L'attaque du griffon

What amazed me about this movie was the difference between the highs and the lows in it. Many of the locations were great. They picked some very nice places in Bulgaria to film some of the shots. The gryphon itself I thought was actually very good, but the way they put it into the picture was laughably bad. It was really, truly terrible. The plot was equally bad. Throw all the old fantasy clichés into a hat and just randomly draw 10 or so, and you'll get an idea of how bad the plot is. The acting also had highs and lows. Jonathan LaPaglia read his lines well - I bought his performance. Amber Benson, on the other hand, was terrible. Interestingly, it seemed like the decent performances were all by the "Delphites" (LaPaglia's character and his nation), and all of the "Locklanders" (Benson's character and her nation) were just the opposite.

Anyway, it was kind of fun to watch once my expectations were lowered to a reasonable level.

I had looked forward to this movie. I love the fantasy genre and expect to make allowances for low budgets, B actors and short time frames production schedules. But I think this one could have been made better in somebody's basement.

The costumes were unacceptable. They looked contrived and inappropriate for their purpose.

The acting was horrible. The hero and heroine didn't appear to be in this movie. Their dialog was stilted. The delivery appeared uncomfortable. Part of this could be blamed on the direction, but maybe the director couldn't pull better performances from them. Hard to say.

The plot of this genre is often far-fetched and I don't have a problem using my own imagination to fill in the usual gaps. But this film had too many gaps for even the most vivid imagination to assist.

I feel sorry for anybody whose name was associated with this film. It will certainly not do their careers any good.

I don't remember seeing a worse movie than Gryphon. This movie had it all : uninteresting summary, characters that didn't even bother to act decent in this so-called sci-fiction production, weak effects. I wasted 2 hours from my life watching this piece of crap. This movie finds his place at the bottom of the worst movies ever. Watching this film, I wanted to laugh because of its poor quality, but the movie couldn't even bring a smile on my desolated face. I can't stop wondering who can give this movie more than 1 star????? If you thing this garbage is worth more than 1 star, i recommend you to watch it again and you will certainly change your vote. I urge you not to watch this movie. 1/10.

This low-budget knockoff of LORD OF THE RINGS, among others, has various medieval folks having to deal with an amateurishly animated gryphon, a giant bird with an an eagle's head and lion's body. An awful lot of the so-called action takes place in the woods, obviously to save on money. What I want to know is what Jonathan LaPaglia is doing in this backwoods barn burner. He is too good for this sort of crapola, but then I guess it's a paycheck like any other. After the gryphon flies overhead for about the 500th time, you will be ready to kill it yourself. Larry Drake, who has done some great work (LA LAW) and some awful work (DARKMAN 2), is simply awful here as the porcine mage who calls the gryphon to life. Fortunately for him, he is almost unrecognizable.

Only my love of Amber Benson got me to not only watch the movie, but actually watch the whole thing. She was easily the best aspect of this movie, but even she couldn't do much to alleviate the pain caused by the stilted dialogue and hammy (or at the very least uneven) acting of most of her co-stars...and why were most of her lines dubbed and then poorly mixed?

The effects were terrible even by Sci Fi Original standards and I was completely underwhelmed by the repetitive score.

I hope the film gave Amber Benson a nice check so she can go off and make more brilliant flicks like Chance...