The Sword and the Dragon (1956)

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.

Like many who have reviewed the film before me, I saw this first as a child at a theater. The action parts impressed me, tremendous battle scenes with thousands of extras. The Wind Demon impressed me as did the Mountain of men, and the mountain of gold. Plot points were lost on me as was the erotic dance scenes. I remembered the heroic music, the beautiful scenery and the magic rug. It was with trepidation that I screened a you tube positing. If ever a movie cried out for restoration, it is this one. The color was faded to the point of being black and white. The print was fairly clean, but to view this on my small computer monitor made the loss of spectacle even more noticeable. One reads among the reviews the Soviet propaganda slant the people saw in the movie. It was based on a folk tale hero, one who like in the heros of our westerns of old, were straight shooters. Ilia plead his allegiance to the land, and those who work it. He would not be swayed by wealth nor power, from doing the right thing. You may call me old fashioned, but these time honored virtues are sore lacking in todays media. The Dragon of the title makes a very late appearance in he film, and is rather easily dispatched, still this was one of the first three headed fire breathing flying dragons I had ever seen in movies, and that alone boosts its "awesome to kids" factor way up. Glad I re watched it.

'He spoke truly, Ilya Muromets …'.The beauties of the Russian land, Russian choruses, a true folkloric content, and a pair of trousers jokingly sent as a signal to the Russians' enemies.This adaptation consists of snippets, bits, small scenes of the Russian legend.In the idyllic love scenes, Ilya Muromets is as convincing as Oliver Hardy at his funniest.It must be acknowledged that THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON (what sword?—which dragon ?) is far from perfect; as a matter of fact, it's very clumsy and primitive.Muromets' exploits have a propaganda—style, bombastic and grandiloquent tone, celebratory of a Soviet hero, and sometimes plainly stupid (see his reasoning when he bravely chooses the way that leads to death, over wealth and marriage).The budget seems to have been appropriately big.For those interested in folklore, fairy tales, children's movie, fantasy movies, sword and sorcery movies, THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON is worth watching.

I really love the quirky nature of these Russian fairy tale films. Nutzoid english dubbing only enhances the warp factor (The US version entitled 'The Sword and the Dragon' even has Mike Wallace as a narrator) The characters are often quite bizarre (The makeup job on the wind demon is just too much, and I'm in love with the sword slinging dancing girl near the end of the film) Top it off with nifty puppetry (the dragon seems to clearly have been the inspiration for Japan's Ghidrah) makes this a true gem of kidvid madness!! I can't wait for the letterboxed Russian restoration which is scheduled to appear on DVD the end of 2001!!!