, wealth is always referred to as how much they receive per year rather than the total pile of dough. Nowadays we don't say "Warren Buffet has $5 million a year," we say he's worth $20 billion, or whatever it is. Perhaps this is because back then income was derived primarily through the ownership of property -- renting it out or agricultural uses -- rather than investments.)

I enjoyed "The Heiress," less for the story than the things it leaves unsaid.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Richard III" (1955)

Shakespeare is better read than seen.

I long ago came to this blasphemous conclusion, which no doubt will earn me the title of uncouth knave among those who cherish the immortal Bard. But if they're honest, they'll admit that anyone outside of those with an advanced degree in English literature can hardly understand the flowery poetry of his plays.

The passing of half a millennium, not to mention dialogue that was crafted for its artfulness rather than its verisimilitude, make it a baffling experience in which you sit there, listening to the words and trying to assemble their meaning in your head as they fly by at an unstopping pace. I myself will admit to grasping perhaps 40 percent of it.

Laurence Olivier's early film career was defined in part by his Shakespearean adaptations: "Hamlet," "Henry V" and "Richard III" in 1955. These films, which he also directed, breathed life into the artifice of the plays as much as the aforementioned challenges allowed.

It's interesting to me how history-based fiction seems desperate for villains, to the point of turning monarchs and other historical figures into blackhearts even when they did not earn that depiction.

For example, all the stories involving Robin Hood show Richard the Lionheart as virtuous and true, while his brother John was a depraved usurper. In actuality, Richard was a poor king who barely spent any of his life in England, and John signed the Magna Carta, the foundation upon which all of modern Western democracy was built.

King Richard III ruled for but two years, and was overthrown by a coalition of lords. Interesting footnote: He was the last British king to die in battle. Shakespeare's play depicts him as a loathsome, though cunningly charismatic figure, who will stop at nothing to secure the throne, including murdering his own brother, nephews and wife.

The historical record is much murkier. It's not even clear if the sons of Edward IV were ever murdered. Rumors that they were bastards and thus not eligible for the throne were spread, but we don't know if Richard was behind it. A mock trial held in 1997 judged by three Supreme Court justices acquitted Richard of guilt.

It's entirely likely that Richard was not even a hunchback, which is a central motif of the play. Word is that the man who overthrew him, the Earl of Richmond (later Henry VII) ordered portraits of Richard altered to make him misshapen.

So much for Richard's soliloquy about his body being "rudely stamp'd."

It's fascinating to note that Richard is almost always portrayed by middle-aged actors -- Olivier was 48, and actually comes in at the low end. In reality, Richard was only 32 when he died.

Olivier is a delight in the title role. The way he connives and plots and lies to his political opponents, and then turns to the audience to deliver a delicious observation about their failings and how he's going to best them, lends the film a comedic undertone.

If you think about it, as a storytelling device it's not terribly different from the structure of reality television, in which the participants comment on the action in interviews recorded separately and intercut with the main narrative. Even fictional shows like "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" have come to use the device of the faux documentary to allow characters to speak directly to the audience, much as Shakespeare loved to do.

As history, "Richard III" is a load of cock and bull. As a piece of narrative, it jumps around haphazardly, has dozens of characters who get lost in the shuffle, and is often impossible to decipher because of the language barrier. As a character study, it's an often delightful mix of tragedy and humor, sometimes within the same scene.

2.5 stars out of four