Box office The film grossed just over $14 million in the US with an estimated budget of $18 million. It later became a
cult film.
Critical response At the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 84% score based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critic consensus reads, "An atypically dark Disney adventure,
Dragonslayer puts a realistic spin — and some impressive special effects — on a familiar tale." At
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. The book
Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Film says: "
Dragonslayer is a compelling and often brilliant fantasy film [... but] it seeks, as well, to impose modern sensibilities on its medieval characters and plot—20th-century political, sociological, and religious sensibilities, which only serve to dilute its particular strengths."
Gene Siskel and
Roger Ebert both gave the film three stars out of four in their respective print reviews. Siskel praised the "dazzling special effects" and the "convincing portrait by Ralph Richardson of the aged magician Ulrich", Nonetheless, he warned: "In movie theaters, that came across wonderfully; on a little TV screen, this may be strictly for specialized tastes." Christopher John reviewed
Dragonslayer in
Ares magazine and commented, "Though the dialogue is occasionally stiff, there is a believable reality. When the people and setting of a fantasy are as carefully wrought as they are here, it is easy to get an audience to accept as small and wonderful a thing as a dragon." C. J. Henderson reviewed
Dragonslayer for
Pegasus magazine and stated that "So, what happened? Basically, special effects aside, it was a terrible film. The acting (outside of Ralph Richardson) was pedestrian, the story was skimpy and fairly bothersome, and the characters did not come across as fully real. The third century was not the time of women's lib. When the best performance in a film is given by the technical staff and not the actors, the film is usually in trouble." Dirk Libbey of
CinemaBlend describes that
Dragonslayer "tends to get overlooked. Even if you do remember it, there's a decent chance you had no idea it was technically a Disney movie, as it was a far cry from their normal output in the early '80s and thus the Disney name was largely left off the film."
Vermithrax Pejorative Guillermo del Toro has stated that along with
Maleficent in
Sleeping Beauty, Vermithrax is his favorite cinematic dragon. He further stated that: "One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is
Dragonslayer. The design of Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."
A Song of Ice and Fire author
George R. R. Martin once ranked it the fifth-best fantasy film of all time, and called Vermithrax "the best dragon ever put on film [with] the coolest dragon name". Vermithrax is mentioned as an
Easter egg in a list of dragons' names in the
fourth episode of that book series adaptation,
Game of Thrones. Fantasy author
Alex Bledsoe stated: "...everyone has a 'first dragon', the one that awoke their sense of wonder about the creatures. For many it's
Anne McCaffrey's elaborate world of
Pern, where genetically engineered intelligent dragons bond with their riders; for others, it's
Smaug in
The Hobbit, guarding his hoard deep in a cave. But for me, it was the awesome Vermithrax from the 1981 film,
Dragonslayer." During filming of
Return of the Jedi, in which
Ian McDiarmid, who portrays minor character Brother Jacopus in
Dragonslayer, stars as the film's main antagonist, Emperor
Palpatine, the ILM crew jokingly placed a model of Vermithrax in the arms of the
Rancor model and took a picture. The picture was included in the book
Star Wars: Chronicles. A creature based on the appearance of this dragon appears in one of
Jabba the Hutt's creature pens in
Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy. == Related media ==