Directed by Matthew Robbins / Screenplay by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins

The early 1980s proved to be a boom time for fantasy cinema, with 1981 the annus mirabilis: that year alone brought us four of the films featured in this exhibition. Despite hailing from the traditionally family-friendly stable of Walt Disney Productions, Dragonslayer is perhaps the darkest and scariest of the lot. Director Matthew Robbins and his co-writer Hal Barwood (both script veterans of some of Steven Spielberg’s early pictures) drew inspiration from the legend of St George and the Dragon, and also from Mickey Mouse’s celebrated Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence in the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia. From these two starting points they crafted a full-blooded retelling of an archetypal fairytale, big on drama and short on whimsy. The setting is Britain in the Dark Ages, where the realm of King Casiodorus (Peter Eyre) is being terrorised by a fearsome dragon, the splendidly named Vermithrax Pejorative. Help is sought from the ageing sorcerer Ulrich (Ralph Richardson), but when disaster strikes the task falls instead to his inexperienced young apprentice Galen (Peter MacNicol). ‘Our film has no knights in shining armour,’ explained the writers, ‘no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail.’ Instead it has a scheming king, treacherous courtiers, some genuinely shocking twists of fate - and one of the finest movie monsters of the pre-digital age. Brought to creeping, crawling, wing-spreading, fire-breathing life by ILM effects wizard Phil Tippett, Vermithrax Pejorative is a spectacular achievement and Dragonslayer’s lasting triumph.

Framed Dimensions: 330mm x 410mm

Acrylic on 300gsm Arches oil paper
Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.