May 31, 1996
DRAGONHEART is directed by Rob Cohen. I have enjoyed several of Cohen’s movies, especially the one before this (DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY), and I’ve had fun joking about his specific brand of weirdo hackiness over the years, but since he has been accused of sexual assault by at least three people including his daughter I won’t joke about him or talk about him anymore. But I will talk about DRAGONHEART.
Sir Bowen (Dennis Quaid, JAWS 3-D, WYATT EARP) is a knight who mentors the Saxon Prince Einon (Lee Oakes), the little shit son of King Freyne (stuntman Peter Hric), who also has another right hand man called Brok (Brian Thompson, ALIEN NATION, MIRACLE MILE, LIFE STINKS). Brok calls Bowen “nursemaid” when he commands him to bring the prince to witness his father’s “noble victory” over rebelling peasants. Bowen tries to teach the kid “the Old Code” so he won’t be a massacring bastard like his no good father, but it really doesn’t take.
During the massacre the dumbass king wanders away from his army to personally set fire to a village he assumes is empty, then the peasants mob him and start to beat the shit out of him but for no reason their leader (Terry O’Neill, CONAN THE DESTROYER) says, “Stop! The battle is out there!” and then everybody leaves? What the fuck. So the prince may have a window to heroically save his father, but instead he pries the giant crown off of his head and slinks away just in time to be clumsily bumped by the peasant leader’s daughter Kara (Sandra Kovacicova), causing a wound that will slowly kill him.
Queen Aislinn (Julie Christie, NASHVILLE) comes up with a plan: carry the little twit to a dragon. They go to a cave to find a dragon who will later be called Draco (voice of Sean Connery between FIRST KNIGHT and THE ROCK). Einon has to swear to “live and rule with mercy” and come to the dragon to “learn the Once-ways.” Then Draco does some kind of magic to give half of his heart to the prince, healing him. (read the rest of this shit…)
May 25, 1983
It’s one of the two movies I remember seeing in a theater that summer. That was monumental because I’d seen the other two at the drive-in while very young, but this one I was able to see with slightly more awareness of what was going on, and I’d bet the crazy discussions we had of it later on the playground were a little closer to what actually happened in the movie. Not that I was all that savvy. I remember my family went to Burger King after the movie and got RETURN OF THE JEDI drinking glasses, which seemed like a coincidence. Hey, this is the movie we just saw! What are the chances?
For this revisit of RETURN OF THE JEDI in the context of the summer of ’83, though, I won’t give myself those constraints. I’ll try not to get hung up on any bullshit. 
MAD GOD is a bizarre stop motion journey through the large intestine of a nightmare. It’s hard to describe (or know) what it’s about, but its version of the STAR WARS opening scroll is an actual scroll inked with a menacing threat from Leviticus. It ends, “I WILL MAKE THE LAND DESOLATE SO THAT YOUR ENEMIES WHO SETTLE IT SHALL BE APPALLED BY IT. AND YOU WILL SCATTER AMONG THE NATIONS AND I WILL UNSHEATH THE SWORD AGAINST YOU. YOUR LAND SHALL BECOME A DESOLATION AND YOUR CITIES A RUIN.”
