Dragon Crusaders

Starring: Cecily Fay & Dylan Jones. Directed : Mark Atkins.

I interviewed Cecily Fay earlier on my blog,She is amazing woman,Nay,Athlete with swords who deserves tons of accolades and roles in the future.

Without seeing her wonderful turn in this film, She can better any number of baddies with a sword or two and do some stunts,That well,Someone taller might not try.

The special effects,Actually thats kind of rude explanation of how we can see Gargoyles,Dragons and other assorted creatures.

The plot where the Gargoyles come from is very creative and once seen,Makes you anticipate.

Hate to go and on about Cecily Fay,Because Dylan Jones is very good as male lead and breaks all kinds of molds of heroes past.

This was mostly filmed in Wales and it looks great for on-location.

Unbelievable, this is a real bad movie! Well, not all of it. The actors have enough talent for a soap, but not for a movie. But the girl with the swords is okay, but only compare to the others of the cast. In a better movie she would fade away in the shadow of more talented actors. But the director of this movie has really zero talent. It's like there was no director at all while they where shooting this picture. And the ones in the editing room did really a lazy job. Like they just put together some scenes without looking at them. The cameraman made some nice shots once in a while. That was the only reason I kept watching, but nevertheless I was shocked that movies like this make it to DVD. I guess the ones who made this movie where not interested in making something good, but just making something because they had to. That's not a good motivation. Please, don't make any movies. Do something that you like but don't make a movie anymore. Can somebody tell the people behind this crap to look for another profesion.

Firstly, let's establish the facts: This is one of the many films produced from The Asylum, they can usually be found on the SyFy channel or Movies for Men. So, we have: A ridiculous title, an even more ridiculous story, wooden acting, extremely clunky dialogue and mega drive standard CGI.

Of course, for the reasons I just listed Dragon Crusaders is an absolute turd of a film. It would be easy to go on a rant, but I will refrain from that temptation. The fact is that Asylum films know their place, all those involved surely know what they are making, and these films that they make tend to actually make a profit, so fair play to them. Calling these films B movies is probably too much of a compliment, maybe Z movie, but they certainly deserve to be a genre in their own right. As long as you know what you are getting in too, have a strong alcoholic beverage at your side, then films like Dragon Crusaders are more entertaining and certainly funnier (intentionally or not) than anything Adam Sandler or Nancy Meyers ever produce.

Few movies could be considered worst than this one. Terrible acting, haircuts and costumes, martial art fighting (sic), non credible crusaders, poor scenery, elementary computer graphics, lousy plot and music and whatever you can expect by a boring movie. Plus, the warrior lady seems the result of mixing up Red Sonja, Xena and any other comic book female fighter, and i didn't know that women wore hot pants in the middle ages. The whole movie is a bad screen version of an annoying RPG. Also the weapons have not much credibility, while the people that fall struck often display no wounds. The movie lines could have been written by my nephew, and the evil wizard is a scandalous tribute to the "Wizard of Oz". I don't understand how someone spent money to produce something like this.

I was interested in seeing Dragon Crusaders because the title was one of those titles that immediately makes you want to see it, as this seemed like my kind of movie, and the cover actually made it look fun. I was also dubious though seeing as it was from SyFy/The Asylum, notorious for making bottom-of-the-barrel type movies.

Seeing Dragon Crusaders for myself, it is not a good movie. However it could have been worse, you could have been watching something like Battle of Los Angeles, Quantum Apocalypse, Alien vs Hunter or Titanic II. Dragon Crusaders is made tolerable by some nice scenery, the tiny swords-woman(played very well by Cecily Fay) who really did kick ass and some good looking dragons, even if I would have liked to have seen more of them.

Conversely, apart from the scenery I could tell Dragon Crusaders was shot on a low budget. The camera shots are haphazard, or at least some of them are, and the costume design while not bad in look were inauthentic in detail, especially with the knights, the heavy red lipstick and the hair extensions, not to mention the sweat pants for the pirates. The dialogue also is never sure whether it wants to be in Old English or in the language of today, this jars with the setting and comes across as stilted.

The action has moments where it is spirited, but overall I found it a little too hectic and eager to please particularly with the tumbling, screaming, kick boxing and wire spinning. There are also goofs that are very noticeable, such as the business with the quiver of arrows for two reasons, one that many are used yet the numbers in the quiver don't change and also where it should be empty but in the next scene it's full. The props are just as jarring as the costuming, they look cheap and seem more at home on a Halloween display than a swords and sorcery tale.

Story-wise it is disappointing, the idea is good but too much time is spent on the action and when something other than that happens it is rushed, a longer length might've sufficed perhaps, so you don't engage with it. The characters are cardboard thin, the direction is sloppy in some scenes and erratic in others and the acting doesn't fare much better, with Dylan Jones an uncharismatic lead and Simon Lloyd Roberts equally unmemorable. Fay is the sole bright spot.

All in all, not a good movie, but if I were to choose between watching this and watching something like Titanic II again, I would pick this easily. 4/10 Bethany Cox