FILM · 1981 · USA
Dragonslayer
40 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (40)
- #001
Some of Alex North's music was originally composed for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and went unused.
- #002
Dragonslayer was the first film to use go-motion, a variation of stop-motion animation in which parts of the model (in this case the dragon) were mechanized and the movement was programmed by computer. During shooting, the computer moved the model while the camera filmed, producing motion blur that made the animation more convincing.
- #003
According to sculptor Bill Basso, who worked on the 2002 post-apocalyptic fantasy film Reign of Fire, the dragons in that film were designed as updated versions of Vermithrax, made sturdier and more dinosaur-like.
- #004
Sixteen dragon puppets were used for the role of Vermithrax, including a twelve-metre hydraulic model. Each was capable of flying, crawling and breathing fire.
- #005
Ken Ralston designed the dragonlings with the help of comic-book illustrator David Bunnett. In designing them, Bunnett tried to find a look that would not invite sympathy, so that audiences would find their deaths more acceptable. Noting that most young animals look appealing because of their large eyes, Bunnett designed the dragon hatchlings with relatively small eyes; Ralston refined the design to give their faces bulldog- and bat-like features, and also hinted at their adult form by adding a small horn to their noses and giving them long forelimbs that would become wings. Ken Ralston, Chris Walas and David Carson built three articulated puppets and a featureless miniature model (for the scene in which Vermithrax discovers her dead brood). The dragons were operated like hand puppets through holes in the floor of the film set.
- #006
The film was shot mostly in Wales. The final scene was shot on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.
- #007
After principal photography was completed, a special effects team of eighty people at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in Northern California worked for eight months to produce 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used in close-ups. The model was animated by radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, rods and hand, providing a fully coordinated facial illusion with a wide range of expression.
- #008
Dragonslayer was Peter MacNicol's (Galen) first feature film.
- #009
The film was a co-production between Walt Disney Productions and Paramount Pictures.
- #010
Phil Tippett built a model for the scenes in which Vermithrax had to walk. Tippett did not want to use standard stop-motion animation techniques and had his team build a dragon model that would move during each exposure rather than between them, as had once been standard. The process, which Tippett called "go motion", recorded the creature's movements in motion the way a real animal moves and eliminated the jerkiness common in earlier stop-motion films.
- #011
This is the only film released under the Disney name to feature frontal male nudity. When Peter MacNicol jumps into the water, his legs swing wide apart, briefly exposing his genitals.
- #012
Dragonslayer was Caitlin Clarke's debut.
- #013
Many local villagers were employed as extras.
- #014
Graphic artist David Bunnett was tasked with designing the dragon's appearance and was supplied with ideas about the mechanics of how the dragon would move, which he then developed into concepts on paper. Because the film's key scene would be the final battle, it was decided early in production that the dragon had to be designed with an emphasis on flight capability. According to Bunnett, "Designing a dragon isn't just a matter of sticking wings on a dinosaur… Vermithrax is 40 feet long and has a 90-foot wingspan. But it had to look light enough to fly. So most of its weight is in the head, neck and shoulders. The rest is quite aerodynamic."
- #015
Ken Ralston was assigned the flight scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminium skeleton to provide a wide range of movement. Ralston filmed flying birds to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was shot using go-motion techniques. To convey the feeling of flight, the camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles.
- #016
Twenty-five percent of the film's budget was spent on special effects to bring Vermithrax to life.
- #017
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film glowing reviews.
- #018
After Bunnett delivered the storyboard panels to the film crew, it was decided that the dragon would have to be realized through a wide variety of techniques: the dragon seen in the film is a combination of several different models. Phil Tippett of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) finalized the dragon's design and made various cosmetic changes, such as making the wings bat-like rather than pterosaur-like. He then sculpted a reference model, closely overseen by Danny Lee of Walt Disney Studios, while larger dragon props were built for close-ups. Two months later, Lee's team had completed a sixteen-foot head and neck rig, a six-metre tail, thighs and legs, claws capable of holding a person, and a 30 ft wing section. The parts were shipped in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747 to Pinewood Studios outside London. Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects and began planning both on-set and off-set effects with various special effects experts.
- #019
Peter MacNicol (Galen) is said to be ashamed of the film and not to list it on his CV.
- #020
Tom St. Amand eventually joined the animation process and, after Ralston set up the daytime work, actually animated the final 'flying' shots at night. Most of the flying shots were ultimately relatively easy to film, but the shots of the dragon falling from the sky and shrouded in smoke were not. A descending smoke bomb (set off by pyrotechnician Thaine Morris) was filmed on set, and Ralston's task here was to match the dragon's movement to the movement of the smoke. The motion was then repeated through motion control and provided a small glowing light attached to the dragon. Additional embers breaking off the dragon and flying were also added to Loring Doyle's shot.
- #021
Eric Roberts was considered to play Galen.
- #022
Vermithrax's legs were based on an ordinary chicken foot that Phil Tippett sent to the writers. Barwood said: "It was a big monster, but it had to be able to fly. So it had to be very light, like a bird - which wouldn't be so unusual because reptiles were related to birds through the dinosaurs. Phil went out and got a chicken foot and we made a model of it and flew it. So it was literally the dragon's foot, a giant chicken foot."
- #023
The Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) team also designed the color scheme that made Vermithrax fit into its surroundings. Phil Tippett recalled: "The matter of the dragon's color really wasn't addressed until we got to England. With an intense shooting schedule and Ken and Jon hiring puppeteers to work together, I was lucky enough to be able to pull Matt off the set for a minute or two to discuss which colors should be used to integrate the dragon into the cave sets. I felt it was important to make the dragon look like part of its own world; so I would walk onto the sets, take handfuls of puppet paint, slate and rock, and then go back to the painting area and match similar colors."
- #024
Filming the full-size models inside the cave proved enormously difficult. Thirteen people operated the full-scale head for the scene in which the dragon emerges from the lake, dripping water and opening its mouth. A single shot took days to achieve. Several planned shots ran into practical difficulties because of the hardware's structural limitations. Robbins commented: "There were many situations where months of planning and storyboarding went down the drain in a few minutes when we realized the hoses weren't long enough to reach the part of the set we wanted to shoot, or the pump would break and take three days to repair, or when we dropped the claw a joint would shatter and it would no longer hold. You can't stop when you're in production. You have to shoot something, and you have to shoot it right now, or you will. I never understood it. So the frustration level was extremely high." This significant loss of production time was solved by moving most of the full-size dragon setups to a second unit directed by Peter MacDonald. Robbins only had to discuss the setup with MacDonald and come in to direct when a particular scene was ready to be shot. At that point Robbins realized that most of the planned shots did not require the advanced movement the first full-size head could provide. A new full-size head, labeled the 'B' head, was built using additional coatings previously made by Lee's team. It had a simpler and lighter construction and was mounted on a seesaw that allowed up-and-down movement. It also had simplified mechanisms that allowed slight lateral movement. The 'B' head proved very useful and was used in numerous shots, including the scenes in which the dragon rises behind Galen - before he turns - and the death of Brother Jacopus.
- #025
Almost all of the 20 walking dragon shots were done with blue screen. After this new animation process was completed it was given a new name. Ziff recalled: "I wanted 'animation,' so that we could call the animators 'animotors.' But that never got off the ground." Eventually this new animation technique came to be called 'Go-Motion.' Carson complained about the process of building miniature sets that might have been better at a different scale if he had known from the start that blue screen would be used. Before the decision to use blue screen was made, Carson had built hanging sets. "It was actually impossible to build a miniature cave," he said. "It had to be done in layers of flats. And unfortunately, in the first few shots we saw that it looked like layers of flats." He added: "That's where the real problem came in; trying to fit everything into such a small space. Later it turned out that we applied the dragon's blue screen in most of the shots. If we had known at the beginning that we would follow this approach, I could have built the sets at a different scale." This method made it easier to hide the animation rods, which meant either masking them or rotoscoping them with articulated mattes. Usually only the dragon's head needed the second technique. Sometimes the rods could even be hidden by shadows or by the dragon's anatomical details. Setting up the shots proved particularly complex. The first step was determining the basic configuration of the carrier mechanism. This was followed by the construction of linkage rod systems. In every case, the configuration had to prevent the rods from obstructing the dragon's movements or passing in front of its body. Once the carrier was configured with the dragon mounted inside it and the shot was aligned, the next step was adjusting the tension of the dragon's joints. This ensured that the said joints responded appropriately to the rod movements. Sixteen memory paths were then created manually. "It was complicated," said Ziff, "because each foot could move up and down, forward and back, right and left, but when you had to go in a circular motion - you could only program one part at a time - it was like operating an Etch-A-Sketch with one hand and trying to make it circular. It was a bit difficult, but Phil mastered it."
- #026
For a foot or limb to appear to be standing still while the dragon moved forward (and thus the rest of the body kept moving), the unit controlling the foot had to be programmed to move backward simultaneously as the rest moved forward. This kind of programming was far more detailed than what was done for the Star Wars spaceships, which had only one control unit. Tippett essentially learned programming while shooting Dragonslayer. Programming the more complex 'walking' dragon shots would take 1-2, even 2 and a half weeks. The actual shooting took about an hour instead. Tippett said: "When we got most of the very complex shots out of the way - which took about 2 months - we managed to complete the last third of the shots in about 2 and a half weeks because we were so familiar with the system."
- #027
One of the 'walking' shots - the scene in which Vermithrax emerges furiously from the tunnel over the death of her offspring - went through a series of different iterations. Barwood recalled: "Phil had programmed the dragon to come out of the cave after it was noticed that the babies were dead. And he had brought it into the cave with its head turning from side to side. I think what Phil had in mind was that this was a natural part of its walk, but the effect on screen was that the dragon didn't pay any attention - as if it had come out for some kind of game in the cave - when in fact what was going on in the tiny dragon's mind was: 'I'm going to get the sucker who killed my babies!' Its face should have come toward you full of menace. Matthew got the chance to see this played back on video and say, 'Wait a minute. Let's change this.' And Phil did. But the rest of the movement was still in the computer's memory and could be stored and transferred to the shot.
- #028
Albert Salmi's voice was dubbed by Norman Rodway.
- #029
Chris Walas's favorite frame of the creature in the entire film is Vermithrax's head snaking toward the camera with darkness behind it, suggesting the presence of the rest of the creature. During this shot Walas stood behind the hand puppet dressed in black. Unlike most 'static' head shots, which required fire to be composited and rotoscoped in, this sequence was purely the puppet's showmanship. Walas commented: "This was what I thought the puppet should have much more range of motion for; just a lot of movement. But part of the problem was that most, or a significant portion, of the close-ups had to match flame shots. So we didn't have much room for movement."
- #030
Despite all the problems the team encountered with the full-size models, the greatest challenge on Dragonslayer would be the animation. "We knew the dragon was much more important to this film than some incidental thing that appears in only a few shots in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back," Johnson said. "The dragon had to be presented in a way that would absolutely astonish the audience." From the beginning Barwood and Robbins were convinced that the technique to be used was dimensional animation.
- #031
Vermithrax's movements were largely based on 16 mm footage of lizards. The initial plan was to animate the head and neck conventionally using stop-motion while using the new technique for the rest of the body. Dennis Muren explained: "We couldn't figure out how to motorize the neck and head without doing everything on blue screen, and we didn't want to do everything on blue screen. So the first shot Phil tried was the mother coming out and looking at the baby dragon. He did everything he could to focus attention on the head and neck - which were the only parts that were stop-motion - and yet it still looked different from the rest of the puppet. In fact, it was perhaps more objectionable than the whole. The puppet was stop-motion, and it was a complete miniature set with smoke and the like in it. It was so complicated that we thought: 'When it comes to compromise, what's the point of doing every shot like this?' That's when it was decided to motorize the head and shoot the visuals on blue screen."
- #032
In case both needed to operate at the same time, two three-foot-long armatures (with a six-foot wingspan) were built for the 'walking' dragon. In the end the second armature served only as a prototype for animation and surface coating tests. Two ten-inch puppets of Galen were also made for shots showing both the dragon and the warrior on screen. Chris Walas made the front sculpture of the walking dragon with Phil Tippett's final touches; after the former molded it, the latter would complete the manufacture.
- #033
The sequences in which Vermithrax would fly were assigned to Ken Ralston. Two additional "flying" dragon motion puppets were built with aluminum skeletons that provided a wide range of movement. The puppets' varying scale depended on the requirements of particular shots. They were maneuvered using the spaceship-type motion control techniques used for Star Wars. The 'flying' models were somewhat smaller in scale than their 'walking' counterparts and were built with ball-and-socket armatures. The larger model had a gearbox mechanism that allowed the wings to actually flap during flight. This only moved the forearms, and so the wing tips still had to be moved by hand. Ironically, Robbins did not want detailed wing movement. Ralston recalled: "The first flying dragon I shot was not like it is in the film. It was slower, more sinuous, and there was a lot more wing flapping." As it turned out, Robbins really wanted the master of the air. He explained: "We hadn't had a chance to establish a workable relationship with Ken and Phil, and we didn't really have a handle on ideas about the dragon's personality. He had a shot in which I felt the dragon flapped its wings too much. Ken thought it was really convincing, but I just had to decide what I wanted to do. The shot was technically as good as anything ever done; but in terms of the creature's dramatic feel, I wanted something very different. I wanted it to move with very little wing movement. The more it had to flap to stay in the air, the more it looked like it was struggling. Flapping didn't seem consistent with its magnificent nature, and so we set that idea aside in many shots." The dragon also had to fly fast. "We know it goes very fast," said Robbins. "We did some math and most of the time it does around a hundred and fifty miles an hour. But we won't apologize for that reality. Believe me, when it looks like it's going at the right speed, it looks too exhausted and relaxed to provide the intensity you need at the end of the film." One of the most magnificent shots shows the dragon hovering in the air, breathing fire on Ulrich at the film's climax. "They had shot Ulrich on a plate," said Ralston. "Then they shot a flame pass with the set completely dark. And the flame was moving up and down - it wasn't just locked off - so I had to match the flame to the head. That was my favorite shot."
- #034
Ian McDiarmid (Brother Jacopus) became famous for the role of Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine in the "Star Wars" film series. Peter MacNicol voiced Tseebo in Star Wars: Rebels (2014).
- #035
The West German version was first handled by 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), which Disney acquired in 2019.
- #036
It is the 111th live-action film produced by Disney.
- #037
It is the second of twelve films to be released jointly by Paramount and Disney; the others are Popeye (1980), Alive (1993), Face/Off (1997), Snake Eyes (1998), A Civil Action (1998), Runaway Bride (1999), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).
- #038
Phil Tippett, Dave Carson and Jon Berg supervised the sculpting process to keep it consistent with the maquette design. Despite even Lee's doubts, a number of full-size puppets were eventually built. Vermithrax's 16-foot head and neck section was built with full neck, head, mouth and eye movement. This was followed by a 30-foot wing section that included only the arm, without the fingers and the membrane between them. Other body parts of the puppet included the left leg, complete with a grasping clawed foot, a 20-foot tail section capable of rough serpentine movements, and a complete puppet of the monster's burned carcass shown at the end of the film. The wing section was ultimately used only as part of this last model. A crane was required to operate the enormous puppets. The outer surface of all versions was molded in polyurethane. Danny Lee's team also made an additional set of spare skins to be swapped in during shooting. When Tippett arrived in England, he supervised the painting process of the full-size props to match the color scheme of the small-scale puppets and maquettes. The full-size models were first shot on the exterior dragon lair set built on Pinewood's enormous '007' stage. This was a raised set (3 meters above the floor) that allowed for earthquake-causing mechanisms and for the dragon's head to rise from the floor. In the cave interior, the famous 'burning water' was achieved with flammable gas bubbling up from underwater and igniting on contact with a burning source, simulating flames on the water.
- #039
The first footage of the full-scale dragon head did not meet the producers' expectations. Despite its fearsome appearance, its movements were inadequate and unconvincing. According to Dennis Muren, this had to do with who operated the enormous puppet: "The men who operated the dragons, the babies, were experienced at performing with puppets and projecting their thoughts onto those puppets. But the men who tried to operate the big dragon were laborers, not puppeteers. Also, I think maybe it could have worked better - if they had put a few men on it to iron out the bugs. As it was, it just came onto the set and was expected to play. Work on the first day; not just work, but get into action on the first day." Chris Walas recalled another major problem with the sculpture itself: "The full head was used in only a few shots because it was discovered to have a flaw." Walas recalled on Facebook: "It had been sculpted very symmetrically, and in shots there was a strange optical effect that flattened the face of any head, and this was considered unusable." At this point Chris Walas re-proposed an idea that had been quickly set aside during pre-production: a small-scale hand puppet. Concerns about extra matte lines, compositing and crossing issues had led Matthew Robbins to prefer the full-size head. Those concerns were now less urgent, and in light of the failure of the full-size props, the hand puppet looked like an effective option. With the director's approval, Walas went on to prove the idea; he sculpted and made the 'close-up' head puppet, all shot at ILM. This new creation proved indispensable to the project, although most of its functions went unused. In the final cut of the film, most of the shots of Vermithrax's head were performed by the hand puppet, with only a very few done by the full-size heads. Given the intended 'hero' role, the puppet was allowed to deviate to a certain degree from the full-scale heads. Walas was thus able to 'correct' the sculpting flaw that made the full-size heads difficult to film. He commented: "The best way to tell them apart is the bridge of the nose. The full-scale heads' protrusion is flatter. That was one of the reasons we had to make a puppet; the flat nose on the full-size heads had a terrible foreshortening problem when viewed head-on. In fact, to avoid this problem I set the entire front of the head at a certain angle." The hand puppet could perform the full range of motion of the full-scale head, along with additional and finer cues in its performance. The basic movements were provided by a pistol-grip control mounted inside the head. Other functions were provided by cable-operated mechanisms, puppeteered externally by assistants using levers made by engineer Stuart Ziff. A motorcycle control lever on each arm allowed two special functions to be performed simultaneously. Chris Walas said of the puppet's expressive ability: "Most of the functions weren't originally designed for the dragon. It was a reptile, and reptiles don't have much facial mobility. So it was very difficult to decide what to move and to move it convincingly. It raised and lowered its brows, its eyes moved back and forth, its eyelids opened and closed. Its nostrils opened and closed. They snarl - a kind of insistence - 'snarling' - a very natural movement. The temples pulse. The tongue swells in the throat."
- #040
Although Peter Eyre and Chloe Salaman play father and daughter in Dragonslayer, their real-life age difference is only 10 years.
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