They do such a great job giving Vermithrax some character too. Like this line of dialogue:
It ties into the theme of lost magic – dragons were once these magnificent creatures, and all that’s left now is this old, spiteful monster – and it even conjures a little bit of sympathy for Vermithrax. He’s the last remnant of something that used to be great, slowly dwindling.
Okay, congratulations Richard. I’ve not seen Dragonslayer since I was extremely young and remember very little about it, but you’ve just made me want to give it a re-watch.
AYeah, I just snagged Dragonslayer on LD because A. there was a sale and I needed to hit 10 to get the discount, and B. I have been officially convinced to give it a shot by all the extollery I’ve heard for it. Plus I’m never not up for high-quality stop-motion beasties.
ASomething Wicked freaked the fuck out of me when I was a wee guy. Saw all of these movies at the pictures when they cane out. SW was the only one that actually scared me. Although the “hell” ending of Black Hole is also really fucked.
Think Dragonslayer is my favourite of the lot though. So dirty and great. And yes, best dragon in cinema.
AI saw a few of these films as a kid and can’t say I was really freaked out by the darkness in any of them, and I was a kid who was pretty much scared of anything with blood or fangs or anything like that. Perhaps it was because they came under the Disney banner I didn’t have any preconceptions going in and was not expecting to be terrified - I just let them wash over me and that was that.
I remember really liking The Black Cauldron simply because I’m a sucker for a ‘magic sword’ type of fantasy movie. Saw it again about a year ago and it doesn’t really hold up but it was still obvious why I liked it as a kid.
Return to Oz didn’t have much of a effect either - it came and it went. I remember a big deal being made about it being by some of the people who had a hand in Star Wars so I was excited, but left feeling Meh. Revisiting it as an adult it’s creepy and downright hellish at times (that glass room with the heads) and you’re left thinking What the fuck Disney?
The Black Hole did nothing for me as a kid. Again it was space, with spaceships and robots and lasers - I was hoping for Star Wars again (and so was Disney) but nope. Again revisiting as an adult my thoughts have done a complete 180, and I absolutely love it. The science and physics etc are laughable but it’s such a great dark creepy atmospheric movie. And that John Barry score. People talk about the WTF ending and how it doesn’t make any sense - I’m 100% on board with that, I’ve no idea what’s going on either but it’s just so wonderfully bizarre, who gives a fuck? If you can get on board with a woman who has a telepathic link to a robot then you can deal with that ending.
Oh and the scariest thing about the movie? That ending? Nope. Anthony Perkins getting eviscerated by Maximilian - those spinning blades, cutting through the book then cut to Perkins’ face “Aaarrrgggg!!” That’s how you fuck kids up.
Tron I’ve tried to sit through, but I’d seen The Last Starfighter a few years before it and that was my fix of ‘arcade action’ movie - I just couldn’t get on board with it.
Dragonslayer ans SWTWC are movies I’ve yet to see but have wanted and need to see for years now.
Would be interesting to know what people think of Dianey’s The Flight of the Navigator (1986) - not seen it for years and for the most part it’s played cute, but the scene where the kid is reunited with his older parents and he starts to freak out, freaked me out as a kid. I think the whole thing despite its cuteness has an ominous air about it.
One of the movies you left off of this list is the one that freaked me out the most as a child: THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN (1981). An unsettling comic take on Faust, the film has an appropriately sleazy and mean-spirited “performance” from Bill Cosby and a terrifying appearance from the Devil (when Elliott Gould’s character tries to break his pact). I can imagine the few kids who saw the film were traumatized.
You’re dead-on about THE BLACK HOLE. It was never a favorite for me as a kid, but I like it more and more each time I watch it.
I remember being upset by the scene in FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR that you’re talking about. I think because it’s played very realistically it has an unusual degree of power, and as a kid you naturally relate to the situation the boy finds himself in, which would be incredibly traumatic if it really happened to you. The stuff with the government scientists experimenting on him is also kind of unsettling, and Alan Silvestri’s score amplifies the darker edges. Once the kid gets aboard the ship with Pee-Wee, though, it becomes pretty goofy stuff.
And definitely give DRAGONSLAYER and SOMETHING WICKED a chance. It’s highly unlikely you’ll think your time was wasted.
I’ve heard of this one forever, but have never seen it. I don’t know that I have the stomach for Cosby now that we know what we know about him, but I might have to push that to the side and give this a whirl.
AI watched Flight of the Navigator a year ago, and theres some weirdness in it for sure. But way less than you want, with worse writing and acting than you want, and ultimately it’s just not an entertaining or interesting film. The best thing in it, I recall thinking, was how much they got out of their Tampa location shooting. It’s a great 80s Spielberg neighborhood waiting for a better story and cast.
But it worked when I was a kid.
I never really consciously registered it, but you’re right about the neighborhood. Especially in the early scenes, when the kid’s walking around at night, it’s a pretty atmospheric area.
It’s way past time Disney licensed these titles out to a studio willing to do them justice on Blu-ray. RETURN TO OZ got a bare-bones Blu-ray with a terrific transfer, but the assholes made the release a “Disney Club Exclusive”, meaning you can expect to shell out stupid money to get a copy from a third party vendor. I know TRON got a Blu.
I’d like to see a studio like Shout! Factory do SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, assuming Disney gives them the kind of access needed to pull together the bonus features. It sounds like they frustrated Anchor Bay on that front fifteen years ago.
AWhy don’t Disney give these movies the Blu-Ray treatment other movies get? Is it simply to not dilute the Disney family-friendly brand with the darker less successful films that they wish didn’t exist or is there different reasons?
We were BIG on The Black Hole when I was younger. I had the story album and a couple of action figures, and we thought Maximillian and STAR were the biggest badasses ever.
I think it’s mainly that they see the movies as failures not worth investing in themselves. There’s profit to be made on cult films but presumably not enough to make a behemoth like Disney care. And the last time a company got Disney to lease them out for DVD releases they apparently dealt with a bunch of recreational micro-managing from insufferable control freaks. So they rot.
They should absolutely do this. If they’re not interested in servicing these films on Blu themselves, they could let someone else take the reigns and still get a nice little cut of the deal. The fact that they did once have a deal with Anchor Bay for these titles implies they’re open to the idea of licensing, but who knows how many different heads the home video department has had since that time.
DRAGONSLAYER is locked in with Paramount (as far as I know), who - in turn - has been locked into a home video distribution deal with Warner Bros., but that deal is ending as we speak, and there’s some chatter out there about Paramount looking to license out particular films in their library. So there might be hope for DRAGONSLAYER on that front. I think we’ll get a bare bones SOMETHING WICKED release from Disney at some point, while THE BLACK HOLE and WATCHER IN THE WOODS could end up going the “Disney Club Exclusive” route.
Ideally, I’d love to see DRAGONSLAYER and THE BLACK HOLE get Shout! releases, and have SOMETHING WICKED, WATCHER, and RETURN TO OZ get Scream Factory “Collector’s Editions.”
Much of the info in that link I had never seen before. Unfortunate stuff.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES - I still have nightmares about the Spider sequence in the bedroom in that flick.
So damn real and you can feel the fear from the actors in that scene.
it shows true darkness, if that horrid scene still resonates with me.
Damn.. I was shaking when I typed this… go figure
What’s nice about that scene is that the kids play it just right. It’s not over-the-top histrionic. Plus, James Horner’s proto-ALIENS scoring in that sequence doesn’t hurt, either.
James Horner and that score totally nailed it. I just know how that whole sequence made me feel… and still does.
Horner’s score is really effective in the film, even as it foreshadows melody and motif ideas that he would return to in numerous subsequent films and to even greater effect (STAR TREK III, ALIENS, and WILLOW, in particular), which does give it the feeling of a dry run sort of score. But that’s really only an issue for hardcore film score nerds who take a wide look at the guy’s career as a progression; it’s not a slight against the score as used in the actual movie.
That said, Georges Delerue’s original score - which was replaced by Horner’s - is absolutely wonderful, and superior to Horner’s effort.
A[quote name=“Malmordo” url=“/community/t/155794/dark-disney#post_4124212”]
One of the movies you left off of this list is the one that freaked me out the most as a child: THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN (1981). An unsettling comic take on Faust, the film has an appropriately sleazy and mean-spirited “performance” from Bill Cosby and a terrifying appearance from the Devil (when Elliott Gould’s character tries to break his pact). I can imagine the few kids who saw the film were traumatized.
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I still think of that movie a lot. Anytime it’s hot I think of the “it’s hotter than hell in here” line. And yeah, the appearance of the devil is full on. I remember this and an animated cartoon (that ended with “a song beats the devil everytime”) being my introduction to the Faust story.
[quote name=“Richard Dickson” url=“/community/t/155794/dark-disney#post_4124452”]We were BIG on The Black Hole when I was younger. I had the story album and a couple of action figures, and we thought Maximillian and STAR were the biggest badasses ever.
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Yup. Had the pop up book, the 3D stereogram, a model of Maximillian, toys of Old BOB and Vincent, the whole shebang. The Cygnus is one of my favourite spaceship designs of all time.