The cover alone is enough to scare you. Someone set the damned thing on fire and Anakin's sword has lilacs on it.

Let me preface this by saying that watching bad movies is an institution for me. I rarely ever get frightened by them. But there was a point, not for long, when my manhood quailed before the queer and awful might of Dragon Heart 2: A New Beginning. Which I prefer to call "Dragon Heart 2: A Bit Unhinging."

I bought this movie because I bought dragonheart 1. I would have gladly paid 10 dollars to have The Sean. I didn’t previously have any movies with his presence, so I needed this one. But on the other side of the disk was dragon heart 2. Two movies for ten dollars. Now, the dvds case advertised Dennis Quaid and Sean Connery. But I had a sneaky suspicion that they had turned up their collective noses at the sequel and been right to do so. That piggybacking the second movie was an effort to further connect it to the first (successful) film. So I was already leary of it.

I expected mediocrity at best. What I got was some of the clumsiest dialogue, most outlandish plot, worst special effects, and most open ripping off of another film I’ve ever seen. Dragon Heart 2 stands apart as, in my opinion, the worst sequel I’ve ever been exposed to as relates to the original. And I’ve seen two of the Deathstalker sequels.

Anyhow, the film starts out with the traditional medieval/fantasy narration and jabbers on about the original like an ex boyfriend pining for his girl who dumped him. Bowen (NOT Dennis Quaid) appears as an old man with fabulous facial hair and carries around a volley ball they’ve painted white that the narrator insists is a dragon egg.

Then the dragon heart theme starts up for the credits. The stirring and beautifully done theme will be assraped throughout the film in a continuing attempt to link this thing to the original. Unfortunately this stirring theme is not appropriate for the scene of monks wandering around an abbey and some kid who looks like Anakin Skywalker fighting with sticks.

Henry O (O is his last name. I guess he plays… well, I’ll tell you later, cant ruin the surprise and have you lot run off) and a Mr. Woodnut appear in this film and the narration and credits continue unabated. Oh and we finally know our heroes name. Jeff. But that’s not olde style enoughe. So it’s pronounced "gee-OFF" or sometimes joff, goff, or jaws. And people love to pronounce his ridiculous name so you’ll be hearing it a lot. The monk’s pronunciation isnt too good either. The first two times I watched it (one not seriously and the next for the actual review) I thought he said Goff was an awful stable boy, but reading the dvd case he might have said orphan. Don’t know, don’t care. But I’m inclined to think he’s awful.

The credits march on and I learn that some beast named Shari Goodhartz wrote this trainwreck. Whoever Shari is I’m inclined to think she does not, in fact, have a good heart. Or any heart at all. Theres some floaty shit in the air and this will be a continuous theme throughout the film. It must be a high pollen count or soemthing cuz in every scene tehre are white floaties milling about. And in every scene so far the narrator continues to jabber on about nothing and talk about the previous, good movie.

Then we get to our villain. Last time there was an evil prince who took his fathers throne. Now theres an evil advisor who also wants to take the throne. He drugged the king but kept him around for some reason and now spends his days making evil edicts like his edict that everyone wear color coded tunics. "And nothing else" a tunic by the by is a shirt. So he basically ordered that everyone just wear a shirt and nothing else. It’s good to know he got his villain ideas from Doctor Susse books. And anyone who doesn’t submit to his below the waist nudity will be whipped.

Action then moves to the exploits of Cough and a monk who I shall call Brother Smacktard. Snoff convinces him to sweep the stables by talking up what a special task Father Peter has given him, to which Brother Smacktard replies "I am special" You certainly are, Brother Smacktard.

Confucius on crack stars as... old Chinaman.

Anyhow next we meet… Holy fuck. It’s Henry O starring as Ho Chi Minh wearing a pope hat and a chick wearing a Pomeranian on her head. This movie just went from bad to fucking incredible. Anyhow they jabber about dragons and the old code and we find out that even the friar from the old film, Brother Gilbert, is dead. They couldn’t even get the comical priest from the previous movie into this piece of shit. Ouch. They also make more and more references to Draco as though just invoking the name of Connery’s character could help their sagging quality. Indeed this Father Peter guy carries a piece of draco as a good luck charm. Hey, better idea. Carry some Drano. It’ll get you out of this movie and prevent anyone ever bothering you for appearing in it.

The awful writing continues when Father Peter responds to Confucius pope’s prophecy: "I am a man of God! I do not believe in such superstitious prattle" Hehehehe. Good job, Shari Goodhartz. You wrote a screen play about goofy monks without bothering to read the bible.

Anyhow our hero, after stealing from a monk, gets into the dungeons of the abbey (This must be a catholic abbey) . There he finds a broken sword and then in a scene stolen right from Indiana Jones he blunders into a cave with a torch and screams like a girl when he sees some desiccated corpses. The monks really should clean up better. He screams even more when he meets the creatively named Drake, son of Draco. Then they become friends and both grin stupidly at eachother. The scene closes on Drake smiling like a moron. Then for no reason we open on some soldiers whipping a man for not wearing his tunic and the narrator keeps bothering us.

The grinning scene. This is before they brought out the creepy, toothy grins that seemed to go on forever and made the switch to peasant bondage seem merciful.

Then when the narrator finally shuts up I started to wish he’d continue. The star of our little show channels Hayden Christiansen again to complain about his tunic, pointing out that it itches and is the color of "warm vomit" because warm vomit is a different color than cold vomit. The dragon hilariously retorts "That’s not the color of my vomit" hahaha! It’s almost as witty as the banter from the more successful film, if the more successful film you’re refering to is Star Wars Episode 2. He went on to add "Not like you Drake… You’re so soft, so smooth… you’re not like my warm vomit."

I  dont know the dates exactly, but the sand speech seems to be the basis for the horrible shirt/barf manifesto between Glopp and Drake.

Then it starts to get fucked up. Scoff has to hide from an approaching monk, possibly friar peter. Then some other guy comes down to tell Drake the bad news. Turns out peter, who we just saw talking to Confucius, died while he was off screen. Here’s the dialogue. Every painful line of it.

"drake, friar peter is gone"

"where did he go?"

"friar peter has gone to heaven"

"did it hurt him to die?"

"no he seemed fine yesterday. He was very old, and he was very fond of you."

Wow. A catholic priest named peter keeps a young boy dragon locked in a dungeon for a long time. I bet he was very fond of him. This movie is just diving into the gutter and rolling around.

Anyhow while I try to repress ever having heard this description of catholic sexual abuse, we get treated to a new scene where Grand Goff Tarkin is sitting on a dock in a river. Then this sort of arrogant knight guy rides through the river on a horse and challenges him to a fight for no reason after they introduce eachother and the arrogant guy repeats his name in disbelief. "Goff?" Anyhow the duel ends and Goff is thrown into the river, but lays on his back in like four inches of water. After being thrown off a dock. Miss. Goodhartz is not very good at studying maritime theory either.

Our hero finds drake and they whine, with Drake uttering the immortal line "but my heart hurts" Ok ok we get it, the name of the movie is dragonheart. Shut up about your heart. They do for now because its time to visit the usurpy guy Osfric or whatever his name is. He drugs the king some more and the king acts goofy, then Osfric makes this ridiculous villain speech:

"Today I make two edicts in accordance with the old code. To defend our helpless and uphold our weak, those people wearing green, beige and brown tunics, must be in doors one hour after the sunset"

Also, the king has a pet chicken for some reason. It becomes painfully clear that the king, who is being drugged, abused, and usurped of his rightful rule with no children to stand up for him in his old age, is the comic relief. It’s just like Robin Hood, where whenever they needed a punch line they cut to King Richard being tormented by the Moors.

Back to the burgeoning love affair between our hero and Drake, Glopp suggests that there may be "other kinds of people" somewhere and then continues "lets fly away from here". He later added

We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way"
I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder"

Anyhow he throws off his Tunic, which is probably too much like sand for him, and then the evil guys guards come. Confucius and pomeranian head are there, but they hide in conveniently placed barrels. The bad guys find McGroff the crime dog and want to whip him. He spews this ridiculous story about his tunic being used to clean the latrine. Charming. They decide to whip him even more for that and I couldn’t agree more with their decision. Theres more jabbering about characters from the previous movie then in a continuing attempt to link an unrelated movie to a far better one, and then all hell breaks lose.

Confucius stands around and watches his daughter thing kick the living shit out of all the kings men…. With kung fu. WITH…. KUNG… FU. Anyhow he leaves the protection of the chinese chick and is prompty recaptured. This time the evil guy wants to kill him, but first needs to know where the dragon is. When told the dragon disappeared the villain replies:

Fun fact: The long blurry things are wings, and the thing underneath is Goff. Drake caught him by his cape which should have snapped his neck or choked him, but somehow he survives Drake's murder attempt.

"No one can disappear unless I make them" Then he shoves him off a cliff. The dragon catches him and then theres talk of some ancient evil by Confucius. They crash land and are befreinded by Lord Osfric whose men just tried to whip Goffric Gryffindor. They go back to his castle and while they make friends confucius plots to kill Drake if he turns out to be evil.

"A shot through the heart with this poison on it will kill him"

Hey, brilliant, asshole. We get to talk about the dragons heart some more so we remember the title of the previous, better movie. But did you know that anything through the heart will kill anything, whether its poisoned or not? Guess the writer didn’t take anatomy either.

Then we go back to the evil guy who’s watching the king being trained to juggle. Haha! Look at the drugged up old man try to juggle. Hehehehe! Oh abusing the elderly is a recipe for hilarity! Then evil guy takes the hero to the worst set I’ve ever seen. There are two treesm some battlements, and a red mat. No sky. Its just red. Its not a tapestry, its supposed to be a sunset. But I never saw the entire fugging sky turned the same shade of red by a sunset. They have another pointless duel and then we get to the dragons training.

Confucius is teaching draco ancient dragon wisdom. Which is just breathing fire and stuff. Our dragon sucks though, so rather than breathe fire…. He farts it. This movie just reached another new low. Then he tries to breathe ice, but ends up spitting on two people. His spit is white. And Confucius demands that he "Open his ice lung and BLOOOOOOOW" Blow white stuff all over Goff, yes.

The bad guy wants Confucius captured but instead they bring back the monk. Then the bad guy has the king make him his heir while the monk watches. Haha what a brilliant villain plan! And it gets better because part of his plan is to kill his own guy for capturing the wrong person. Ah killing your own guys just never gets old… The monk is sent to the dungeons and we get to see more kung fu fighting. Then the King starts trying to play the most poorly put together bag pipe prop I’ve ever seen and we all laugh at the elderly.

The bad guys soldiers try again to capture confucius and his daughter, and they get their asses kicked again with the girl dropping a convenient bell on some guys head by, this is clever, cutting the rope that suspends it. And then Goff sticks arrogant knights face in a conveniently placed pile of… yes, poo. Haha! Oh the pile of poo is a source of endless hilarity.

But after that Groff decides that he likes the bad guy and turns Confucius in. So the bad guy asks him to come fight the kingdom of Tarragon, cuz apparently they need seasoning for their poultry and hollandaise sauce. The bad guy kicks some ass and does some honestly impressive sword play while the hero lays about uselessly. Then he shoves the hero aside and takes a pike in the heart for him. He asks Drake for his heart saying "give me your heart" awwww Osfric I never knew you cared.

But luckily our hero realizes it’s a set up cuz… well… he realizes it’s a set up. Apparently Osfric … faked being stabbed through the heart by an enemy soldier despite the fact that the hero, Drake, and the audience all saw it happen. The heroes wander off only to meet Osfric back at the castle where hes probably got the king walking around on a leash somewhere.

Confucius fixes the king and then it’s fight night again and the plot comes together and has a bunch of other shit mixed in to make a kind of fecal slurry. Confucius looks at the bad guy and says "so it is you" turns out the villain is an evil dragon who was made human as a punishment. He reveals this in the whiniest villain speech ever, sounding as though he’s constantly on the verge of tears. Oh and he mentions Bowen again for no good reason, and the Old Code. Remember, this is related to Dragonheart. No really it is.

Then the villain gets his dragon heart back and becomes a dragon, and tempts Drake to join him. Drake seems to consider it since the hero failed to go flying with him that morning and thus he should join the side of evil on account of that wrong done to him. Then Goff apologizes in the sensitive manner that just screams "lets have make up sodomy"

"I know that I hurt you and I’m sorry but he’s going to enslave mankind" Oh sure, its always about Gosic and never about fuGoff. Draco has a change of heart regardless saying "If it wasn’t for Golf I would have given you my heart… and lost… my soul."

So they fight with special effects almost as good as what we saw in the epic battle sequence Godzilla VS Gidra At least for the five seconds we actually see them fighting. The rest of the fight scene is just people watching the dragons fight and red lights shining on peoples faces to give the illusion that fire is flying back and forth and exciting stuff is happening above them, safely off screen. One neat special effect we do get to see is the ridiculous two tailed comet streaking over the moon. It is not only a ridiculous size but its so cool that it has not one trail of cosmic dust, but two. Yeah fuck you, laws of comet behavior, we wanted to make a ridiculous graphic.

The final scene is marked with incredible special effects.

Anyhow Drake masters his blowing technique. He blows a load all over the evil dragon, freezing him and making him shatter all T2 style. How original. Unfortunately when dragons shatter they act like fragmentation grenades so the hero gets a piece of shrapnel… In his heart! Honestly, is there any other part of the human body that the writers are willing to acknowledge? Other than Father Peter’s…

So Drake bonds with him and then he wakes up,

"My heart hurts" he whines, apparently not content with being alive again.

"No, our heart hurts" Drake corrects him.

"No. My head hurts" I say as the narrator starts to jabber incoherently again. In most movies this would be where Goff gets the princess and the king is restored and makes Goff his heir. Not this one! Instead the narrator announces that he and Drake "finally have... a family"

Now I'm not worried about the kids turning out queer, I'm all for gay adoption. But when one of the parents breathes (and farts) fire I am worried about the kid turning out well done.