In Dan Lybarger’s article for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he writes, “Matthew Robbins’ 1981 adventure film “Dragonslayer” is the tale of a sorcerer’s apprentice named Galen (a pre-“Ally McBeal” Peter MacNicol) who tries to liberate the kingdom from a menacing airborne reptile. Like the dragon itself, the film flew away from theaters quickly and got disappointing box office returns despite good reviews and terrific performances from MacNicol, Sir Ralph Richardson as his mentor, Caitlin Clarke and an unknown Ian McDiarmid, who’d later gain cinematic immortality as Emperor Palpatine in the “Star Wars” saga.”
In a Zoom conversation, Robbins — the director and cowriter of the movie — tells Lybarger that Paramount’s restoration of “Dragonslayer” was unexpected: “I was informed of it once they had taken the decision. I didn’t agitate for it. It was purely out of their own enthusiasm. A whole team of people, audio and video, who had been doing restorations of other Paramount films from the library and made them up to date.”
Robbins calls the 4K restoration of the film “very much in the spirit of the leading edge of today’s technology about getting rid of the matte lines, getting rid of all the grain and the night skies of seeing deeper into the shadows, even finding detail in the highlights.”
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