In a long-gone era out of time and space (really, the scarce sets
suggest the gothic era [roughly 12th to 16th century] while the costumes
suggest ancient Rome and the mythology ancient Greece): Orthos (Carlo
Rota) wants to take over the known world and thus has Acta, a sorcerer in
his employ (who's also working on making him immortal) summon the Chimera,
an almost indestructible beast, from ... well, from wherever. Princess
Philony's (Nazneen Contractor) father was killed by Orthos and his men, so
she trained herself on the longbow to become the best archer on earth, and
she eventually joins forces with blacksmith Belleros (Sebastian Roché),
whose father has been killed by Orthos' men as well, to kill Orthos -
something the Chimera might make a bit more difficult. So the two hook up
with a white witch (Rae Dawn Chong) who summons the winged horse Pegasus
from wherever, a creature that can not only fly but also heal its rider,
and drinking its blood might make one immortal ... and since Acta's magic
hasn't made him immortal yet, Orthos is hell-bent on getting his hands on
the Pegasus ... The usual to and fro ensues, but in the end, our heroes
have not only slain the Chimera, Orthos and Acta, they have also fallen in
love, and they release the Pegasus to return to wherever it has come from. There
is plenty wrong with Pegasus vs Chimera: For starters, the budget
is too low for a story of its scale, then the story is quite silly and
predictable, and the failure to at least remotely root the story in actual
history is a bit disorienting not only for history buffs. (On the other
hand, the CGI effects look pretty decent, not only for a low budget
flick.) The biggest letdown of Pegasus vs Chimera though is that it
totally lacks any and all sense of wonder: When our heroes walk through a
forest for example (and they do lot of that), it's just a forest you and
me know, there's no atmosphere, no otherworldlyness to it. Likewise, when
Pegasus flies, you never get the feeling that it's anything more than a
computer-animated flying horse, there's nothing mythical about it, and
likewise, the Chimera is just an ugly and dangerous beast, not the monster
of legends. And this, I'm afraid to say, is a letdown not explained away
by the low budget, simply by the filmmakers lack of vision or even
interest. Too bad!
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