5/5 one of my favorite movies
  by Carrie M. Freschi
I've been looking for this movie on DVD for a long time and found it here in widescreen format which is what I wanted. Now I have one of my all time favorites in my library.

3/5 What a Pay-Off!
  by K. Hookey
This is a bare bones, paint-by-numbers plot (that blatantly rips off Star Wars a few times). Nothing that happens is interesting, exciting or entertaining, and none of the characters are memorable in any way. There's no humour of note and the dialogue is a bore.

But.....once that princess goes into the dragon's lair.....man oh man! From that point on it really is quite incredible. These effects for a dragon in 1981? It seems impossible. The dragon really looks great. The way it crawls, flies, breathes fire...it's all so right!

If I had fast-forwarded to the "princess-goes-into-cave" bit and watched from there...I would be thinking 5 stars. But, unfortunately I slogged through until then (at which point I was not enjoying the film at all), so 3 stars it is.

I suggest you fast-forward until that point. Here's what you miss: Old wizard is hired to kill a dragon; one of the king's men wants to stop him; wizard allows himself to be murdered by the king's man; his apprentice takes up the quest; apprentice meets girl pretending to be a boy in order to get out of "the lottery" where the "winning" virgin is sacrificed to the dragon in order to spare the village; apprentice is locked up by the king, who fears if he fails the dragon will not be happy; princess figures out the lottery has been rigged for years to omit the rich families' virgins (including herself); she nobly rigs the next lottery so that all the names are her own; girl-who-was-pretending-to-be-a-boy's father is a blacksmith, who happens to have previously forged a spear called the "Dragon Slayer", gives it to the apprentice; girl-who-was-pretending-to-be-a-boy bravely makes a dragon-scale shield for apprentice.

And at that point...you should start watching. It probably took about a minute to read that, I just saved you about 90 minutes of tedium. But make sure you do get to see this dragon. It's awesome.

5/5 An absolute pleasure to watch
  by sarasn1derland (pineville, nc United States)
Every time i see this movie, i don't regret it. i think it's wonderfully done, and the story is great. it's a timeless classic dragon movie!

5/5 Dragonslayer Review
  by C. Egan
This movie is about a boy who claims to be a dragonslayer, but he is not really. However, he ends up slaying a dragon with the help of a sorcerer. There is magic, lots of special effect dragon viewings, which are really good in this movie. I think this movie might have some of the best dragon special effect viewings I've ever seen. The part of the movie inside the dragon cave is really good, it shows baby dragons eating people's body parts. The plot is good, the acting is ok, mostly I like this movie for the special effects, but the movie itself is lots of fun. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. It's good stuff.

3/5 Quality lacking
  by Eric E. Tenneson
There's a lot of heart that went into this film, and the innovation of Phil's stop-motion procedure breathes life into the dragon. On the heals of early ILM work in the 80's, the main focus, however, still dwells with character development and political/ religious commentary.
If the film could somehow be re-mastered, I'd enjoy the product more. As it is, there are many poorly illuminated scenes that are hard for me to see on the tv. During such plentiful moments, this does make a good movie to listen to while doing other things, such as artwork, knitting, or cooking.