Instant Favorite.

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Blistering performances.

I moderate a bad movie screening series that's described as "A celebration of awful movies through semi-regular Monday night screenings by rotating hosts. From the polluted minds behind Good Things About Bad Movies and Halloween Horror Picks."Dragonfyre was the ninth bad movie we watched, and most of us thought it was actually rather decent. What follows is the mini review I shared with the group shortly after first watching the movie. - - - -Tonight's Bad Movie was pretty watchable, at least compared to the no budget SOV garbage we usually watch. That's not to say that Dragonfyre was good, exactly, but we all agreed that it has been undeservedly kicked in the shins on IMDb... 3.4 is definitely lower than our estimations.Still, at its core, this is a movie about a retired soldier (played by an underwear model) who finds himself the guardian of a dimensional portal that allows LARPers in Lord of the Rings costumes to hassle rednecks. There's something in there about an elf princess and a Native American stereotype too, not to mention a witch and a "fyre" breathing CGI dragon. Truthfully, the obnoxious spelling in the title might be the worst thing about this movie as I otherwise kinda enjoyed watching a redneck kill orcs with a shotgun for 90 minutes.

This movie features a large body count. With all the mayhem it's easy to overlook characters that stayed engaging, some funny lines and the beautiful Texas scenery. This is an action movie and every human in the film is either an action hero or a horror victim. There are some satisfying plot culminations, and the action hero subverts a trope through a poker bluff, which takes some mindful writing. Each character who lasted more than a scene had development. Is this movie original? I've never seen a US Marine type guy fight off a horde of Orcs before, and the gun loving human side of me enjoyed the fantasy of a heroic battle an old D&D foe. The movies I'd compare it too have a tragic historical connotation of imperialism such as Zulu. There are too many movies with white protagonists slaughtering hordes of dark skinned people. As this takes place in Texas, it's impossible to separate borderland narratives in the real world from the story of this man protecting a boundary between worlds. This movie is not alone, LOTR sets the standard. This is my gripe with fantasy overall and is not specific to this movie. This movie is a mishmash of genres but is mostly a Western with Fantasy elements. It is very violent, around 1/4th as violent as Rambo 4. There is one scene that is like a tribute to Friday the 13th movies, but generally the violence is Action in nature and not Horror. There are two pulp scenes. There was no sexual violence.

The idea of the film is pretty fun: there are gateworlds between the nine realms and they open pretty much whenever it suits them. At the gate to Earth there is a wizard standing guard to preserve balance. The wizard is an old man with a lot of guns, though, and his magic is gun powder. When he dies trying to protect the last elven princess, a soldier coming back from Iraq takes his place. The rest of the film is people shooting orcs and dragons.The problem is that the idea was completely lost on the filmmakers. They try to make it slightly fun and campy, but the bad acting, the clichés, the myriad inconsistencies, the plot holes, they all work together in making the movie a failure. Unlike another Arrowstorm film "Shadow Cabal", which I thought was awesome, this one has lame visual effects, lame battles, lame dialogues, lame everything.I reiterate that this idea had a lot of potential, pitting experienced modern war veterans with experienced medieval war orcs, with magic thrown in for good fun. Instead it felt like one of the bad sequels to Tremors, made by Asylum.

For something I thought I would just give the minimum 20 minutes to grab me, then on to the next one : I was surprised. This is a load of utter stupidity, but the people who made it did so all of the way, and in no way would you ever think that they were joking. No I would not really recommend this movie to anyone, but I would not call it a bad movie either. If someone had absolutely nothing else to do, and they had the chance to sit and just watch this, well I wouldn't actually say you couldn't have done a lot worse. I want to hate this movie, and tell you that you should never waste your time with this thing that they have stitched together in much better quality than they should have. I just can't do that. Too much work went into this, and too many people tried very hard to make this thing. I can say though that unlike Rubber or WRONG from Quentin Dupieux there is a big piece missing, and that is a quality story, a kernel of an idea that is good enough. But you just might Enjoy the spirit of this movie, and the hard work that went into it. Save it for one of the last ones though.