A fantastic-looking Russian fantasy epic which, despite a poor, washed-out print, still manages to convince in its portrayal of a LORD OF THE RINGS-type world packed with monsters, beautiful landscapes, and warring armies. A solemn-sounding narrator tells us the fairytale story as the film progresses and, even with only an eighty-minute running time, it still manages to pack in half a dozen plot twists and plenty of action.
Boris Andreyev makes for a different type of hero as Ilja. Normally the heroes are fresh-faced and muscular in these fantasy films; however, he's a bearded Santa Claus lookalike who would appear to be grandfatherly rather than a young and brave fighter! I guess they have a different idea of these things in Russia. Still, with Ilja chucking rocks and tree stumps around at his farm, he would at least make a fair adversary for the likes of Steve Reeves or Kirk Morris. The rest of the cast all look much the same and don't really register with the exception of the Mongol Chieftain who seems to be an foreign equivalent of Vincent Price.
Scenes of thousands of warriors marching through countryside are well done and give the film its tagline "A cast of 106,000!". The special effects of the wind demon and the obese merchant are well done, but the dragon (which doesn't actually appear until five minutes before the end) is an unconvincing puppet which at least spits fire fairly regularly. However, the threat is destroyed after the fighters simply chuck buckets of water over their heads and walk up and cut off its heads! Not exactly a powerful adversary after all and one that would be more effective from a distance, I think.
Still, the film provides plenty of unintentional laughs, not least of these the dragon. A scene where Ilja walks up after a battle and we see his shield studded with a dozen arrows is pretty funny too. There are some surprisingly violent and cruel scenes involving Mongols being repeatedly skewered by spears and lifted into the air, and three being impaled on one spear at once - not what you would expect to see in a children's epic! Thankfully the film has an imagination which still manages to impress us, like the scene where the chieftain walks up a mountain of soldiers on his horse in able to see more clearly! THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON is a highly entertaining film and should be seen by any genre fan as a genuine attempt at an epic by a foreign country that at least partially works, and what it lacks in professionalism it more than makes up for in spirit.
Boris Andreyev makes for a different type of hero as Ilja. Normally the heroes are fresh-faced and muscular in these fantasy films; however, he's a bearded Santa Claus lookalike who would appear to be grandfatherly rather than a young and brave fighter! I guess they have a different idea of these things in Russia. Still, with Ilja chucking rocks and tree stumps around at his farm, he would at least make a fair adversary for the likes of Steve Reeves or Kirk Morris. The rest of the cast all look much the same and don't really register with the exception of the Mongol Chieftain who seems to be an foreign equivalent of Vincent Price.
Scenes of thousands of warriors marching through countryside are well done and give the film its tagline "A cast of 106,000!". The special effects of the wind demon and the obese merchant are well done, but the dragon (which doesn't actually appear until five minutes before the end) is an unconvincing puppet which at least spits fire fairly regularly. However, the threat is destroyed after the fighters simply chuck buckets of water over their heads and walk up and cut off its heads! Not exactly a powerful adversary after all and one that would be more effective from a distance, I think.
Still, the film provides plenty of unintentional laughs, not least of these the dragon. A scene where Ilja walks up after a battle and we see his shield studded with a dozen arrows is pretty funny too. There are some surprisingly violent and cruel scenes involving Mongols being repeatedly skewered by spears and lifted into the air, and three being impaled on one spear at once - not what you would expect to see in a children's epic! Thankfully the film has an imagination which still manages to impress us, like the scene where the chieftain walks up a mountain of soldiers on his horse in able to see more clearly! THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON is a highly entertaining film and should be seen by any genre fan as a genuine attempt at an epic by a foreign country that at least partially works, and what it lacks in professionalism it more than makes up for in spirit.