REMINDER - DRAGON FIGHTER on Sci-Fi Saturday Night

[Foywonder]

Here’s a quick head’s up on a movie debuting on the Sci-Fi Channel this Saturday night and as we all know, if it’s debuting on the Sci-Fi Channel then it’s gotta be good! This one is called DRAGON FIGHTER and the Sci-Fi Channel promises that it will feature “the most startlingly real depiction of these mythic beasts ever put on film.” Sure it will. DRAGON FIGHTER is actually a low rent REIGN OF FIRE knock-off starring Dean Cain (a mark of quality unto itself) from the people who have brought us such other * cough* fine films as PYTHONS 2, EPOCH, SHARK HUNTER, and INTERCEPTOR FORCE 2. Good or bad, I know I’ll be watching anyway.

[Flangepart]

Yee, heehee!
Sounds like fun, in that sick sort of way we all seem to have. Saw a promo for it today. Looks like "Reign of fire in space". Realy!
Oooooh. This looks like a job for ...us! Lets all review this thing. Shared pain is dulled pain, i like to say.......
A flameing cheese fest. Velveeta for the Gorgonzola deprived.

[Foywonder]

What a truly retarded movie!

I needed something to go along with my THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT review for my new NOWFF column and I think I just found perfect fodder.

"Doctor, you have created a real live fire breathing dragon and it's really p**sed so open the damn door!"

Thank you, UFO Films, for continuing to give the world such utter crap!

[Squishy]

Blerck.

No wonder the cave in the opening looks familiar: I'd bet it's the same one from Phillip Roth's "Pythons 2." And like "P2," I couldn't make it through the opening. The CGI critter--fully visible from the get-go...screw directoral style!!--looks like a cross between the title characters from "Reptilian" and "Dragonheart: A New Beginning" (which ran on SciFi before I tried to watch this).

Damn! CGI can be an incredibly effective FX tool, but if you can't do it well, PLEASE don't rub our noses in it, Mr. Roth. The opening gives us a phony monster AND a phony cave-in, all of which could've been accomplished with greater realism through cheaper techniques.

Forgive the bad taste, but...of all the horrible fates that have befallen Hollywood's "Superman" actors, perhaps Dean Cain's is the worst: he worked with Roth once before ("Boa") and was so desperate for work HE CAME BACK. *shudder*

Maybe if it comes on again--SciFi always squeezes a couple of hundred showings out of its "exclusive" turds--I'll try to sit through it again. But it's...tough. I'm just not the B.M. lover I used to be. (ha ha)

[Foywonder]

Actually, it was the same cave used in PYTHONS 2 and I recognized the lab as being the same one from PYTHONS 2 which was also appeared to be identical to the sub interior from SHARK HUNTER.

I don't blame you for turning it off but rest assured it got much, much worse. I'll have a write-up complete with a few stills in the next week or two.

Woo! What a stinker!

[Fearless Freep]

I caught part of this during commercials for the playoff games.

One scene kinda sticks in my head as being really stupid.  Dean Cain's character is running from the dragon and he comes to a door that won't open.  So he shoots the hand-recoginition panel and the door opens..and the a few seconds later it closes behind him before the dragon could get him.  How did that happen?

That and the luck of the dragon tail smashing open the lock that Cain happens to need open but doesn't have the key for

[Foywonder]

Even better is when Dean Cain tells everyone not to bother with trying to make it to the elevator because the dragon "fried" it and then at the end...they're trying to escape via the elevator! I also won't mention how the dragon magically changed size and could suddenly squeeze through the emergency hatch in the roof of an elevator. Like I said, plenty of cannon fodder for my column from this one.

[I_Luv_Dolma]

It wasn't that bad--especially in comparison to Reign of Fire and Boa. Which I really hated both. And, yeah, the opening cave scene was exactly the same as the one in Pythons 2. But I liked Pythons 2. Its a playstation-like snake crawling around a government facility after Russian Communists and Ex-Bay Watch Babes. But Dragon Fighter wasn't that bad. I'll probably never watch it again. But why do all these films take place in secret government facilitys?

[Foywonder]

I_Luv_Dolma wrote:
> But why do all these films
> take place in secret government facilitys?

$$$

It's cheaper.

And while I agree that REIGN OF FIRE sucked it was still a hell of a lot better than this crap on a stick. It's ALIEN with a dragon that keeps changing size! Behold, the dragon is big enough to fill a hallway! Behold the dragon can now fit inside an elevator! Behold, the dragon can fit through the escape hatch in the roof of the elevator! Behold, the dragon is now almost as big as a fighter jet! They should have named DRAGON FIGHTER's dragon Puff because he was truly a magic dragon!

[Flangepart]

Ouch.
I taped this ...thing, last night. I did a mini review for the board on Pythons 2 ...Gad, what pain! Oh, Foywonder...you will feel venom apleny, if its even a 10th as bad as Pythons 2. Give it a swift kick for all of us!

[Brother Ragnarok]

I'm sure someone's going to try to kill me for standing up for this movie, but I can only imagine the dragon didn't daintily climb through the elevator's escape hatch considering it destroyed a reinforced steel and concrete wall to escape the incubation chamber.  I also thought the multi-split screens were interesting.  Made it feel like watching a comic book.  But in the end, yes, it was crap.  And was it just me, or did the redhead who survived look remarkably like Rusty the TNT Mailgirl from the last days of Joe Bob's Monstervision?
I made my girlfriend sit through Boa with me as payback for having to watch Crossroads, and I actually dug that one (no, not Crossroads, smartass).  I thought the snake having a giant grappling hook on its tail was cool.
Now Sabertooth, that movie sucked when it shouldn't have.  Why can't these people do anything beyond having a groovy concept.  To my knowledge, there's never been a sabertooth cat as a central movie monster before.  DO SOMETHING COOL WITH IT!!!

Brother R

[Foywonder]

Actually, it was essentially the same movie as PYTHONS 2 only with a dragon instead of a snake. Hell, the lab looked almost identical to the lab in PYTHONS 2 which also looked like the interior of the sub in SHARK HUNTER.

[JohnL]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the lab and many of the other interior sets were from Interceptor Force II. I thought the cave looked like the one from Pythons II. I also reminded me of the cave from Lair of the White Worm too.

I agree it was crap, but I considered it watchable crap, unlike some of the garbage Sci-Fi has inflicted upon us.