I love this movie so much

That was an excellent one.

Nice effects though.

Admirable film.

I remember this movie well as a kid going to see it in theater which is the only place it really should be seen. The Sword And The Dragon is the English dubbed version of the Russian film about their legendary hero, Ilya Murometz. In size and scope it's like some of Charlton Heston's films at the time.In the Russian culture Ilya Murometz is a knight errant with no membership at anybody's Round Table. Several of the stories about him are included in The Sword And The Dragon. The main plot line however is the repelling of those rather ugly looking Asiatics who are called Tugars in this film as opposed to Tartars.A Russian subject is best done by Russians. I have to say in watching the film again if you stop it at just about any given point it will look like a medieval painting or tapestry. The way D.W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation looks like a moving picture of that Matthew Brady could have produced had moving pictures been invented then. The set designers should get lots of recognition for their achievement.The special effects, the wind demon, the dragon also come in for kudos. They're out of date now, but Cecil B. DeMille couldn't have done better. I'm sure the Russians probably studied his work to get it right.I'm glad to read that the film has been restored. After being in theaters here it was on Million Dollar Movie for years and I saw it many times during the Sixties.I'll bet it would do good business for a family audience even today.

I just watched it for the first time, the original Russian-language version restored in 2001. I really enjoyed it. It definitely belonged on MST3K. I grew up in USSR but somehow never saw it as a child. Maybe it was not broadcast because it needed restoration, maybe because it's pretty ridiculous. Probably the former.As somebody noted, the make-up job on Solovey-razboynik (wind devil?) is pretty impressive. He shows up about 10-15 mins into the film.Note a repeating theme on the soundtrack, an interesting rip-off of Ravel's Bolero.This film would definitely suffer a lot from bad dubbing. The original dialogue really suits the acting. It is a pastiche of Russian epic tales, and half of it is written in blank verse in a certain meter: two anapests, one trochee, one dactyl.Tamara Nosova played a maid at Vladimir's palace and is not credited on IMDb. You just get a few glimpses of her.

While this film doesn't look as impressive today as it once did, you have to remember that it debuted here in 1956, when the big "epic" movie was DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," and this film has several things in common with it. This was a very, VERY big picture for 1956 Russia, and while technically there's no comparison with DeMille's picture, it has a kind of charming innocence that DeMille's definitely does not. The dated, over-the-top acting styles are common to both pictures, and while it sort of works for the Russian picture, it really doesn't for "Commandments," and was the one thing that always annoyed me about that picture (and pretty much all of DeMille's talkies, for that matter). I enjoyed the villains much more in "Sword and the Dragon," and the human pyramid scene is still astounding, as is the scene near the end where the Russian spearmen pincushion the Mongol chief and raise him, screaming and still impaled on their spears, above their heads; it was quite gruesome for 1956, and is still remembered by people who haven't seen the film for 20 years or more. Granted, some of the film is laughable--the simpering, pigtailed blonde girlfriend is a bit much--and some of the effects are pretty cheesy, but overall I still think it's an impressive accomplishment. The Russians put a lot of money into this movie, and for the most part it shows. The film is a bit lumbering, but not much more so than "The Ten Commandments," which is more highly regarded, and not entirely justifiably.Overall, this is a somewhat goofy, charmingly dated but eminently watchable spectacle with some truly memorable scenes, so slip it in the VCR, pop open a beer, get some popcorn and see what passed for state-of-the-art cinema in 1956 Russia.

I give this movie a 10 on the basis that it provided me with countless hours enjoyment when I was a child. Though many years have past since first viewing this movie, it still holds true today that there is good and there is evil. There is sorrow and there is joy. There is pain and there are miracles. This movie has it all not to mention a few extra childhood fantasy's. Ilya Muromets was my hero. "Bravo Ilya Muromets, Bravo". It was my favorite childhood movie.