Rating of
2.5/4
Plot was pretty bad, but the movie was decent
Josh C - wrote on 10/17/08
It is hard to believe that the special effects of a film that came out in 1981 are better than those in the Sci-fi channel movies. It wasn't anything spectacular, but the effects were well done and didn't detract from the story.
Overall, the movie was fairly well done and interesting enough to watch. However the plot was a bit weak and so were the characters. The tyrannical king wasn't so bad, actually he may be decent guy. He designed a "lottery" in order to choose which girl has to be sacrificed to the dragon to keep the peace. The peasants hated him and the lottery because they didn't think it was fair that his own daughter (the princess) wasn't part of the lottery. They thought the only way to deal with the problem was to kill the dragon. Which was dumb since many more people died after they failed to kill it the first time.
So the plot I have determined needed work. The characters needed to be more "evil" so that I didn't find myself thinking, "what is all the fuss about?" Maybe if the king was raping and pillaging the villages in an evil pact with the dragon it would have made more sense. Anyhow, it is not a bad movie, but if you want to watch an 80's movie with magic and more substance watch Willow instead.
One final thing: I can't believe this is PG. It had death, blood, burning alive and even brief blurry nudity. Today's MPAA raters are so conservative.
