Super Movies 2-Parter! The one with Arnold

 

Title: Conan the Barbarian

What Year?: 1982

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, it’s now just over a year since I started this feature, and I’m once again thinking about what I still want to do before ending it. That brought me to a larger project I have considered for a long time, and I decided it was time. This will be not one but two reviews, of a series I have dealt with before (including a soundtrack review). It is worth further note as a property that was never “officially” based on a comic, but attracted a great deal of suspicion then and since. I present the first part, none other than Conan the Barbarian, and this is the one that kept me from doing this for so long.

Our story begins with the forging of a sword, by a technique that has enraged blacksmiths for decades. We then meet a tribe that worships steel and the strange god Crom, who in short order are massacred by invaders bearing the sign of twin snakes. The sole survivor is a boy who goes from slavery to mercenary to a thief in the splendid cities of the Hyborian Age. In the course of his adventures, he gathers a band of rogues including a lady named Valeria, who quickly becomes his lover. He also runs afoul of the cult of Set, the same snake-worshippers who killed his family, and their leader, a charismatic sorcerer named Thulsa Doom. When a king reveals that his own daughter has joined the cult, Conan accepts a mission to bring back the wayward princess. But the quest will carry a terrible price, leaving Conan with the ungrateful rescuee in tow and the raiders of Thulsa Doom in pursuit. When the rogues make their final stand in an ancient burial ground, even Conan may be outmatched- unless the dead come to his aid!

Conan the Barbarian was a 1982 “sword and sorcery” film produced by the Dino De Laurentiis operation (see… Maximum Overdrive?), directed by John Milius from a script cowritten with Oliver Stone. The film was based on the character and stories created by Robert E. Howard for the horror/ fantasy pulp Weird Tales. Many believed it was influenced directly by the Marvel comics Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan. The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as the title character and Sandahl Bergman as Valeria, with James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom. Other cast included Mako as the wizard, Max Von Sydow (see FlashGordon) as King Osric and Valerie Quennessen as the princess. Basil Poledouris scored the film, and the sequel Conan the Destroyer. The composer also scored the. The film was released around the middle of a wave of fantasy films of the early to mid-1980s, which also included Dragonslayer,Krull and The Black Cauldron. Unlike many such films, it was inarguably profitable, earning up to $79.1 million against a $20M budget. Schwarzenegger and Mako returned for Conan the Destroyer, which otherwise had little overlap with the first movie. Quennessen became best known for Conan and the romantic comedy Summer Lovers, also scored by Poledouris, released the same year. The actress died in a traffic accident in 1989 at age 31.

For my experiences, my strongest memory of the franchise is that I saw Conan the Destroyer, or the end of it, on 1990s TV, which I will get to. To my further recollections, I finally watched the movies in full around the time I was really discovering Howard. What came to my mind during the viewings for this review is that the first movie in particular is very much like Howard, yet quite different from the Conan stories or any other incarnation of the character. Particularly noteworthy is the grim, almost humorless mood, in many ways closer to the strange saga of Kull than anything else. (Of course I know that’s where Thulsa Doom came from.) Also noteworthy is the quite limited role of monsters, magic and other fantasy shenanigans, which almost puts this on the vein of otherwise “straight” Howard adventures like “By This Axe I Rule!” The problem, at least for me, is that the final product feels ponderous if not pompous rather than epic, ultimately belying even the “so bad it’s good” reputation of the film. I can’t say it’s bad, but I don’t get it, and there’s way too much material here that I do like for that to be just me.

Moving forward, most of the easy targets here involve the origin story given for Conan, which is one thing Howard never did with any of his major characters. In fact, it actually does pretty well at introducing the characters and the assumed world. The one thing that is jarring is the introduction of Jones, which isn’t help by the fact that the makeup and lighting seem chosen to make him look as “white” as possible. We also get completely surreal moments like the encounter with a literal witch, and some monster action with a giant snake in the temple of Set. The movie gets in gear as the cult comes to the front, with homages to several of the finest Conan stories, especially “Queen of the Black Coast” and “A Witch Shall Be Born”. There’s also an underrated arc with the princess, which I will admit I didn’t notice before the current viewing. Quennessen provides impressive screen presence in the role even without much to do, especially in the temple scene where she first appears. I personally took enough notice to do much of the research here by the time the credits ran.

On the “con” side, I’ve already done the best I can to explain the issues I find with the movie. If there’s one “obvious” issue I haven’t gotten to yet, it’s that the movie is so long, almost half an hour longer than Conan the Destroyer. What makes matters far worse is the strange pacing and the further absence of a coherent message or theme. There’s plenty of movies at least as long that “work”, particularly Apocalypse Now, which the present film in fact seems to try to emulate in long stretches, and Aliens. But this movie doesn’t have the thematic complexity of Coppola’s film, and it certainly doesn’t have the fast-paced action of James Cameron. Indeed, the action scenes that do occur are as oddly static as an actual comic book, with only the palace free-for-all mustering sustained energy. As for any ambitions of “message”, the closest we get to a payoff is the simple contrast between the fanaticism of the cult and Conan’s pragmatic view of his own indifferent god Crom. (Now that I think about it, this must have had a little influence on my own character Carlos Wrzniewski.) It all culminates in the not quite comical prayer before the final battle, which really does sound like something Howard would have written for the character.

Now for the “one scene”, I had to go with one that has Jones onscreen. After Conan’s first attempt to infiltrate the cult, he is captured by Thulsa Doom, and the two characters have their one extended exchange. Thulsa Doom vents about Conan’s depredations, concluding with hilarious inflection, “You killed my snake.” Conan furiously accuses the sorcerer of killing his tribe, to which Doom merely muses that he valued weaponry in his youth. He continues with a discourse on the power of human flesh and spirit. In the middle of it all, he calls out to one of his followers far above, in a soft and fatherly tone. What follows could have been played as comical or terrifying, but instead, we get the film’s deadpan film as the camera follows the cultist’s fate, complete with a shot of the resulting hole in the floor. It’s a bizarre moment in a very odd film, and on this occasion, it really works.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. I honestly considered giving this film a lower rating than I have. If not for certain better points, especially the Poledouris music (see my Starship Troopers soundtrack review for comparison), I might have. After a fresh and somewhat more careful viewing, I’m satisfied that the middle is where it belongs. What continues to baffle me isn’t that so many people clearly like this movie better than I do, but that few if any talk about just so odd it is.  It is ultimately the weird factor that keeps me from coming down harder than I have. I don’t get it, but it gets my respect. With that, I’m done with this one, and I’m actually looking forward to what’s next.