Surreal. . .Bizarre. . .you gotta love it
wforstchen
Just sit back and assume you are going to see something so strange that you'll either flee to reruns of Beastmaster, or fall in love with an enchanting film…
Just sit back and assume you are going to see something so strange that you'll either flee to reruns of Beastmaster, or fall in love with an enchanting film unlike anything you've ever seen. Its an old Soviet production from the mid fifties, filled with overacting in the best traditions of social realist acting, and that indeed is part of the charm. But it is so much more, a child like wonder land of wind demons, magic swords, squirrels beating on mushrooms like bongo drums, and some of the best darn villians ever created. I first saw this in a theater when I was a kid and fell in love with the tale, so much so that it actually impacted my life in a major way. I wound up in a library, a ten year old wanting to read about Russian history, folktales, and above all else, the Mongols, who are the bad guys in the film. Well, I now spend my summers in Mongolia working on archaeological digs, have wandered around Russia doing the same, and though I teach American history on the college level, this film triggered a life long love of the exotic world of old Rus and the "Tugar," i.e. Mongol Hordes. . .along with the science fiction novels I write in which a Mongol like Horde are the major antagonists. For that alone I'm grateful to the weird genius of Ptushko, the director of this and several other equally strange movies. When I ran a college film series as a student I ordered this one up for what I guess you could call a "stoner's night," the old routine of strange cartoons, "Reefer Madness," and such. Everyone went nuts over "The Sword and the Dragon," and said it was the best of the night! Some of my favorite moments, the tower of human bodies, the great dancing girl routine, the 1000 lb envoy, the dancing squirrel, the wind demon, and the beautiful entry scene in the the court of Prince Vander. . .a moment as beautiful as any put on film and one of a couple of songs that are in Russian. So, go ahead and call it goofy. . .it might haunt your nightmares, you might just freak, call me a nut and turn it off in ten minutes. . .or you might get haunted by the film and watch it again and again. "Bravo Ilya Murometz!"
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★ 6 / 10
Worthy Howler
Piafredux
This I first saw when a child, on New York's WOR-TV's 'Million Dollar Movie' - which repeated a film at least a dozen times in each week! Back then we had only…
This I first saw when a child, on New York's WOR-TV's 'Million Dollar Movie' - which repeated a film at least a dozen times in each week! Back then we had only B&W television and the film aired in full-screen/pan-&-scan. Yet for me and my brother and our cousins this was a worthy howler - full of fantastic, fabulous freaky people and creatures, many of them, and their adventures, done in belly-laugh-provoking Ginsu special effects. I think we watched every one of the weeklong WOR-TV telecastings of this weird but most impressive film which was, by the way, shown under the title 'The Sword and the Dragon.' a title that appealed much more to us youngsters than would have 'Ilya Mouromets' of whom we knew naught.
Though we didn't realize it when we first saw 'Ilya Mouromets,' we were properly awed by the legions of extras swarming and piling up into a human massif before our widened eyes; and despite its many laughable - and we did laugh and howl at them even when we were kids - it's an enchanting film chock-full of unexpected, surprising vignettes and exploits and (much-softened, I think) Tugar cruelties.
Of course as children we recognized in 'Ilya Mouromets' no Soviet propaganda, and the film inspirited in us no everlasting Communist harm, though it is to be acknowledged by the genuinely thinking, objective truth-insistent adult into whom I matured, a superb bit of propaganda thinly concealing the Soviet Union's groupthink-encouraging, politically correct anti-Red Chinese orthodoxy of that unspeakably Evil Empire's day. Thus there's a lesson to be taken from this film by today's sheeplike mass of uncritically-misthinking fashionable Hollywood lefty-clones for whom so-called "multiculturalism" is but one misbegotten "blame America first" prop of their craven ideocratic visions - and which prop is, of course, the patently repulsive ideocratic negative of 'Ilya Mourmets's' colorful, yet equally patently repulsive, orthodox xenophobia and racialism.
'Ilya Mouromets' is to be appreciated for its historically evident conception and malevolence, but it still works on the superficial level of child-like, fabulous, howling-good entertainment. Methinks no film buff ought to deprive himself of seeing it, apprehending its despicable Soviet propaganda message, and yet enjoying its tremendous entertainment value. In fifty years time no such entertainment value will, sadly, likely be accredited to the groupthunk, "I can be more politically correct than you can," lefty-orthodox films that Hollywood and European cinema have been mass-producing for at least the last forty years.
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80%
AUDIENCE
5.8/10
1.7K
•••
MST3K gave this stinker the treatment it deserves :P 3 out of 10