Dragonfight

Composer Bob Mithoff's opening theme really bops, and hearing George Buck Flower provide the opening (and any subsequent) narration is an unexpected joy. The fact that James Hong's is one of the first faces we see, three minutes into the runtime, is also softly encouraging, even if we have no expectation otherwise that the movie we're committing to will be any good.

And, well, then 'Dragonfight' starts in earnest. Beautiful landscapes, on the one hand, and on the other hand, additional filming locations to which access was clearly granted on a Saturday with help from a connected friend. Quizzical costume design. Writing that is at once direct, brusque, blunt, unsubtle, inchoate, and meager, providing only the most useless, empty foundation for any scenes of fighting and action. Soft, seemingly inexperienced direction has a deleterious effect on the acting in turn, though the cast do try, and some meet with fair (relative) success. Poor pacing and sequencing even in the fundamental course of events. Camerawork that ranges from surprisingly adept to amateurish; inelegant or overzealous editing at the most inopportune moments. Some of the rest of Mithoff's music is quite alright, and some of it is just bland; most all of it is repetitive.

This picture is weakly written, and weakly made, to the point that sometimes even the apparent movements of characters from A to B, as we see them, are all but senseless. Storytelling is all but right out. The premise is clear: a future in which people are induced to kill each other for the gain of powerful people. With scant exceptions, nearly everything beyond that basic premise - and I do mean, nearly everything - is up in the air, questionable, unclear, ill-conceived, murky, flimsy, vague, meek, and unconvincing. Who are any of these characters in the first place? Save for those first three minutes, which (a) include the opening credits and (b) are up for debate, the most that the feature probably has going for it is a small but hilarious exchange of dialogue a little after the half-hour mark. To the rest I can only say, "what?"

To come across this title in any way, even sights unseen no one could have any illusions about what they're getting into. 'Dragonfight' is low-budget, low-grade slop, and it's incredible that it somehow got made, and that some recognizable folks somehow became involved. I suppose it's possible for someone to genuinely enjoy it, but the whole construction is so desperately thin from top to bottom that I don't know what there is to get from it. I don't know what anyone here thought they were doing, but the end result is just perplexing. Even if you're a huge fan of someone involved, whatever it is you think you're going to get out of this flick, in good conscience I must recommend against it. These are eighty minutes with no meaningful redeeming qualities, and if you accidentally stumble onto it, I suggest you keep looking.

Me and my friends rented this baby just to have something to watch while we drank beer and lied to each other about female conquests of the past... The party ended pretty early since we started to watch the movie. Obviously we had missed the "first part" or.. because we didn't understand anything! My most vivid memory was a line from the film: Two guys are standing in the middle of nowhere. One of them says something like "There ísn't a living soul out here for a hundred miles except us"... and in the background a motorcyclist are clearly visible the whole time. In a normal movie, that would have mean that someone was out to get the guys or.. well, anything! In this movie it truly didn't mean anything. It just ..was...

Robert Z'Dar's chin deserves its own credit in the movie. This guy has a chin that would eat Jay Leno's chin for a lightweight snack and not even blink. How freaky would it be to see a chin that blinked? I wish I had a screenshot from the movie of Z'Dar wearing his chain mail because he looks JUST LIKE Buzz Lightyear.

Anyway, laughing at his chin is the only sort of entertainment you're going to get from watching "Dragonfight." Since Michael Paré is in the movie, my friends and I thought this would be a good one to rent and make fun of. Nope. This is a movie that's so bad it's *not* funny, and Paré wouldn't appear in it for more than 5 minutes.

Unless you like a 5-minute premise stretched out to 83 minutes by showing repetitive shots of people running in the desert and climbing hills, then I suggest you avoid this one by any means necessary.

This movie almost plays as a sequel as whoever wrote it seems to think you should know what is going on so he isn't going to take the time to explain it. The "plot" and I am using the term loosely is I am guessing a bunch of rich people in corporations make bets based on two guys fighting to the death. Sounds simple enough, but wait...somehow one of the warriors is able to come back from the dead. How? Who knows...it has something to do with this gal who I think was some kind of sorceress. This is never really touched upon much, but hey she is cute and I think that is why she is stuck in this one. Nothing much to be said for the fighting as it involves Robert Z'Dar and some other guy. When I first saw this movie I only caught the end and wondered why the heck Z'Dar was dressed as a knight and he was going around killing people (his character goes berserk or something and starts killing more than just the guy he is fighting). I thought this was some movie about time travel, which would have been better than what it was really about. You occasionally flash to these board members watching the fight and other stuff...it does have a rather catchy tune to it and it is rather short so it wasn't all bad. As I have said though it plays like a sequel to something.

After seeing films like "Glen or Glenda" or "Terror in the midnight sun", you may think you´ve seen the worst film ever made, but "Dragonfight" really wins that "price". The first films I mentioned, like many of the "bad film classics", have got some charm in just being bad, but "Dragonfight" hasn´t. It´s got worthless actors, a crappy story and an even crappier screenplay. And then I haven´t even mentioned the "special effects" and the "stunts". Commonly, when you watch a film known to be bad, you don´t mind about those things mentioned above, because they are what you expect them to be and you can laugh at them, but in "Dragonfight" it seems like the crew thought that they were doing a great film and that´s what making this film so extremely bad. So if you get your hands on this film, view it so that you can tell your friends that you have seen THE bad one. After that, burn it.