P-51 Dragon Fighter

Watched this without reading up here first, but somehow knew it had been ripped apart by ratings & reviews on here, as always, most likely by people who rate positive on mega million budget blockbuster garbage (x y z , or simply insert Aquaman here), or, to stay in the desert, any of those 100s of utterly badly acted & written modern desert war movies?

But hey, this little B movie, shot in California, with good acting actors, quirky script doesnt deserve that 2,**rating. Hence an 8 for a little boost. Seriously good fun watching!

AND it has Dragons ;)

But btw, producers: why call Erwin Rommel "Irwin"? ..did the Rommel family complain? Lol.

Somewhere in Northern Africa, back in WW II. Nazis discovered dragon eggs, raised many grown up dragons a little later, and hire four witches to control the dragons by psychic powers. Then they attack allied forces, planes and tanks are destroyed by the fire of the mythic beasts, until a British general develops a cunning plan: shoot back...

Another trash movie from director Mark Atkins I remember best for 'Princess of Mars' and 'Sand Sharks'. The budget was obviously very low, for example the pilots in the cockpits are always shown in a close-up with a narrow focus range against a blue studio background, so nobody can see interior details of the planes. The acting is ridiculous, just for example take the the French pilot. Well, you knew from the subject of 'Dragons vs. Planes' it wouldn't be Shakespeare, still this is entertainment on a very modest level. The fantasy element of the co-operating witches is interesting, but will work better in a different background, i.e. a pure fantasy movie. The best scene of this movie was, which is telling a lot, the drinking contest. Maybe I'll recommend the same to 2 people I really don't like some time.

In recent years, there have been a huge number of films offering strange mash-ups that combine things that really have no reason being combined. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a great example. And, there also have been films with alternate realities—where the rules of the franchise can be changed. The recent Star Trek films clearly fall into this category. While such bizarre reinventions might be entertaining, films like P-51 Dragon Fighter would seem to indicate that these trends have about run their course…and thankfully so.

In this bizarre film, dragons, yes dragons have been brought into a WWII film. But it must be an alternate reality also because so much of the history in the film is wrong. P-51s did not serve in North Africa (and if they had, they wouldn't have been the late models you see in the film), V-2 rockets were not launched until well after the North African campaign, black men unfortunately did NOT serve on the front lines with whites and folks would have had different haircuts and no beards—because it was the 1940s, not 2014. But considering there are freaking dragons, I guess bad history isn't exactly a huge problem here.

The film begins with a couple soldiers having a punch each other in the face contest to see who is the most manly (I am not kidding about this ridiculously macho scene—it IS in the movie). The film then shows that a cult of weirdo sorceresses and some Nazis are working together to control dragons that they recently discovered. These dragons work for the Germans and sport cool German insignias. They can out-fly the best American planes of the day and look unstoppable. It looks like the Allies are screwed until they assemble a group of about 8 pilots to take on the dragons. Considering that they COULD have had thousands of planes and pilots at their disposal, it IS odd they'd go with these 8 and it's also odd that they were NOT all American pilots but a United Nations sort of group (I guess the film was trying to be politically correct). At the same time these pilots take on the dragons, an equally tiny group of Allied commandos attack the dragon enclave on the ground. Again, they could have sent in 50,000 troops…but that many men mean a much higher budget than this low-budget film would have allowed.

So is the film any good? Well, I liked the music….and the CGI was nice.

The bottom line is that P-51 is indeed a bad movie—and this should come as no surprise to anyone (except, perhaps, the folks who made the film). It does have some decent production values and might be of interest to the really undemanding and possibly demented film buff. My only worry is that if the film manages to somehow make money that we'll see even weirder mash-ups. What's next—Cavemen with Nukes, Jesus and Gandhi Versus Hitler or perhaps The Obaminator--where we learn that our president is a robot sent from the future to wipe out mankind?!

I hafta share this gem. Dragon Fighter on Prime. Imagine P-51D Mustangs flying over North Africa! Not P-40 Warhawks!

I loved the premise of Nazi-controlled fire-breathing dragons engaging Allied fighters over the skies of N Africa, but had to laugh at the abjectly incorrect, out of place Mustangs.

The roundup of pilots is comical, too. The group includes pilots from the RAF and Free French. Of course such integration was NOT a factor in American fighter groups during Operation Torch in the skies of North Africa.

The armored personnel carrier conveying the sorceresses is bogus, too. Out of place vehicle.

Still, if one can get past these not-insignificant errors, the movie provides some worthy viewing.

This, just like Mark Atkins other attempts (generally rip off's of other big movies in order to trick people into buying the DVD, "Jack the giant killer" is his perfect shameless example) is yet another flop in literally every way possible, there is literally no saving grace at all.

To cut a long story short, the directing, cinematography, writing and acting is all shocking. I watched it purely out of curiosity and I wish I could have that time if my life back. I am generally a very positive person and find "something" good on most things, but this is just abysmal - needless to say, don't bother.