Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Flight of Dragons

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This originally published
November eighteenth, twenty twenty two, and it is the episode
you did with our old friend Seth on Flight of Dragons.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right. I thought to rerun this one because the
theme song out of Nowhere was suddenly stuck in my
head this morning and I was like, well, we've got
to do Flight.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Of Dragons again.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Then this one's a little under the radar, I think
for a lot of people, but if you saw it
back in the day, it probably has a very important
place in your heart.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Seth Nicholas Johnson.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, Joe is still out on parental leave, so Seth
is joining me once again, and we're going to discussing
a wonderful slice of early nineteen eighties animation. We're going
to be talking about nineteen eighty two's The Flight of
Dragons from Rankin in Bass Seth, what's your history with
this film?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
So I assumed this was pretty common in the eighties
and nineties when I was a child, But my family
had a large collection of VHS tapes that, you know,
contained movies that were recorded off of television, especially Gosh,
I think ever since the beginning of television, a big
way to like kind of fill that time was just
to play old movies. And then ultimately someone was like, hey,

(01:35):
what if you make new movies for television. It's like
wow even more, you know. So yeah, I think most
parents when they had when they got their first VCR,
they just taped movies off of television perpetually, and they
just had these amassed collections of two or three movies
on a single blank VHS cassettes. And back when this

(01:55):
first premiered on television in nineteen eighty six, I presume
one of my parents corded it. And then as I
got older, and I was like, you know, going through this,
you know, collection of black spine tapes with no description
other than maybe a few hastily scribbled words on on
like a label, I was just seeing, what are these things?
And one of them that I came across was the

(02:15):
Flight of Dragons, and it really fascinated me as a child.
I'm not sure if I could really articulate as a
child what really made me, you know, gravitate towards it.
But now as an adult, I can go like, wow,
you know, this animation is actually really complex and really
special and really compelling. You know, the stories actually really
kind of deep but also shallow enough for a child

(02:37):
to understand it. It's got a nice kind of like,
you know, balance there. And yeah, I just watched it
perpetually as a child, and then ultimately, as we shifted
into the DVD world, I bought a new DVD copy
from the Warner Archives and I still watch it pretty regularly,
but mostly honestly for its visuals. Its visuals are really
pretty stunning in places.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, this this one is. It's a real joy to watch.
I had not only had I never seen this before.
It was really off my radar for most of my life.
I don't know what was I don't remember exactly what
all was going on in nineteen eighty six, but I
know that we were watching TV, so I'm not sure
how I missed this one. Because there are certainly plenty

(03:18):
of other films from the Rank and Bass catalog that
have an important place in my television and film childhood.
But this is one that I don't think I heard
of until I guess many years ago. I think Ben
Bolin of stuff they don't want you to know in
Ridiculous History. Casually mentioned it to me once. He's like,

(03:39):
do you remember a film called The Flight of Dragons?
And he gave me some brief description of it. I
was like, oh, no, I haven't heard of that, but
that sounds interesting. And then more recently, I knew that
you were going to be guest hosting a couple of
episodes of Weird House, so I started looking around at
various animated features from this time period, and I ran

(04:00):
across that title again and watched I don't think I
watched a trailer, but I watched some segment from it,
and I was then instantly interested.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
No, it's a fascinating thing, and I think it's got
something to do with the structure of replaying things on
television when we were younger, because, like, you know, something
like another Rank and in Bass classic, like Rudolph the
Red Nose Reindeer, there's a built in structure for that.
Every Christmas season you play it again, and you know,
people kind of get like an attachment to it. The

(04:31):
late seventies early eighties did have this kind of like
fantasy boom and other things really happened. Like I'm going
off the top of my head here, But in eighty six,
I believe the other two big animated features that came
out that year, or this might have been eighty two,
either way, the year this premiered one way or the other.
I looked this up. It was the same year as
Secretive Nim and The Last Unicorn. Those were like the

(04:53):
three big features that year, and I was like, oh wow,
Like that really was like a vibe at that time
because all three of those they are beloved, but they're
also like cult favorites, like they are none of them
are mainstream, but they are all well known fantasy things.
So yeah, I just think it was a weird time
for latching onto the public consciousness and trying to capitalize

(05:15):
upon high fantasy as mainstream entertainment that maybe it wasn't
quite as successful as they were hoping it would be,
you know, as a moneymaker.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned those films in particular, because
on one hand, even if you haven't seen The Flight
of Dragons, and I had not. It's easy to enter
into it if you've seen certainly other Rank and Bass
animated features from this time period, but even just sort
of stuff that was also populating the waters of major

(05:44):
animated fantasy at the time, and then specifically mentioning The
Secret of Nim and The Last Unicorn, both again both
beloved films with very strong following. I could sit down
and watch either of them. However, I do feel like
both of those films have their own issues as well,
depending on where you're coming from. Like for me, I

(06:06):
absolutely love like the first half of The Last Unicorn,
and then it starts kind of to drag.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
For me, I think that's perhaps a element of fantasy
that perhaps some I don't want to call it lazy,
but I do feel like there was like a pattern
to it where it's like set up the interesting world
for the first half and then just let it play
out for the second half. And I think actually that's
part of this film as well, which which we'll get into.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, though this one I think does pick back up
in a major way, but yeah, there is sort of
that lag period perhaps here as well. Secret and Him
I'll just say real quick, I never had this particular attachment,
but I know that the source material does not have
rat wizards in it. I think they added all of
that for the film, and that's the stuff I love
the most. So I am certainly not offended by it,

(06:57):
but I could understand where there would be some weirdness
there for viewers who had a stronger attachment to the
source material. Interesting, all right, So, yes, this is a
film that I believe debuted in the UK direct a
video in nineteen eighty two, and in nineteen eighty six
it aired as an ABC movie special. It was the

(07:18):
ABC movie Well I don't know if it was ABC
Movie the week, but it was an ABC movie special.
And I think we're going to play the TV spot
for that in just a second. But first of all,
the elevator pitch. What's your elevator pitch for this flick? Here?

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Seth straightforward, I would say an animated Dungeons and Dragons
campaign about science versus magic.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yes, I think that's good. It is a fantasy adventure
that kind of sneaks a fair amount of pro science
propaganda into it, but in a way that I absolutely love.
And I should also note I'll keep coming back to this.
But when I watched it for the first time, I
also got my son to watch it with me. My
wife was out that evening, so we had the TV

(08:02):
to ourselves, and I said, Okay, let's watch this Dragon
show together. And so he ended up really enjoying it
as well, and certainly was on board for all of
the scientific messaging. Nice. All right, Well, let's go ahead
and listen to that trailer. Well TV spot audio, and
I believe this is a long time ABC announcer Scott
Vincent doing the narration.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
Tonight an ABC premiere presentation somewhere in another time, in
another place, Sizuma lives a realm of magic.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Man will never inherit mine to me.

Speaker 5 (08:44):
Well, wizard's rule, we want none of your dark magic.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
We're good battles.

Speaker 5 (08:50):
The voices of email enter an enchanted kingdom from mystical
tale of Unforgettable Adventure. They'll flight of rackons.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
I love it. I'm a sucker for a good TV
spot like that most definitely. Now, I would say word
of warning if you're if you're out there and you're interested,
and then you go and look at a listing for
this on wherever you get your films, you may find
that the box art or the thumbnail for this movie
looks really bad. And I just want to to assure

(09:23):
you that the quality of the picture is not entirely
represented by that very cartoony image.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Not only is the art style completely wrong, like the
characters barely even look like the characters they're supposed to represent,
Like the main character Peter almost looks like the page master,
you know. Like it's just it's that's not the art style.
That's not from the film. That's someone trying to cartoonify
it and sell it to a younger market I presume,

(09:51):
I don't know, but unsuccessful.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, wait until we've talked a little bit about the
some of the other films that Rank and Bass were
putting out of the time. Wait until we've talked about
the the source material here, because I think that does
a better job of setting the stage and preparing your
expectations for what the film is like visually. And speaking
of yes, where can you get this film? I think
it's pretty widely available right now. Certainly you can get

(10:15):
it on DVD or Blu Ray from the WB collection,
and then you can you can rent or or buy
it digitally wherever you get your films online. All right,
well let's start with the really the most obvious point
that we've already hinted at several times. This is a
Ranking in Bass joint.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
I love Ranking and Bass. I own so many Ranking
and Bass films late. Like we mentioned previously, I love
stop motion, and they did a lot of stop motion,
so I own a lot of Ranking and Bass.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, yeah, I feel like it's it's hard to not
have a connection to something they put. They produced, something
that they had a hand in if you grew up
with access to a TV for a number of decades.
So Rankin and Bass we're talking about author Rankin Junior
who lived nineteen twenty four through twenty fourteen, and Jules

(11:04):
Bass who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty twenty two.
They both have director and producer credits on this. They
founded the company known as Videocraft International in nineteen sixty
that went on to become Rank and Bass Productions, Inc.
They were known, of course, for all those holiday films,
many of which were quote unquote anti magic. I believe

(11:26):
that was their term for the stop motion they were using.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, it was because they weren't clay, so they couldn't
use the Will Vinton phrase claymation. And they also weren't
Let's see who was it someone coined the term puppet tune.
I think that was the guy that invented gumby. But yeah,
everyone had to had their own individual name for what
they were calling stop motion at the time. And yeah,

(11:50):
they used AnimagiC.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Why they were the revulsion to stop motion? Was it
just like stop motion? We can't. That just sounds so negative.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
It's too much of an oxymoron that people just won't understand.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
But anyway, there's stop motion productions include the likes of
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, which I think many many,
many of you are familiar with, maybe most of you
are familiar with, but also a number of lesser known
stop motion films. There's some. Looking at the list of them,
some were ones that I vaguely remember catching part of
on TV and maybe even as a child, being like,

(12:27):
I don't think this one's for me. And then some
I'd never heard of, like this particular one, the Life
and Adventures of Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
I love that one. Yeah, this was one of the
ones that we were possibly gonna do for today's episode,
High Fantasy, written by L. Frank Baum. Is that his name?
The Wizard of Oz guy? Right? Yeah? And oh my gosh.
High Fantasy about a bunch of demigods debating amongst one
another whether or not to make the human man Santa
Claus immortal for all the good deeds he's done in

(12:57):
his life. Fascinating, real, fascinating, really beautiful. You got to
watch it if you're interested in very strange holiday movies.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
There does seem to be an entire genre of holiday
films where folks decide to flesh out the Santa Claus mythology,
sometimes to great results, other times to kind of you
get into kind of weird areas when you have to
build all this like support structures to hold this idea.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Up, especially I think as a youth, when you watch
these and it's not like, you know, they're all working
from the same blueprint. So you have let's say, five
or six different origin tales for Santa Claus that never
really match up. They don't really kind of lay over
one another, so it just muddles the whole idea.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, and they all end up feeling a little bit
like heresy. Yeah, especially if you're still if you're still
a believer in Santa, or you still are holding on
to some of those beliefs, you're gonna look at something
like and then be like, I don't know about this
line of faith. I think they've pas perhaps lost track
of them, so yeah, for sure. Now, Rankin and bass

(14:02):
Rolls are responsible for some beloved non holiday animated films
of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, which I think these
probably deserve more of our attention here, at least for
this film. These include the likes of and Stop Me.
If you have thoughts on some of these here seth.
But Willie McBean and his Magic Machine from nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
No thoughts on that one, okay.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Oooh, This next one I've only seen parts of, and
i've every year at Halloween. I'm tempted to play it
in full. But Mad Monster Party question Mark from nineteen
sixty seven.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
That one is beloved. I love that one, dearly. It's
a bit dated at this points, but love it, love it,
love it. I mean, it's a bunch of stop motion
monsters throwing a party. It's a really good time.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oooh. The next one is one of my personal favorites,
and definitely a film I grew up with. Nineteen seventy
seven's The Hobbit.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, this one, The Hobbits, and the follow up Return
of the King. I still, to this get confused with
the Ralph Bakshi, you know, token adaptations, very confusing. They
all kind of blend together in my head. I'm not
really sure how to parse them apart.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, yeah, It's The Hobbit is a film that I know,
as a child I loved, and then later on, when
I was reading and rereading the novels for the first time,
I had a strong dislike for them because I didn't
want to picture the characters as they appeared in the
animated film while I was reading it. But then I've

(15:36):
subsequently come back around and really really embrace nineteen seventy
sevens The Hobbit. I think it's I think it's tremendous.
John Houston, I think is my Gandalf. As much as
I love Ian McKellen, I've got to go with John
Houston for my Gandalf. And also it's just the pacing
in seventy sevens The Hobbit is just so good, like
they managed to take one book make one film out

(15:58):
of it. Yes, they cut out some great stuff to
do it, but you end up with a very watchable
film and you're in and out in seventy eight minutes.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
It also feels good that I feel like the material
it adapted much smoother than it did in the Jackson films,
because it went from this is a short children's book
to this is a short children's film. It was a
one to one. It was very easy.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
There.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
There was no flourish, no no no gilding to lily
like they did on the Jackson one, which I enjoyed
to a certain extent. I think they're fine. They're just
not as good. Obviously the other trilogy.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
They're they're they're fun as well. I don't dislike those.
And certainly when you get into the adaptation of The
Lord of the Rings you have to give a lot
of Lord of Rings itself, you have to give a
lot of credit to Peter Jackson. I mean, those are
pretty terrific films. On the other hand, the animated attempts
to bring that trilogy to the screen were a little
a little rough around the edges. You have the Ralph

(16:56):
Bakshi film, and then of course Ranking and Bass comeback
around and finish what Bakshi started with the Return of
the King, which I also remember enjoying. It also has
some nice Orc songs in it, something that I think
has largely been lacking. I don't remember if the Orcs
sang at all on the Peter Jackson films, but I
haven't seen all the cuts all right. On top of those,

(17:17):
we also have The Last Unicorn from eighty two, which
we already mentioned, certainly a classic, great vocal performances in that,
for my money, terrific music by America. There are at
least a couple of tracks in there that I will
absolutely go out of my way to listen to on
their own every now and then.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
That was also an element of the early eighties late
seventies animation was they worked in popular musicians, I think
for the first time, and I think we're better for it.
So we'll have a little theme song by a popular
musician later for this film. Well, we'll talk about that later.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
On the TV end of the spectrum. There was also
ThunderCats and silver Hawks. Silver Hawks was basically ThunderCats remixed
the same basic concept but in space, and instead of
cat people, they were like metal bird people. And instead
of mom Raw you had Monstar The Space Crime Boss. Yeah,

(18:14):
but I definitely remember watching those shows. Ranganabass also had
their hands in some mostly live action films that are
also worth noting. One is nineteen seventy seven for The
Last Dinosaur, which is Japanese co production, and then there's
nineteen seventy eight The Bermuda Depths. This is another Japanese
co production that featured a young Carl Weather's Burro lives
and I believe a giant psychic sea turtle. Joe has

(18:37):
seen this one. I have not, but he tells me
that it's amazing. It sounds amazing. I haven't seen it either.
Now one more quick note about the animation here. As
with other as with various other Rank and Bass productions,
you'll note a number of Japanese animators in filmmakers credited.
They worked with a company called Topcraft on this one,
a Japanese animation studio that did hand drawn animations on

(18:58):
this picture. Topcraft win on to make one of the
greatest animated films of all time, Miyazaki's Nausica of the
Valley of the Wind and When top Craft folded. Miyazaki
and others formed Studio Ghibli, and you can tell.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
You can tell there are a number of shots in
this film that you may want to like just because
it looks dated, because it looks very seventies. You might
just want to dismiss the whole thing and be like, oh,
that's old and no, no, no, this isn't good. But no,
there are multiple shots that when you look at them,
you're like, oh, they weren't lazy, they weren't. Yeah, they

(19:31):
went to extremes to make this shot successful. One for example,
that it'll come up later, we have a wizard and
our protagonist Peter, both sitting on a die. We have
a pair of dice, each of them sitting on one,
and they rock it up into the air like a
little rocket ship and spin while they're doing it, and
we see their bodies full three hundred and sixty degrees

(19:54):
from going because they're spinning in a circle and going
up from beneath us two above us. And when I
was watching that recently as an adult who has made
a career in animation, I go, oh, no, that is
so much time like that. That is weeks, weeks and
weeks for that one very quick shot. And I was like, oh,
they weren't being lazy, you know, were there were a

(20:16):
lot of ways to do that shot lazy and they
didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Do you think something like that is a case when
you're looking at, especially a collaboration like this co production.
Is that a case where the animators are hungry to
do something like cool and maybe that requires more work,
or is it a situation where others are like, no,
this is what we need, this is the shot we
need to make it happen.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
I think it's both. I think someone who's a storyboard
artist would originally put that in because they think it
would look cool, and then when it gets handed off
to the animation director or to the animators, they would
look at it and go, oh, no, this is gonna
take a lot. And then they would go, yeah, but
it would be pretty cool. They're like, yeah, that would
be pretty cool. All right, do we have time for this?
Do we have the money for this? Okay, Okay, let's

(20:58):
do it. Let's do it. So I think it's a
combination of both.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
All right, getting into the writing on this one real quick.
Romeo Muller, who lived nineteen twenty eight through nineteen ninety two,
was a long time ranking bass writer. He was a
writer on this. There's also Jeffrey Walker that is credited
with writing additional material. Not exactly sure what the additional
material was, but they were an actor and writer as well.
Now getting into the source material here, they are really

(21:32):
a couple of things. The main one seems to be
this book, The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, who
lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty fifteen, and illustrated by
Wayne Anderson who was born in nineteen forty six. And
I believe as if this recording is still very much alive.
I actually got a copy of this book. You can
pick it up used for a relatively cheap I mean,

(21:54):
basically very little more than it would have cost fresh
off the shelf back when it came out. But this
was a nineteen seventy nine book. Pick it up if
you were at all interested in this topic. I'll talk
more about it in a bit. But of these two individuals,
Dickinson was an English children's author of numerous books, including
Tolku from nineteen seventy nine and City of Gold from

(22:16):
nineteen eighty. Anderson is a splendid illustrator and artists whose
work has shown up just all over the place. Has
a very distinctive style, which you can see if you
go to his website. It's Wayne Anderson art dot com.
And I know I had previously run into some of
his dragon illustrations because they were used or reused in
the Time Life Enchanted World books, I believe, specifically in

(22:39):
their Dragons book. So a lot of some of the
cooler elements and the science the elements and also the
monster science of the dragons is all right out of
this book. And there's even more of it, Like there's
stuff about dragon blood and the chemical composition of dragon blood.
So I haven't had time to just devour it all,
but it's a really cool book, definitely worth picking up.

(23:02):
You know, it's one of these where it's it's not
real history and it's not real science of dragons, but
it is it is all sort of speculative science of
dragons that I love it.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
I mean, that's always fun stuff. I mean that stuff
you and Joe have done on this podcast often, which
is here's something unexplainable, let's explain it. Let's find a
way to make it work.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, there's a theory of dragonflight in this that we'll
describe when we get into the plot, and it's amazing.
I'd never thought of it before. My son was very
amused by it. It's great now. In addition to this,
because this is not a really a narrative book, this
is more of a here's the world of dragons and
how it works book. Apparently some story material also came
from the book The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dixon,

(23:45):
who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and one,
author of the Dragon Night series, of which I believe
this was the first volume the Child cycle, as well
as such novels as The Forever Man from nineteen eighty six.
He also wrote a whole bunch of short stories. All right,
let's get into the voice cast on this picture. It is,
as you might expect from this time period, rather interesting.

(24:06):
It's a mix of folks that might surprise you that
they're here at all, and there are also some just
really great voice actors that pop up as well. So,
first of all, there is a wizard in this by
the name of Carolinas who's very important. He's essentially our
main good wizard, and he is voiced by Harry Morgan

(24:26):
who lived nineteen fifteen through twenty eleven, and I have
to say this bit of casting feels a bit weird,
but also totally spot on for late seventies or early
eighties casting, for sure. He was an accomplished actor of
stage and screen well before TV's Mash. But Mash is
probably where a lot of people would recognize this guy from.
And if you hear his voice, he has that very

(24:48):
dry voice, kind of crackly American accent in this picture,
then you know exactly who this guy is. He was
also in Dragnet, so yeah, very much a Dragnet cop
voice for our weird nature wizard, which again feels kind
of strange, but all right. Morgan was also in nineteen

(25:10):
fifty two Is High Noon, nineteen forty two is the
ox Bow Incident, in nineteen sixties Inherent the Wind. He
was also just in a ton of TV over the years,
often doing little guest spots, showing up on such shows
as Night Gallery. He was in a segment on Night Gallery,
and he was also on an episode of The Simpsons,
just to name a couple of his many appearances. So
that's our main good wizard, but we also have an

(25:32):
evil wizard, as one tends to have in pictures like this.
This is the Wizard Ohmadon? Who and Ohmadon is voiced
by James ear Old Jones born nineteen thirty one. This is,
of course, the legendary actor of stage, screen, TV, and
more legendary is the voice behind Darth Vader in the
Star Wars franchise. He originated the role of Jack Jefferson

(25:54):
on Broadway in the Great White Hope, and gave a
really electric performance of that role in the nineteen seventy
five film adaptation. He's been in so many things we
can't even begin to list them all, including playing King
Jaffy in Coming to America, voicing Mufasa in The Lion King.
And there's also no shortage of weirder, smaller roles that
he did as well. And he needed TV work, but

(26:16):
he also pops up in things like Grim Prairie Tales
from nineteen ninety. There's a nineteen eighty two monster movie
that I was recently looking at called Blood Tide, where
he plays like a kind of suspicious archaeologist who may
have awakened a monster in Greece. I believe it's the plot.
He has a memorable role in nineteen eighty seven's May

(26:37):
Twan And the role that this performance I think mostly
made me think of is another performance from nineteen eighty two.
Hep of course, played the villainous wizard cult leader Thulsa
Doom in Conan, the Barbarian.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
There's even a part in this film where he starts
saying doom, doom, doom, and it definitely connects the two
in my mind.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yes, I love that part all right. We also have
a kind of befuddled writer character from our world, from
the normal human world, the world of science, who get
sucked into all of this. This is the character Peter Dickinson,
and this is yes, the same name as the actual
author of the Flight of Dragon's book, and he's voiced

(27:22):
by John Ritter. John Ritter, of course, lived nineteen forty
eight through two thousand and three, beloved TV and film actor.
He made a splash on the small screen for the
sitcom Three's Company, which I weirdly grew up watching a lot.
I think that was like a show that would be
on TV and syndication, and we generally, I think while
my mom was cooking dinner and we the kids, would

(27:43):
just watch Three's Company.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Did oh, I have no reason in my mind other
than the fact that it was on all the time. Like,
I didn't really care or even understand about the dynamics
of this household, but they were funny and John Ritdard
in particular, it was kind of a goofy, cartoony guy,
so at least he appealed the kids in a way.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah. It was weird because like, later on I would
learn that, oh yeah, this was like supposedly a risque
kind of TV show, and it was supposed to be like,
you know, breaking down boundaries, Like here's this guy and
he lives with these two women and they're keeping it
a secret from the landlord. All of that just completely
washed over me as a kid, and you just take
it at face value. It was like, oh, yeah, he
lives there with these these two women, and I guess

(28:25):
the he has these goofy, wacky landlords that they just
try and keep out.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah. No, he worked on two levels.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
In addition to that, he also did a lot of
film though he did Sling Blade, Problem Child, Bride of Chucky,
and also a lot of TV shows, popping up in
guest spots, usually in episodes of stuff like Buffy, Tales
from the Crypt and News Radio of course, we also
have some dragon voices in this. The dragon r Rog
is voiced by Victor Bueno.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Oh wait a minute, a minute, I thought Rog was
the wolf.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Oh yes, oh, of course is the wolf. Yes, I
know we're getting ahead here. Yes, a wolf will show
up in this and he talks. Ag is voiced by
Victor of Bueno. This is the last role for this individual.
Longtime TV and film actor, probably best known for films
such as nineteen sixty two Is Whatever Having a Baby

(29:17):
Jane and nineteen seventies Beneath the Planet of the Apes,
in which he plays one of the mutants. I included
an image here for you, Seth in case you have
flashbacks to Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Now, now, was he also King Tut in the Batman
Live action series? Or am I completely making that up?

Speaker 1 (29:35):
I think this is true. Yes, one of the stills
that I grabbed shows I think images from both of these.
I think he did play King Tut. I've just been forbid. Yes, yes,
that is him. That is him.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
A very strange character in the history of Batman. I
believe he was a college professor who was hit on
the head and then suddenly believed he was King Tut
and then would commit crimes befitting King Tuts trying to
exist in this modern twentieth century world of nineteen sixty
six Gotham City.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
One of the most beloved Batman villains of all time,
right up there with a joker.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah, I'll start it right below Egghead.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
I'm not really a Batman comics guy, but I do
seem to recall there have like Batman is never going
to end, and so inevitably creators have come back to
some of those villains from the Batman TV series and
found new things to do with them. And I think
I read something about like one where you had a
faction that had these sort of forgotten characters like King

(30:38):
Tut and Egghead.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
I have read it. I have read it. It was
a complete series exclusively based on the nineteen sixty six
Batman television series, as if it continued on after the
television show. And no, it's wonderful. If you like Batman
sixty six the TV series, which I do very much,
it's fun just to have more adventures in that campy
world with these characters that never really got much attention

(31:02):
outside of that world.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
All right, We also have Briog and Smurgle. These are
are these both dragons?

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Smurgle definitely is Briog. I think that's the evil red
dragon and Smurgle is like the elderly good dragon. I
believe that's the two. But just like our God, there's
gonna be a lot of like just guttural noises. That's
just mythical creature.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, I guess this is draconic. This is the dragon language.
It all sounds like growling. But both of these characters
were voiced by James Gregory, who lived nineteen eleven through
two thousand and two, New York actor. He had a
long running role on TV's Barney Miller. He was in
sixty two Is the Manchurian Candidate, he was in sixty
six Is murders Row. And he was also in nineteen
seventies Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in which he

(31:47):
played the ape general Ursus.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
The Planet of the Apes franchise. Whenever anyone even just
starts talking about it, I always feel the poll just
to watch them all again. It's just there's something very
comfort about them, and I'm not quite sure what that is,
but but yeah, those are those are enjoyable films. The
original series, of course, is what I'm speaking of.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, I need to REWI guess I'm kind of waiting
until my son's ready for them, and then I'm gonna
definitely watch the first one, and I really want to
watch the second one again. I have a weird attachment
to beneath the planet of the Apes. If that is
the second one. There's not a one in between those two,
is there?

Speaker 4 (32:24):
No?

Speaker 3 (32:24):
No, that's the one. Yeah, that's the one where they are, like,
you know, worshiping the atomic bomb and all that kind
of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's a fun one. I also
really like the one where the two apes go into
our modern world and are kind of like wandering around
to being like the toast of the town. I forget
which one that one is. It's like the Creature Walks
among Us, except it's about two ape creatures. It's fun.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, Yeah, same energy as that for sure.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
All right. Getting into just a couple of smaller roles here,
Larry Storch plays the pawnbroker in this which is a
fun little role we'll discuss. But this guy lives nineteen
twenty three through twenty twenty two, actor and comedian but
I only really wanted to highlight him because he also
played the scout Master in nineteen eighties Without Warning, which
of course was the first episode of Weird House.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Cinema classic for that reason alone.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
We have a voice in this film. It's sort of
a power, almost a deity. It is known as Antiquity,
and it is voiced by Paul Freese, who lived nineteen
twenty through nineteen eighty six. He's actually, I believe, uncredited
on this film, but this was a long time voiceover
voice actor that frequently popped up and rank it in
Bass productions.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Also, Paul Freese did the voice, also uncredited, of Soilarius
the Blue Wizard, another role which once again in the
credits for no reason, he just doesn't get credited, but
there he is. He plays one of our main four
wizards as well, but one of the lesser ones, one
of the ones with fewer lines.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
I do always find it interesting when you look back
at at voice acting in the nineteen eighties and earlier,
like sometimes you would find situations where they just have
one voice actor to just do numerous voices in ways
that you, I guess you certainly don't see as much
on modern animated pictures. Right.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, and here's actually, to me the worst part about that.
Think about Looneytun's shorts. For example, Mel Blank did almost
every cartoon voice almost all of them. However, there are
two other actors which are very prominent in that world.
One is June Foray and one is Arthur q Brian.
Arthur q Brian is mostly known for the Elmer Fudd voice.

(34:31):
That was not Mel Blank, that was Arthur q Brian
and June Foray. Basically most of the female characters, like Witch, Hazel,
et cetera, et cetera, they often were never credited in
these old Looney Tunes shorts. All the voice credits always
just went to Mel Blank for the longest time. And
there's no particular reason other than you know, ego or

(34:53):
I don't know, perhaps trying to fool people into thinking
he did more than he did. It's it's just a
weird practice, and it still happens. There's a lot of
that of people not getting credit for work that they
have done, or it's just a strange practice that still
exists in the entertainment industry.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
All Right. Finally, on the music front, first of all,
the score we tend to highlight the score of the
score is by Marie Laws, who lived nineteen twenty three
through twenty nineteen. Also scored The Last Dinosaur as well
as The Hobbit from seventy seven and other various ranking
and bass joints. But the real juicy part of the

(35:31):
music is, of course, the theme song to the Flight
of Dragons. This has really just gotten its hooks into
my brain ever since I watched this film last week.
If I even see the book The Flight of Dragons
on the shelf, my brain will just automatically go Flight
of Dragons. And it's the voice of Don McLain born

(35:52):
nineteen forty five, American music legend singing the Flight of
Dragons theme song.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
I mean mister American Pie himself.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah. Now he didn't write this one, I believe, but
he does perform it, and it's it's a fun, little
little theme song. It's it. At first, it might feel
kind of weird because it it does not feel medieval.
I don't know not. I mean not that the theme
song to The Less Unicorn by America feels medieval either,
but that's a great one as well, So I don't know.

(36:21):
I think it absolutely works here. I absolutely can't get
it out of my head.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
That's the tone for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, it gives it like an airy, dreamy vibe. Yeah,
so it totally works.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
All right. Are we ready to talk about the actual
the plots of this film.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
So we begin with a shot of mountaintops and they
are crusting through a sea of clouds. The sun is
low on the horizon, and we slowly move in on
a figure dressed in green robes standing up the precipice
of the highest mountain. This green cloaked figure shouts out, gorbash, gorbash, Come,
and a large green dragon, maybe like ten times the

(37:10):
size of the shouting figure. He just kind of pulls
up next to the mountaintop and allows what we can
now see as an elderly looking man with a long
white beard to step onto its back. The man of
the dragon take off into the sky and join an
already established thunder of dragons. Now I had to look
this up. I was like, what is a group of
dragons called? And, because of course they are fictional, I
actually found many, many different words to describe a group

(37:34):
of dragons. My favorite was thunder, So I'm going to
refer to that a thunder of dragons just sounds very
cool to me. However, another explanation for a group of dragons,
another word for that is a flight of dragons, which
will be brought up multiple times actually in this movie.
So I suppose I should use that term. But thunder
of dragons just sounded so cool to me.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
That does. That sounds good.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
So the figure in green monologues to himself a bit
about how the world is in a transition period between
magic and science, and he just kind of wonders to
himself what he's gonna do about that, you know. So
so from there, the epic theme song from Don McClain begins,
and there's a long credit sequence showing this group of dragons,

(38:21):
this thunder of dragons in flight.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Long.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
This was just a thing they did back in the
late seventies, early eighties. This is the kind of moment
that when I was a child I would fast forward through,
but as an adult I appreciate.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
If memory serves this is actually a sequence from later
on in the picture, right, that they just went ahead
and front loaded to just give you a give you
a lot of dragons to look at while you listen
to this wonderful Do McClain song, so you know, fair enough?

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, why not? It is beautiful, so why not? But
much like a cheer up Charlie in a Charlie in
the chocolate factory, or let's see, would the other one be?
It was a candle on the water in Pete's Dragon.
These were those eighties seventies ballads that were they put
in children's films that I just fast forwarded through.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Now at this point, since we've mentioned the dragons and
we've seen multiple dragons, should point out that, yes, the
dragons in this film are as my son described them, chonky.
They are big chonky dragons, and at first you might
look at these and think, I just can't. I did
not feel in these big chonky dragons. But I would
just advise you to stay seated until the film can

(39:33):
reach its cruising altitude because this will make perfect sense
in a bit.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yeah, it's necessary. They're chunk is very necessary. So after
this montage of dragons flying through the sky, several of
the dragons land on a river bank, and we see
a few other mythical creatures, including some pegasi, which I
presume is the plural for pegasus. Do you think so pegasi?

Speaker 1 (39:56):
I guess you get into that weird situation where is
Pegasus an individual or is Pegasus a species.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
And so forth. So more than one Pegasus is on
this bank amongst some fairies who are riding down the river,
floating on the back of a swan. But oh no,
this swan that the fairies are riding on, and the
fairies themselves are suddenly sucked into a water wheel attached
to a mill, and they are mangled and presumed dead.

(40:25):
They are lifeless. But this green cloaked figure who we
have seen flying around in the back of the dragon,
he lays his hands upon the swan and the fairies
and he revives them. We must assume bringing them back
to life. And this is like the first like visual
metaphor for kind of the overarching thesis of this film.
You know, can this technology, this water wheel exist in

(40:48):
the same world as this magic these fairies, Like can
they coexist or is one destroying the other?

Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
So the man is upset and he yells at the mill,
you know, be careful if you're technology. And then the
mill workers come out and they start belittling the man
in green and he says, no, I am Carolinas I'm
the protagonist of this film. I am the Green Wizard.
You know. My domain is the green world, nature itself
and all of its inhabitants. You know. The mill workers,

(41:16):
they're like whatever, and they start throwing large rocks at
Carolinas and just tell them to go away. Now, Carolinus
is mad, so he casts a spell to destroy their
water wheel. But as he casts it, the spell just
kind of fizzles out and just kind of plops into
the river and has no effect. Thus the ridicule from
the mill workers increases, and he's just having a bad day.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, this this was unexpected because when this looked like
he was going to really come down hard on these
awful mill workers, and my son was like, well, they
brought this on themselves. He was ready for it, and
he was totally supporting anything he was about to do.
But then the spell fizzles out and he just kind
of has to walk away.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
So Carolinas walks home dejected. He actually lives nearby. These
are his neighbors, you know, and he's comforted by his daughter,
Princess Melissandra. And we'll see here more and throughout the story.
And so Carolinus is thinking to himself, what am I
going to do about this? So he summons his three
brothers to a meeting. This is the first time they've
all come together in four hundred years, because they need

(42:17):
to have a discussion about the state of magic. So
he sends off the letters on owls as you do. However,
one thing I learned recently. Did you know that owls
are actually the slowest birds? So there are four terrible
conveyance for messages. You know, he's a quicker bird, please,
But anyway, magic.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
I didn't realize that. Joe and I did an episode
a while back talking about the idea of using things
other than pigeons as messengers, like ravens or owls, and
we talked about some of the possibilities and limitations with
these different species. But yeah, we somehow didn't touch on
the flying speed of the common owl.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Hey, you know, there are more important things than speed.
You know, there's all kinds of aspects we could look into.
But let's meet our three other wizards. So they're all
color coded to keep everyone straight on these. So we've
met Carolinas. He's the green wizard, Nature Grass, all the creatures,
you got it green. Next, we have silarious the Blue Wizard.

(43:19):
He is the lord of the depths and the heights.
His realm is outer space, deepest ocean, and highest mountain.
So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, yeah, he's he's kind of almost like a sea deity,
but in the like in the older sense where you know,
you have a situation where you know, the Greek god
of the ocean beside and is not limited at the sea,
like he's the sea is like one of his domains,
but he has domains beyond the sea as well.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
I love the combination of outer space and deepest ocean
because it does make a lot of sense in a
lot of ways. No air, big murky, bluish black voids,
like you know, it's a fun juxtaposition. I dig it.
Next up we have Lota Jao. This is the Golden Wizard.
His realm is light and air. He's the lord of transcendence, healing,

(44:11):
and contemplation. Once again, love it. I also love that
because he is designed as like you know, more of
like an Eastern wizard. His dragon is the only one
in the whole movie that is like an Eastern style dragon,
which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah. Yeah, this is a cool dragon. And my son
for the most part like this one. But he did
point out, well, it does have tiny wings, and you
tend not to find wings of any sort on Eastern dragons.
I had to look it up in the source book.
Here there is an illustration of a Chinese dragon, and
then there's a bit about Chinese dragons, and they don't

(44:47):
have tiny wings on it.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
So interesting. I wonder if they were trying to maybe
perhaps patch a plot hole, because later on we do
find out the importance of the wing when they start
discussing the science of how dragons fly. So yeah, I wonder,
I wonder what kind of thought went into that. But well,
I guess we'll see.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Well, even the book seems a little conflicted on this,
because the picture of the Chinese dragon has no wings,
but then the text says that that they do have
wings that are just not as noticeable. So huh, I
guess fair enough. If you try and put those two
together and come up with some version that can work
on the screen, you just throw some tiny wings in
there and call.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
It a dead Well, we'll discuss that when we get
to the science of dragons flying. Because I have a
thought about the differences between the Eastern and the Western Dragon,
but we'll get there.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Now our fourth wizard, this is the evil one we
mentioned to the James Earl Jones wizard. This is Ohmadon,
the Red Wizard, Lord of the Devil's Domain, seducer of Darkness,
master of black magic. He's our villain. And man, he's beautiful.
I love the design of oh Maadon.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Oh yeah. Like he's robe, he's of course wearing red
and dark colors, but he has stars on his robes
as well as opposed to skulls or anything. They are stars.
And then his face too, he's like he's not really
he's either beyond human at this point or has some
sort of hybridity going on, because he has like this

(46:13):
kind of beastly, almost rat like catlike face.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And he morphs at various times throughout
this film, and it's all gorgeous. He's he's the one
to watch for visual splendor.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
And the James Earl Jones voice performance on this character
is just absolutely great. I mean, James Earl Jones is
not just laying back in his chair or sitting in
a hammock reading lines on this He's just chewing every
bit of dialogue. Up and spitting it out and it's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, yeah, per So these four wizards, just to remind everyone,
we got a Green Wizard, we got a Blue Wizard,
we have a Gold Wizard, we have a Red Wizard.
Those are the four. They will come up, but mostly
we're focusing on Green and Red. Those are the primary antagonist.
Protaganis so at their meeting the four brothers, they discuss
that magic is getting weaker because humankind is choosing logic

(47:07):
over magic. But Carolinas has a plan though. He wants
the four wizards to consolidate their power and create a
realm of magic, sealed off from the rest of the
world where magic can live and survive, almost just like
you know, a little terrarium of like all the magical creatures,
all the magic, where it's like, hey, we don't own
the world, but in this zone we have full magical power.

(47:29):
That's his plan. The Blue Wizard and the Golden Wizard
agree and pledge their help. The Red Wizard Omadon no, no, no,
he disagrees. He calls this proposed magic realm a retirement
home for magic, and he would rather destroy humankind. And
his method is really fascinating. Basically he says, like, I

(47:49):
will take their worst instincts and basically use them against themselves,
you know, more or less kind of like playing into
the idea of like, oh, you want to build a bomb,
I will help you build the biggest bomb humans. You know, Oh,
you want to distrust each other, you should distrust everybody
And really just like leaning into the worst aspects of
humankind and using it to destroy ourselves. That's his magic plan.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, inviting omadan really couldn't have gone worse here for everyone,
And I do love the villainous take he has on
all of this. It reminds me a lot of some
of the concepts that Michael Inda explored in the book
The Never Ending Story, because in this work, in the
Flight of Dragons, there is this idea that they discuss

(48:33):
a lot where magic is kind of the inspiration for
humans to do great things but also potentially terrible things,
as Omadon is channeling here. And in The Never Ending
Story we get this idea that's particularly presented by the
gomorph and discussing the motivations of the nothing and the
powers beyond the nothing that like the same energy that

(48:54):
gives a child imagination and gives imaginative individual the chance
to dream and create these magical worlds. It also is
the same energy that can be twisted into the domain
of lies and deception. And so I think that's that's
kind of echoed in this work as.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Well, most definitely. And there is even a point just
in case a kid is watching this and thinking to themselves,
you know, this doesn't make any sense. Princess Melissandra, she
says to Carolina's her father and goes, why are you
even inviting this guy? You know, Oh, Maadon's a jerk.
Don't don't invite him. And Carolinas has a stock answer,

(49:38):
but he's just like, hey, you know, good can't exist
without evil. He is necessary, you know. And it's like,
all right, all right, I'll buy that. In a fantasy realm,
we'll take that. So Omadon wants to destroy humankind. He
does not want to, you know, hide his magic away.
So the three good Wizards Blue Green, and they decide

(50:00):
that they must stop the Red Wizard from destroying humanity.
But because there is a rule with their like wizard God,
which we will get into, it's it's it's an entity
known as antiquity. Well, we'll get there. There is a
wizard law that says you are not able to fight
against another wizard and Antiquity this this wizard god will
basically ensure that. I believe, they start getting mad at Omadon,

(50:23):
and Antiquity starts causing like an earthquake and dropping like
giant stones near them and stuff like that. So they
can't do it. They cannot fight Ohmadon. So they decide
to use their magic to inspire a quest to go
take Omadon's Red Crown to basically destroy Ohmadon. So again
with the wizarding laws which will come up, and we

(50:43):
almost have to go, you know what, just go with it.
You know, when the wizarding laws come up, we'll just go, Okay,
that's the wizarding law. I don't know this wizarding world.
I'll take your word for it. So another wizarding law
says that a magic quest must have three core members.
Carolinas picks an old knight that he knows, someone who
he knows to be trustworthy and brave, Sir orn Neville Smythe.

(51:05):
He also picks his dragon that we met at the
very beginning, Gorbash, who is young and perhaps a bit
of foolhardy, but very brave, very strong. So Gorbash the
Green Dragon he'll go to, but he doesn't know who
to pick is the leader. He can't really figure that out,
so he goes later that night to talk to Antiquity
once again. This is like the wizard God more or less,

(51:28):
and it's represented by a silver tree that just kind
of grows out of the ground. Again just go with it,
and Antiquity tells Carolinus that the leader of the quest
is in the future and that he is Peter Dickinson.
He is the correct choice for this quest and the
only choice for this quest because he is the descendant
of a great dragon master, but he is also the

(51:49):
first in this line that is also a man of science.
Carolina is confused about this. He's like, I don't know,
you know, why do we need that? By Antiquity is like,
come on, I'm god, you know, and he's like, all right, fine,
I'm fine, fine, we'll do this. So Carolinus is given
a silver acorn by Antiquity the silver tree, and he
throws it into a limpid pool under the direction of Antiquity,

(52:11):
and now he can see Peter Dickinson in the future,
specifically they say, I think it's like they call it
like the final you know, death rattle of the twentieth century. Here,
however they phrase it, but anyway, the end of the
late twentieth century. So we can assume it's probably nineteen
eighty two, just like you know, just like it was made.
And so we meet Peter. He is developing a D

(52:36):
and D style board game called Flight of Dragons, and
he's showing it to a friend of his who runs
a pawn shop, and he's discussing, Oh, I really want
to get this game made, but I need money, so
maybe I can pawn this watch, and the pawnbroker's like,
that watch isn't worth anything. And then he also explains
that he's also writing a book called Flight of Dragons,
and that basically he's just obsessed with dragons. He really

(52:56):
wants to figure out how dragons fly, how they breathe, fire,
et cetera. He's just he is. He's a dragon fanatic.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
However, does not seem like really would be your first
pick to lead an adventuring party into the heart of
darkness to stop an evil sorcerer. But antiquity knows better
than we do.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
I guess, yeah, because every character mentions that. Every characters like,
are you sure this guy you know? And so yeah,
Peter and the pawn broker are playing their D and
D style board game together and all the figures on
the board are all of Carolinas's brothers and himself and
Princess melissand and the dragons. And he's like, Okay, that's

(53:35):
that's a pretty big sign like something's going on here.
I better come get this guy. So he uses his magic. Now.
Now remember Carolinas doesn't actually have a lot of magic
these days, so this is a pretty this this is
an expensive use of his magic to go get Peter
in the future and bring him back to his time.
This is where I mentioned is that really beautiful shot

(53:56):
of them both riding on top of a of a
pair of dice and spinning through the air and then
they're falling blah blah blah. It's it's it's quite beautiful.
So yeah, there's that. So we're now introduced to ay
that go back in time. We are we are with
them back in the magical age where our story is,
and we're introduced to a b story where Peter is
now in love with Carolinas's daughter Princess Melissandra doesn't really

(54:20):
affect the story. It's just it's a subplot. Don't really
worry about it. It's just there. Uh So at this point,
it turns out that almost all of the dragons have
joined Omadon because he used black magic on them. The
only remaining dragons on the hero's side are Gorbash and
smurgle U. Smergle is Gorbash's elderly uncle. He's not quite

(54:44):
as spry, but he's he's very knowledgeable.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
So now Omadan has not only one fierce dragon, but
also an entire army of dragons at his disposal.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yes, we will see later that the other two wizards
still have control of Oh yeah, I guess we should
mention this. Each of the four wizard brothers, each of
the four colors, they each have their own more or
less pet dragon. They're familiar dragon. However, the other two,
the Gold Wizard and the Blue Wizard, theirs don't join Omadon.
And yet they don't. They also don't help, so I

(55:18):
don't know why. Maybe they're just too far away. Who knows.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
They contribute magical items.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Seth, that's true. We do, get, of course, some magical items.
This is actually my favorite part of this movie, especially
to me as a child. Peter, as the fish out
of water character, he makes a lot of discoveries throughout

(55:45):
the film that kind of like define like the canon
of being a dragon. You know, this was his goal.
He wanted to learn more about dragons. Now he gets
to do it firsthand. And so now he gets to
learn about this biology of dragons and how they work.
And this will occur throughout the film, but I'll point
them out as dragon can in facts when they do
so dragon can in fact number one. He just kind

(56:05):
of hears this in conversation amongst the dragons. A dragon
having a horde of gold is a pretty common thing.
It's it's in all the fantasy literature that you come across,
whether it be a Tolkien or oh gosh, what's his
name of the guy that made the Chronicles of Narnia.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Oh yes, yes, Lewis C. S. Lewis.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Yeah, yeah, A dragon's horde of gold is a pretty
common thing. Why well, in this they describe that it's
because dragons need somewhere soft to sleep that won't accidentally
catch on fire, because even while they sleep, they could
actually you know, spark it you know, with with their
fire breath and they just need somewhere that's you know, unflammable,

(56:42):
not flammable.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
I love it. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I never I'd never thought about this sort of thing before.
When it comes to the gold and this is Yeah,
this is a perfect explanation. Granted, it does raise questions
like why don't they sleep on lead and so forth,
and then gold is soft into being shiny and prize,
so I absolutely buy it.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Yeah. Yeah, And I remember we mentioned this a long
time ago about a child's love for learning canon facts.
I don't know what it is, but like like hearing,
like the definitive version of like classic creatures, classic tales,
et cetera, is something that children just love. Myself included.
So therefore I really loved these when I was watching

(57:25):
this movie as a child. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Yeah, my son really started getting into the dragons at
this point when when this film, when they start explaining
how they work within the context of.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
The film, So Carolinas, before this big quest kicks off,
he gives Peter two gifts. Now, these aren't really that important,
but they do help in the trials later, so I
got to mention them. One is the Shield of Saturn.
It's a big golden shield, and the other is the
flute of Olympus, and uh yeah these will aid in

(57:55):
trials later, but don't worry about it. Meanwhile, Omadon sends
is big dragon familiar to kill Peter, and Carolinas tries
to save him, but in using a magic spell, he
accidentally merges Peter's mind into Gorbash's body. Gorbash, if you remember,
is the big green dragon from the beginning. So yes,

(58:17):
our hero is now a giant dragon. So fun right.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Oh yeah, I think this is a point in the
film where I think everything really picked up for us
as viewers, because now we don't just have Peter the
sort of fish out of water character. Now he is
in the body of a dragon. So now all the
things he's learning about dragons is also him trying to
figure out how to function as a dragon, and it
just makes everything a lot more entertaining.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
It's a great way to kind of like dole out
some exposition is like you know, a newbie learning the ropes.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
It's great and it introduces a lot of room for
comedy too, Like, oh am I doing it right? I
don't know, I'm falling out of the Sky.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
And so forth exactly. But like we said, wizard laws
dictate that there must be three members on a magic quest.
And now since two of our members are merged into one,
Peter and gorbash, we're back to two again. We need
a third member, so we have the night we have
Peter in Gorbasch's body, and so Smergle, the elderly dragon,

(59:16):
joins the quest to make up for that lost member.
So we're back to three again. The magic quest can begin.
So on the quest, Smergle is now instructing dragon Peter
on how to be a dragon, so we get more
dragon can in facts. I love these, This one's fun.
I really enjoyed this. So dragon can in fact number two,
Dragons eat diamonds and to get them into their craw.

(59:41):
In the film, we see them actually like bullying some
dwarfs to make them look force them to bring them
out giant sacks full of diamonds, and then they just
gobble them up right away. Peter actually feels a little
bad about this. So picture that a dragon eats a
sack full of diamonds, puts in in his craw much

(01:00:01):
like a bird, and then they start to eat limestone,
which will then be ground up by the diamonds, much
like a bird uses a grit to grind up feed
because they don't have teeth. Okay, so limestone is high
in calcium, which mixes with the stomach acid to create hydrogen.
So then hydrogen is lighter than air and expands their bodies,

(01:00:23):
giving them that chonky look and giving them their ability
to fly much in the same way a blimp does.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Yes, oh my goodness, I absolutely love this. And again
this is out of the book as well, that the
dragons of the Flight of Dragons are essentially hydrogen airships. Yeah,
self powered hydrogen airships. It's fabulous.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
So that's where the wings factor in and their long
like snake like bodies or I should say, you know,
lizard like. Either way, that's how they propel themselves is
with these wings much like an airplane, much like a blimp. Yeah,
just just they are just floating and then they're they're appendages,
their wings, tail, arms, whatever. That's what actually guides them
through the air. So how are they going to get down?

(01:01:06):
That's an important aspect to this. They need to expel
the hydrogen. So for a dragon, expelling the hydrogen is
done by breathing fire. Now they don't fully explain this
in the movie, but I think the logic in my
mind goes, you need to It can't just be like
a balloon letting off hydrogen, because if that's the case,
it'll push you in a different direction because they'll be
forced coming out. What you need is a way to

(01:01:27):
expel it in a controlled way, which is why they
ignite the expelled hydrogen to breathe fire. Doesn't quite make
sense in my mind, but that's they don't really explain
it either. In fact, Peter asks Smirgle, he goes, wait,
so why is it fire? He's like, cause we're dragons,
we'd breathe fire now here. This is the part I love.

(01:01:50):
Smirgle explains that the hydrogen is ignited because dragons have
something in their mouth known as a thor's thimble. It's
in the roof of their mouth and has the ability
to spark, and we'll basically ignite the hydrogen much like
an electric stove ignites you know, gas. And that's fun too.
More dragon facts.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Yeah, yeah, this this was all all pretty fabulous and
I didn't even think about the potential plot holes in
any of it because it was just while watching the film,
you're just completely like, oh my goodness, this this is it. Yes,
I buy it. And then you have the fun banter
between the the dragon mentor and Peter in dragon form

(01:02:30):
because he keeps asking obsessive, science leaning questions, and the
answers are often along the lines of because we're dragons.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Yes, Smirkle has not thought about this very much, and
he's okay with that. Peter should think, yeah, less about this,
so says Smirkle.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Yeah, don't don't think about it, just do it. Just fly.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Uh So at this point, basically this turns into a
D and D campaign. That's the that's the remainder of
this movie. There's not really much to talk about from
from from here on out, so we'll go through it quickly.
But along the way they face various trials and meet
new allies that joined them. One ally is named Orog.
That's the wolf character they talked about. He's an undead

(01:03:11):
talking wolf. They describe it briefly, but basically he drowned
and then one of the wizards was like, Hey, if
you do me this favor, I'll bring it back to life,
and so he does. He comes back and saves our heroes,
which just works. Another is Danielle of the Woodlands. She's
a very skilled archer and warrior. Another one is Giles
of the Tree Tops. He is the leader of the

(01:03:33):
wood Elves. They all join this magic quest and the
party looks more and more Tolkien as time passes. You know,
there's a variety of trials they go through. There are
these sonic rat things which were really beautiful. They were
just kind of these odd like goblin rats that let
off a real high pitched noise that drove the listener

(01:03:54):
to be very ill tempered, and they had to destroy them.
It was fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Oh, that sequence was great because I didn't really know
what was going to happen. I wasn't sure what they
kind of they presented this threat slowly and you're not
sure what. You know, you they're about to run into something,
but you can't really tell what it is. And then yeah,
it's it's this weird concept of screeching rat things that
like destroy your mind and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
It was done very well and very fun to watch.
The next trial I also really enjoyed it was this Ogre. Oh,
this ogre other than Omadon was probably my favorite thing
to look at, just just beautifully depicted. And they also
threw in some like fun ogre facts about like why
ogres are like so sturdy and kind of almost invincible
in many ways, And a big part of it I

(01:04:42):
really loved was that ogres have very very thick bones
that they don't have much flesh. Most of their body
is boned, and I was like, Oh, that's fun, like
just picturing that ogre skeleton in my mind. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
He also has three eyes, but only two are functional,
like one lost sight.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
I love it. The one of the one in the
middle of his head is is his additional eye, but
one of his like traditional eyes, I believe it was
his left eye, was was gone. So it's just just gorgeous,
really gorgeous, real meaty fella, you know. Uh. Then then
there's this worm thing, also very beautiful to look at,
but it is pretty quickly dispatched. And then then Omadon's

(01:05:21):
getting involved because they're getting much closer to his home base,
and he casts this doubt spell that basically just makes
everyone depressed and everyone just has imposter syndrome, like oh,
I'm no good, you know, And that's that's pretty fun.
They overcome that along with this giant dragon swarm by uh,
let's see here, what's what's the order of it. I

(01:05:43):
believe the doubt spell is dispelled by the magic shield
that he was given earlier. And then there's a giant
dragon swarm that comes soon after that, and that's dispelled
by the magic flute, which the the gosh the wood elf.
He he plays the magic flute, and this makes all
the dragons fall asleep, including Peter, you know, because he's like, hey,

(01:06:03):
we got to do this quick play that flute. I
know would make me fall asleep, but it's got to happen,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
This is this is weird how this one lined up
because we watched that, My son and I watched this
film while we were also watching the new season of
The Dragon Prints. Both of these have plot elements involving
magical musical instruments that put dragons to sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Nice. Nice, Yeah, So this this works, and then we're
into the final battle. Now here's where it's going to begin.
With Peter facing off against Omadon, and the first thing
he does is he breaks the spell of his dragon
merge through logic, so when he falls asleep, basically when
he awakens, he's man Peter again, and someone asked him, like,

(01:06:47):
how'd you do that? He's like, oh, well, two objects
can't you know, occupy the same space. That's just logic.
So I logiced my way out of that dragon. And
everyone's like all right, you know, sure, But at.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
This point it's is Peter the human against Ohmadon, this
all powerful wizard. So already this is a point where
we're suddenly I feel like an uncharted territory because we
were setting everything up for more of a traditional high
fantasy battle and now we're somewhere else, like all the

(01:07:19):
big flight of dragons has been put to sleep, and
let's see, have we I think we've at this point
lost a few characters as well.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
Right, yes, some folks have have definitely not worked out,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Yeah, there's a scene where our our Night bites it
battling a dragon, the big bad dragon that serves Omadon. Uh,
there's a we lose our archer. I think we also
lose our wood Elf.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
I think he gets thrown against a stone cliff and
is at least passed out, if not dead.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Yeah, so there, at any rate, they're all taken out
of the equation. So instead of getting this continuation of
the fantasy battle that we seem to have been set up,
it is this standoff between a sorcerer and a game design.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
And first of all, Omadon rerupts into this giant, multi
headed dragon and it's the prettiest thing of this whole movie.
It's so so beautiful. Like, Omadon looks cool when he
was just the Red Wizard. Now he is a he's
a red Wizard hydra.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Like it's yeah, it's gorgeous.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
I love, love, love the look of this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Then it's also perfect because it's so nonsensical, it's so chaotic.
It's like he is because basically this becomes a standoff
between logic and chaotic imagination. And so it makes sense
that Omadon would just defy all logic and just be
this swirling amalgam of humanoid and dragon features.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Yeah, and so since the only tool that you can
fight chaos with is logic, that's what Peter does. Peter
just starts basically talking his way out of this battle,
much in the same way that like, oh, let's say, Sarah,
you know, talks her way out of Jerreth in Labyrinth

(01:09:14):
or I forget the protagonist's name in Nightmare on Elm Streets,
where she's like, I'm not afraid of you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
It's just like that that simple thing of just like, hey,
your power rests in this If I you know, you
have no power over me. If you just kind of
declare it, you get to you get to kind of
just like move on. So that's what he does. He
just starts like quoting scientific principles and equations and then
he just starts listening like digital like just different branches

(01:09:41):
of scientific study.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
And just and it works.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
It just kind of knocks knocks the wizard down one
by one. One of my favorites, there are many examples
of like him just like kind of like spouting book
learning at this wizard to kind of like make him
kind of lose power. My favorite was that Omadawn was
like calling on the power of the Sun, and Peter's
response was like every child knows that it takes this long.

(01:10:08):
I think he says eight minutes for the sun Sun's
raised to travel to the Earth, So you're not even
calling upon the sun. You're calling upon where the sun
was eight minutes ago. And Obadon's like, what, no, No,
the Sun's right there, and it's fun things like that,
and ultimately, without even like, you know, laying a single blow,
Peter beats Omadon with just logic, you know, just saying

(01:10:30):
science terms out loud.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
And yet it works so well. Like, for instance, the
Labyrinth scene I think is a great comparison. I have
no power, you have no power over me, a thing
with Sarah and Jared, and yet I'd never have I
love Labyrinth, but there I have questions about various things
in the plot, and that whole scene never felt completely

(01:10:52):
earned for me, Whereas in this film, I feel like
they do a great job of laying everything out, Like,
for instance, there's the whole part of it where Omadon
is just you know, calling up on forces of darkness,
saying these evil sounding magic words, some sort of incantation,
and Peter's like, yeah, I have incantations too, and He's
like bam equals MC squared and so forth, and like

(01:11:15):
these are actually like hurting Omadon, Like the logic is
cutting into him and taking away his power.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
Yeah, no, it's earned and it works. It's a fun
little ending. So he doesn't he beats Omadan, he is destroyed,
turns into just dust on the ground. It's mostly a
visual scene, so we can't really go through it entirely.
But then Peter is sent back to modern Boston and
he's back where he left off. He's back in the
pawnbroker shop with his friend playing his D and D

(01:11:44):
game that he invented. Now, remember earlier, way in the beginning,
Peter wanted to pawn his watch so he could get
his board game created. Well, now suddenly he has the
Shield of Saturn with him, this big golden shield, and
he's like, hey, pawnbroker, how about this? And he's like, wow,
this is great. This will give you so much money
you could You'll be able to do whatever you want,

(01:12:05):
you know. And then here here's the nice part where
it all ties up melissand to the Princess, the daughter
of Carolinas. She enters the pawn shop in this modern
world because she has fallen in love with Peter, and
she brought Omadon's crown with her and she pawns that too,
and it's like, hey, no, he gets love. Also, yay

(01:12:26):
the end, that's the end of the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Oh yeah, it's so good. I deny all magic. It
was another one of the rallying cries of Peter in
the final battle. Yeah, and there's as it's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
A fun thing because the balance between I love magic
and magic isn't real is really on display here. And
then that's that's why they needed Peter. He was a
guy that loved dragons and really cared about magic and
had a great knowledge for it, but also knew the
science and so therefore he could both respect the magic
as well as cut it down a peg. But I

(01:13:00):
think I like almost ultimately Carolinus like sealed his own
fate by inviting Peter into his realm because in many ways,
what he didn't want to happen happened very quickly, which
was that that science destroyed magic.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Yeah, but they get their magic refuge where they get
to keep all their magical creatures running around, right. Yes, yeah,
so you know it's it's it's not an unhappy ending
for them as well.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
It works out.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
I do want to also point out, because I'm always
a sucker for these sorts of scenes, when Omandan is
finally defeated, he does like sort of shrink and melt
and then wither away to nothing, like turns to dust
and blows away in the wind and it's a fabulous
animated sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:13:43):
Good stuff, good stuff all around. And that's that's this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Yeah, The Flight of Dragons. Yeah, just a just a
real delight. This one I think holds up so well.
Like I said, I didn't. I had never seen it before,
so I didn't have anything to compare it to in
my memory that it did resonate with my love for
these other pictures from this time period, like the Ranking
and Pass Hobbit film.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
If you're a D and D person, not only will
you recognize basically the structure of this, but you'll also
probably really enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
Yeah, all right, Well, we're going to go ahead and
close this one out here, but we'd love to hear
from everyone out there, especially for those of you who,
like Seth, have definite childhood memories of the Flight of Dragons.
If you want to share how or when you saw
this for the first time and what your impressions were
right in, we'd love to hear from you. And if
you're like me, if you just saw it for the

(01:14:36):
first time as an adult or recently introduced a child
to it, right in and let us know how that went.
A reminder that stuff to blow your Mind is primarily
a science podcast, but every Friday we set aside most
serious concerns. You just talk about a weird film in
Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow the various
films that we cover on Weird House Cinema, well, I

(01:14:58):
mean they're all in the feed, but also I blog
about them at some immunomusic dot com and I also
list all of them on our letterboxed profile. If you
go to letterboxed dot com that's l E T T
E R b O x D. You can look us up.
We're Our username is weird House. There have all the
films that we've watched so far, and sometimes they'll be
a peek ahead at what's coming next. Speaking of all this,

(01:15:22):
of course, Seth is not just the producer of Stuff
to Blow your Mind. He is also a podcast host.
Tell us what's happening right now on Rusty Needles Record Club.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
Yes, Rusting Needles Record Club. It is a book club,
but for music instead. It's a weekly podcast. Find it
wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Now this week we
are doing Grace Jones Nightclubbing, very fun hits. Everyone loves
Grace Jones and if you're looking for just some great

(01:15:52):
fun music discussion, something just kind of, you know, make
you feel less lonely as a music nerd, Or if
you're looking for some really good music, recommend check out
Rusty Needles Record Club. It's a fun show all right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
So if you want to reach out, if you have
thoughts for Joe, if you have thoughts for Me or Seth,
you can email us at contact at stuffdwlow Yourmind dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Flight of Dragons