It's not about the dragon...

Imagine a story about a kingdom that is being tormented by a monstrous, fire-breathing dragon.



The only way to keep the dragon at bay is to offer up a virgin girl as a sacrifice twice a year.


Inevitably there comes a day when the daughter of the king is selected for sacrifice, and it falls to a brave and dashing young hero to slay the dragon and save the kingdom (and the Princess).


Does this story sound familiar? Does it sound a trifle clichéd? Does it... remind you of anyone?


The story of St. George and the Dragon has been a popular narrative trope for millennia, and of course depictions in the visual arts are legion.


The basic elements of the story are generally the same: the imperilled virgin; the fearsome dragon; the brave hero. 


Occasionally, there are variations.

"So I was out one morning, walking my dragon, when this horrible man comes along..."

Given cinema's love for all things beastly, it was inevitable that Hollywood would eventually turn its attention to the St. George and the Dragon story. After all, this is a story that has everything! A fearsome creature! A dashing hero! A damsel in peril! Where's the downside?

Impressively, every detail in this poster is wrong.

And so it was that Dragonslayer was released in 1981, starring Peter MacNicol, Caitlin Clarke and one of the great cinematic dragons of all time.

The timing of this film was significant. 


Following the unprecedented success of Star Wars in 1977, other studios had rushed all sorts of films into production in an effort to cash in on the sudden and unexpected appetite for all things fantasy and science fiction. 

Many of the genre films of that era serve to illustrate just what, specifically, various studios had decided was the "magic ingredient" that had made Star Wars so phenomenally popular. Some tried to replicate the "sword & sorcery plus ray-guns" ethic... 


...while others focussed on the kid from a backwater community thrust onto the galactic stage.


And then there was Flash Gordon.

The film that launched a thousand detergent commercials


Dragonslayer pursued a different tactic. It took one of the most clichéd stories in the repertoire (valiant hero saves beautiful princess from fearsome dragon) and proceeded to deconstruct almost every aspect of that story.


Taking its inspiration from the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in Fantasia, Peter MacNicol plays Galen, an untested young wizard who sets out to slay the dragon when his master (Ralph Richardson) proves unsuited to the task.


Full of youthful exuberance and bad judgement, Galen proceeds to make one mistake after another as he slowly realises the scale of the quest he has undertaken.


Like many others before him, he also must learn that you don't set about slaying a dragon for fame or glory. When you want to defeat a real dragon, it can't be all about you.

Before he was the Emperor of Star Wars, Ian McDiarmid tried to soothe the savage beast.

Rulers sometimes need to make adult decisions.

Also noteworthy is the music, written by veteran composer Alex North. 

North had been one of a group of composers credited with bringing a modern "20th Century" sensibility to film scoring in the 1950s. In the 1980s, when John Williams and Star Wars had ignited a fever for big, orchestral late-Romantic film scores, North's score for Dragonslayer inhabits the neo-Classical world of Stravinsky, and gives the film a decidedly non-bombastic, non-heroic flavour.

And Galen's amulet definitely deserves its very own Oscar for "Best Performance by a Tchotchke".



We will screen Dragonslayer at 7.30pm on Thursday, the 21st of November at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.

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