This film looks like it had very impressive production values. Huge sets, a rather decent looking monster and other things one associates with a big time budget. What it lacks is a coherent story, however, this may be more due to the fact this is a heavily edited American cut of the film, cut even more so by the fact I saw it on MST3K. What I saw warrants a score of three, mainly due to the fact it seemed to randomly jump from scene to scene. If I ever see a print of the film as it was meant to be seen I will gladly score and review it again, but now I have to review the film as I saw it. Unfortunately, what I saw in terms of story was a convoluted mess.
The story is the main problem, but I will attempt to explain the main gist of it as I saw it. A man is crippled, unable to move, an evil warlord type is plundering the land and a strange hero who may as well not been in the film at all dies and wishes for these men to pass his sword to another. Well, these men find the poor man who is crippled and witnessed his village pillaged and his wife taken by the horde and they make him better and give him the sword that he does not use very often at all during the film. He goes to the prince of the kingdom's palace (why not a king?) and brings him this creature that blows wind. At a point he is reunited with his wife, only to promptly leave her side again and she is again captured, for some strange reason the prince locks up the hero and during this time the wife has their son a big battle occurs where the hero has a plan that does not really seem like a plan. You just know there is something being missed of vital importance, unfortunately during the early years when they dubbed these films they often times did less translating and more insert whatever sort of make sense and that seems the case here.
The title of "The Sword and the Dragon" makes one think that both play a vital role in this film. Well neither does, as the hero rarely pulls the sword out and the dragon only has a short scene in the beginning and a longer scene at the end. It looks very good, however, as it reminded me of Godzilla's foe King Gidorah. It looks like they made a fairly large sized model of it too. My guess is though that the original Russian title made no reference to either the sword or the dragon.
The set pieces in this one looked great. The forest the hero goes to looks really good with its large and twisted trees. They also do an okay job at a full scale battle, though one will see that there really was not much done during the battle after the two sides rushed each other. The castle and village look good and like I said the production did a great job especially considering it was 1956. It is one of the reasons I have to believe that the story would be much better if it was not dubbed. I just do not see them putting all this effort into everything else, but not the story.
So, from what I saw it was a incoherent movie with great scenery and a cool looking dragon. I am sure the film would be better if seen in its original Russian, but I saw what I saw and that is what I reviewed. I know a lot of people bash MST3K at times for putting down movies such as these, but without them I never would have seen this film at all and I bet that goes for a lot of other people as well. It is also not their fault that the film was horribly reedited and dubbed for American audiences. It was, for me, an interesting watch and in the end most certainly not one of the worst films I have seen them do.
The story is the main problem, but I will attempt to explain the main gist of it as I saw it. A man is crippled, unable to move, an evil warlord type is plundering the land and a strange hero who may as well not been in the film at all dies and wishes for these men to pass his sword to another. Well, these men find the poor man who is crippled and witnessed his village pillaged and his wife taken by the horde and they make him better and give him the sword that he does not use very often at all during the film. He goes to the prince of the kingdom's palace (why not a king?) and brings him this creature that blows wind. At a point he is reunited with his wife, only to promptly leave her side again and she is again captured, for some strange reason the prince locks up the hero and during this time the wife has their son a big battle occurs where the hero has a plan that does not really seem like a plan. You just know there is something being missed of vital importance, unfortunately during the early years when they dubbed these films they often times did less translating and more insert whatever sort of make sense and that seems the case here.
The title of "The Sword and the Dragon" makes one think that both play a vital role in this film. Well neither does, as the hero rarely pulls the sword out and the dragon only has a short scene in the beginning and a longer scene at the end. It looks very good, however, as it reminded me of Godzilla's foe King Gidorah. It looks like they made a fairly large sized model of it too. My guess is though that the original Russian title made no reference to either the sword or the dragon.
The set pieces in this one looked great. The forest the hero goes to looks really good with its large and twisted trees. They also do an okay job at a full scale battle, though one will see that there really was not much done during the battle after the two sides rushed each other. The castle and village look good and like I said the production did a great job especially considering it was 1956. It is one of the reasons I have to believe that the story would be much better if it was not dubbed. I just do not see them putting all this effort into everything else, but not the story.
So, from what I saw it was a incoherent movie with great scenery and a cool looking dragon. I am sure the film would be better if seen in its original Russian, but I saw what I saw and that is what I reviewed. I know a lot of people bash MST3K at times for putting down movies such as these, but without them I never would have seen this film at all and I bet that goes for a lot of other people as well. It is also not their fault that the film was horribly reedited and dubbed for American audiences. It was, for me, an interesting watch and in the end most certainly not one of the worst films I have seen them do.