If you were a youngster not yet versed in the ways of R-rated horror films, the sight of a screaming, melting old man was heart-stopping stuff.Īnother fantasy movie, another disturbing swamp scene. Topping the list in the Krull nightmare-fuel rankings is the scene captured above, where the Emerald Seer (John Welsh) is replaced by a black-eyed, long-taloned Changeling. What director Peter Yates gave us for that money was one of the most eccentric fantasy films of the decade, with disconcerting cinematography from Peter Suschitzky (who’d later go on and make a series of films with David Cronenberg, which figures) and some properly nightmarish images. When you’re a little kid, you don’t really care about how much movies cost, so it came as a surprise, when we got older and started looking into these things, just how much money was spent on Krull: about $47 million, which is even more than Return of the Jedi cost to make. This wonderfully weird fantasy may not have had the profile of Return of the Jedi, released the same year, but then again, George Lucas’ Star Wars movie didn’t have Bernard Bresslaw as a cyclops, former Grange Hill (and future EastEnders) star Todd Carty as a bandit, or that cool, boomerang-like weapon, the Glaive. Long before we got to see Alien, the Vermothrax Pejorative became the terrifying big-screen monster to beat, thanks in no small part to this grim scene. The burning corpse was one thing what really damaged our tiny minds was the detail of the blood running down the woman’s wrists as she wriggles out of her chains. Read more: Was Dragonslayer Really a Disney Film? No such luck: backed into a corner, she’s torched to death by the dragon right before our eyes. As the young woman, clad in white and chained to a post, looses her bonds, you might be forgiven for thinking that she’ll escape just in the nick of time. The movie’s dragon, called the Vermothrax Pejorative, establishes its villainous reputation early on as it descends on a sacrificial victim. Dragonslayer, which features some stunning animation work from Phil Tippet, is still one of the most startling. Long before the studio brought up our childhoods– Star Wars, Marvel, and the like–it was busy scarring them with a series of left-field and shadowy live-action and animated movies. Ah, Disney’s dark phase of the ’70s and ’80s– something we’ve written about in a bit more detail in the past.
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