• DRAGONSLAYER Coming to 4K UHD

Posted: **Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:15 pm**

Guess we're skipping over Blu-Ray for this and heading right for 4K?? My misgivings about portions of the movie and the score aside, this should look spectacular in UHD if the transfer is handled properly.

Posted: **Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:18 pm**

Thread where we discussed the movie last year:

viewtopic.php?p=83064#p83064

Posted: **Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:10 pm**

Pre-order. Price should come down. Looks like a beaut Clark!

https://amzn.to/3WhJNr0

Posted: **Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:29 pm**

Guillermo Del Toro commentary is definitely enticing.

Posted: **Thu Dec 22, 2022 10:08 am**

Non Steelbooked edition:

Posted: **Wed Feb 01, 2023 12:03 pm**

Extras detailed in the new PR release

DRAGONSLAYER continues to win over fans more than 40 years after its initial release, not the least of which is Guillermo del Toro who joins director and longtime collaborator Matthew Robbins for an entertaining and illuminating new commentary. The 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray releases also include more than an hour of additional new special features as detailed below:

THE SLAYER OF ALL DRAGONS

Step back in time with director/co-writer Matthew Robbins, dragon supervisor Phil Tippett, and ILM’s visual effects master Dennis Muren as they revisit DRAGONSLAYER. Their stories and memories take viewers deep into the dragon’s fiery lair as they recount the challenging journey from concept to screen.

WELCOME TO CRAGGANMORE

A look back at the impact of Star Wars and its visual effects on Hollywood, the origin of DRAGONSLAYER and its screenplay, and the film’s casting.

A LONG WAY TO URLAND

Pre-production begins in England as the film takes shape. The young filmmakers seek gritty medieval realism through the production design, cinematography, and costumes.

VERMITHRAX PEJORATIVE

The filmmakers take on the daunting task of bringing a dragon to life like never before, utilizing every ounce of movie magic available including Phil Tippett’s breakthrough go-motion animation, cutting-edge practical animatronics, visual effects, and compositing.

INTO THE LAKE OF FIRE

Production woes at every turn, horrific baby dragons, and the challenge of creating Vermithrax’s iconic lair plague the filmmakers. Phil Tippett offers a mini-masterclass on crafting powerful creature performance through detailed animation.

THE FINAL BATTLE

The team faces the unique challenges of the film’s stage-bound climax, filmed entirely against a blue screen. Director Matthew Robbins looks back on the incredible work done in the final stages of film editing, the beautifully dense sound design, and Alex North’s amazing score, which utilized pieces from his legendary unused 2001: A Space Odyssey score.

Posted: **Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:44 am**

Gorgeous disc! Working on the review but...it's great. 'Nuff said.

Posted: **Mon Mar 20, 2023 5:26 pm**

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:44 am Gorgeous disc! Working on the review but...it's great. 'Nuff said.

Really looking forward to your review, Andy! I'm excited about this release.

Posted: **Sat Mar 25, 2023 9:56 am**

I watch the new 4K disc last night.

It is a still wonderful film, and it looks great too (why more fantasy movies don't take advantage of the gorgeous scenery in North Wales is baffling to me).

My only problem is that the film isn't as emotionally-resonant as it could be -- and I blame Alex North.

North's score plays-up the darker aspects of the film brilliantly (those sinister trombones and tubas which open the main title are enough to make you crawl under your seat in terror). His subtle scoring of Ulrich's reminiscence of the days when dragons filled the skies is incredible. The fight scene between Galen and Tyrian has a visceral fury which is all down to Alex North.

But Dragonslayer, in the end, is a fantasy film. The score lacks a vital dimension -- that magical "sense of wonder" which you find in other fantasy scores of that era. North's score is overall too somber, too dour, and it doesn't ultimately help the film live up to its full potential.

I don't think he had a handle on this particular genre.

Posted: **Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:35 am**

Well said Paul, my feelings about the score on my last viewing were reinforced again here.

Looking at the year the film was made, I firmly believe the right composer there, in that moment, probably would've been Elmer. He could have infused a sense of appropriate dread but also correctly nailed the characters and provided a more sensitive/effective love theme to balance out the heaviness of the story -- along with a sense of magic. He always had a great ability to score fantasy and the movie needed his kind of touch.

I totally agree North's music is mainly effective in depicting the story's dark, gloomy environment -- and on its own I think some of it is tremendous -- but it doesn't really support the movie. It certainly doesn't support the characters or provide the viewer with an accessible "entry point" as music usually does in this kind of film, and like we said before, the editorial switch-ups that were made with some of the cues didn't help (I cringe EVERY TIME they play the "trek music" at the end of the movie

Watching KRULL with Theo a couple of weeks ago, I was again so moved by James Horner's magnificent score. Thinking back to that and Rosenthal's CLASH OF THE TITANS -- all made around the same time -- there's a lyricism and romantic component that -- while DRAGONSLAYER is admittedly a heavier movie absent some of those movies' respective tonal elements -- is absent from North's score.

As I wrote in my review this week, had it been 1983 or later, my guess is North's score would've been thrown out and replaced. Some of it is great film music, but as a whole, it drags the movie down when it could've lifted it up. I think audiences would have responded more positively to the film had someone like Elmer scored it.

Posted: **Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:58 am**

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:35 am I think audiences would have responded more positively to the film had someone like Elmer scored it.

Agreed on Elmer -- though scoring Dragonslayer might have kept him from Heavy Metal. Not sure I'd have wanted that! (Though if it were a choice of Elmer scoring Dragonslayer over Honkey Tonk Freeway or Going Ape, well...)

North's Dragonslayer score is just too dreary at times. I'm guessing that Matthew Robbins selected North because some of his peers had sought-out Herrmann and Rozsa for their films -- with stellar results. Robbins probably figured North would give him something "old school" as well.

But North was always more of a "modernist" than other golden age composers, and tended towards the somber and strident (even his music for Spartacus has a very shrill, cold quality). Ironic that North actually wrote "Unchained Melody"!

North is a composer who was hailed for being "modern" in the 50s and 60s. But looking back, his music feels (to me at least) like a product of that era. I have to be honest, I can't blame Stanley Kubrick for replacing North's 2001 score. That score is well-written, but it would have locked the movie into the esthetic of the Mad Men era.

Posted: **Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:43 am**

I've never been much of a North fan. His work was impeccably written, of course, but it was SO dense and spiky and dissonant.

Leonard Rosenman was another one like that, where his music tended to have too many of those stuttering brass exclamations and aleatoric strings, and not enough melody.

As for Dragonslayer, it's a very good, but not quite great movie. I didn't "grow up" with it (I saw it for the first time on DVD maybe 15 years ago), but had I seen it as a kid, I probably would have found it too dull/scary for my seven-year-old tastes in '81. It's beautifully shot (and the new 4K transfer makes Derek Vanlint's cinematography sparkle), the ILM F/X are terrific, and it's well-paced, but the two leads are incredibly uncharismatic, and it's all so ponderous, lacking in the humor and character interplay that would have made it appeal to audiences more. North's browbeating score doesn't help, which is effective in setting an appropriately "otherworldly" tone, but is lacking in melody. Obviously superior to anything you'd hear in a modern-day fantasy movie (which is why the awful trailers for Dungeons & Dragons: honor Among Thieves have been scored with contemporary rock music

), but I've never owned it on CD.

Posted: **Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:10 pm**

^^I think you put it very well, Jack. I actually do own North's score on CD, and find it very listenable -- though it is one of those scores (like Altered States or Alien) I have to be in the mood for.

Also agreed on Rosenman, whose work I respect a great deal -- but don't for the most part enjoy listening to (I also feel that, as a dramatist, Rosenman didn't always connect with the films he worked on, and as a reults his scores didn't establish the right tone).

Posted: **Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:19 pm**

I really enjoyed reading your review and analysis of the new Dragonslayer disc, Andy! My copy arrived this weekend. I hope to watch it and begin diving into the extras soon.

Interesting discussion of North's score here. I bought the Southern Cross/SCSE CD long before I saw the film, and I'm actually glad I did. I hadn't heard anything by Alex North at the time (as far as I remember), and I was completely surprised by Dragonslayer's score, which I was expecting to sound like Horner's Krull. At first I thought, "What's this?" but slowly fell under its spell and like the album quite a lot to this day. I also have to be in the mood to listen to it, of course!

The first time I saw the film I thought the score sounded almost ridiculous against the visuals. I thought something like Jones's Dark Crystal would have been more appropriate. But on repeated viewings I've grown to like the score in the film, and my appreciation for both film and score continue to grow in part because both are so unique, not cut from the same swashbuckling cloth as Star Wars or Krull. Of course, I'm still drawn much more often to more swashbuckling fare. But Dragonslayer is a great quest in its own peculiar, dark, but interesting way.

DRAGONSLAYER Coming to 4K UHD

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