Conan The Barbarian

Conan comics = classic, esp. the last few Barry Smith issues - psuedo-pre-raph art with all the ornate trimmings. Red Sonja one of the most dubious female comics characters ever - she wears a chain-mail bikini and will only give herself to a man who has beaten her in battle!

The first Conan movie is faintly interesting for the way that fascist fuck John Milius tries to turn Arnie into uberman, but it's pretty turgid nonetheless.

Didn't know abt Rory Storm (not that I'm compiling a list or anything!)

Conan is nowhere near as good as The Running Man. Bad film in terms of all films, but in terms of 80s films, unbeatable.

vulture eats conan...

vulture eats conan...

CONAN EATS VULTURE!!!

HAHAHA! best scene ever.

[image]http://www.angelfire.com/sk/darthreiko/images/ConanTheTriad.jpg[image]

http://www.angelfire.com/sk/darthreiko/images/ConanTheTriad.jpg

YES! I was just watching this on cable too!

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dice-man/conan.jpg

http://warchild13.com/images/images/Frazetta-Conan.jpg

http://www.kenmeyerjr.com/misc/conan.jpg

http://www.megomuseum.com/wgsh/accessory/conan/conan.jpg

http://www.dragonstoothminiatures.com/images/conan2.jpg

http://www.conan.fero.pl/grafika/zabawki/seria1/conan2/conan2_01.jpg

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/conan5.jpg

http://www.readaboutcomics.com/images/072406_conan02.jpg

the first one and he fights te bear - funniset thing EVAER!!!!

I AM HERCULES I DO NOT HAVE MONEY!

I just read the first collection of the new Conan comic, and it was actually quite good. A bit too wordy, like every Kurt Busiek comic is, but it manages to catch the spirit of the Howard short stories very nicely.

hang on i was talking about hercules in new york which is infinitely worse and better at the same time.

http://www.securitymetrics.org/content/attach/Welcome_blogentry_040505_1/hamster.png

word to that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-vveE9DI4

haha. "right into du soop."

accidentally came across this after looking at that. woah!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0amCfgnwY8&feature=related

Hahaha at the beginning of Conan the Destroyer the queen is sending her niece off on a quest and says to her servant: "Make sure that she comes back a virgin" --

The servant is played by WILT CHAMBERLAIN

^^ this is only slightly funnier than the scene at the beginning where Conan DECKS A HORSE. Like a horse comes galloping up at him, and he punches it in the face, and it falls over and passes out. He does the same thing to a camel a couple scenes later.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_disappointed_cabinet_failed

A year ago the local theater showed a print of this and having been a pre-adolescent fan of the movie I went and had the time of my life. AWESOME b-movie drunken crowd experience. Great music, great one-liners, plenty of opportunities to cheer whenever Conan kills someone. Plus the cannibal cult, the crazy wizard dude (who does wonderful narration), the giant stop-motion snake, amazing music, and James Earl Jones. Great cinematography too. This movie gets a bad rap cos it's based on a comic book but it's really badass. I love the discussion about the different gods. And it starts with the line "Back when the oceans drank Atlantis"!!

Conan was originally a series of short stories by Robert E. Howard, not a comic book. The comics and the movied are both adapted from those.

He translated them from the original Cimmerian, don't lie.

Also, the original Conan comics are pretty badass too.

It's no Kull.

I liked the books as a kid, but I honestly can't remember much about why: I guess because they were the ancient-world equivalent of more medieval fantasy stuff? I remember they struck me as the tiniest bit sordid, like their author wasn't necessary the most upright adult.

It's no Krull.

I remember they struck me as the tiniest bit sordid, like their author wasn't necessary the most upright adult.

was it the gratuitous tits or vivid dismemberments that tipped you off

There was also aesthetic stuff like his preference for creepy monsters and weird ritualistic magic and whatnot

BARBARIAN

howard was closeted, some say

Vincent D'Onofrio gives a painfully high school quality performance as the genius writer, Robert E. Howard. Totally unsympathetic almost until the very end, one has to ask why this movie would interest any but Mr. Howard's fans and why they should tolerate such a shoddy treatment of a truly gifted man. There's precious little reason to care for either of the two main characters, although Renee Zellweger gives a game performance and shows any depth or dimension of any of the players in front of the camera. D'Onofrio who gave a riveting performance as the psychotic misfit "Private Pyle" in 'Full Metal Jacket', totally ignored Howard's many facets to portray him as a social outcast and raving lunatic. While I began watching this movie with anxious anticipation knowing that D'Onofrio and Zellweger are top-flight performers, the movie ended mercifully way too late to hope to get 93 of the longest movie watching minutes of my life back. Instead of D'Onofrio, Kevin Kline or even Robert Downey, Jr, would have been a much better choice of lead and brought a much higher quality performance. Ninety-three excruciating, dreary and painfully lonnnnnnnng minutes. Avoid this mess.

(I mean, there were titties and beheadings in the usual fantasy stuff, too, but it was just elf-chicks and goblins in the forest, not mystical quasi-Satanic snake-monsters eating virgin sacrifices in weird Orientalist post-Gilgamesh nightmare cities)

I remember they struck me as the tiniest bit sordid, like their author wasn't necessary the most upright adult.

If I remember correctly, Howard expressed some quasi-fascist beliefs in his letter to Lovecraft and other folks. Also, he lived his whole life with his mother, and when his mother died, he killed himself right after.

there's some dirty stuff in them little short story booklets

If I remember correctly, Howard expressed some quasi-fascist beliefs in his letter to Lovecraft and other folks. Also, he lived his whole life with his mother, and when his mother died, he killed himself right after.

― Tuomas, Thursday, February 5, 2009 7:28 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

His mother fell into a coma, he killed himself, THEN she died within days IIRC.

Also, depending on which versions of the Conan stories one reads, there is tons of bastardization by L Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter, who decided to take it upon themselves to "fill in the gaps" between Howard's original stories. They also finished some of his drafts, outlines & fragments--opinion is divided on these, generally, but I find them to be pretty iffy. TBH I find it equally distasteful that Derleth did the same to several of Lovecraft's outlines/works in progress.

Also, Robert E Howard's Dennis Dorgan stories are HILARIOUSLY un-PC. So are many of his boxing stories for that matter.

Also, I think I posted this on the early influences on your sexuality thread. The cover of Conan the Freebooter (one of thoe Ace paperbacks with de Camp & Carter fill-ins.)

http://www.virtualcomicartcon.com/0370.jpg

http://i27.tinypic.com/33c6w5z.jpg

Weird timing! I just started reading me some Conan for the first time ever, like, yesterday. I've already discovered one of my favorite quotes of all-time:

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

I dare to have hope for this being good. I could dig the whole King Conan idea even if there ain't no Milius in the mix. On the other hand, it's from the same license holders who brought out that POS from last year that was impossible to like on any level.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/25/arnold-schwarzenegger-will-return-as-conan-in-new-reboot

More importantly: it's apparently a sure thing that the day after Thanksgiving the soundtrack specialist label Intrada will announce a new 3CD reissue of the Poledouris score for the first film. The complete score for the first time ever, with alternates and unused music, and the first time any of it has been properly mastered from the multi track tapes, apparently (all previous CDs have been mastered from either safety tapes or mixdowns). GAHHHH!

I hadn't seen the Milius one since I was kid. I remembered it being pretty dull and ... boy, is it. There are things working in its favor, like the location sets and production design, Arnold, and, of course, the score. But there is so much working against it, like the slack editing, the boring fight scenes, the incoherent/bad script, the hit or miss cinematography ("Lawrence of Arabia" one sequence, TV schlock the next), the fact that Arnold is without a doubt the best actor in the whole thing. I watched the "international" cut but will have to be reminded what's different.

I was intrigued by the OG Ebert review.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/conan-the-barbarian-1982

There's some imo non sequitur race stuff he gets into, but this caught my eye:

The movie’s casting is ideal. Arnold Schwarzenegger is inevitably cast as Conan, and Sandahl Bergman as Valeria. Physically, they look like artist’s conceptions of themselves. What’s nice is that they also create entertaining versions of their characters; they, and the movie, are not without humor and a certain quiet slyness that is never allowed to get out of hand. Schwarzenegger’s slight Teutonic accent is actually even an advantage, since Conan lived, of course, in the eons before American accents.

This line in particular: "Arnold Schwarzenegger is inevitably cast as Conan." Inevitably? Ebert writes about Arnold as if he's the action movie standard-bearer he soon became, but at this point was he even close to a household name? He had bit parts in a few movies, but even his most prominent exposure in "Pumping Iron" was 5 years earlier. You'd think Ebert would have written something like "the biggest surprise may be Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who finally finds a role suited to his mass."

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/conan-the-barbarian-1982

bodybuilders had been going tv / hollywood for decades before this and arnold was a superstar the moment he emerged. it totally makes sense that ebert would see it as obvious.

I still have a few of the old "Savage Sword" black & white Marvel magazines from the 80s that I've held on to.. looking for the right D&D kid to pass them along to
The writing in those was pretty solid

bodybuilders had been going tv / hollywood for decades before this and arnold was a superstar the moment he emerged. it totally makes sense that ebert would see it as obvious.

There's something in either the documentary or the commentary on the original DVD release and after where Milius, I guess, or someone basically talks about how there was a lot of marketing emphasizing Arnold's specific presence -- like it wasn't just 'Conan' being sold but Arnold-as-Conan -- and how in either a test screening or a premiere or something, the scene where we see adult Conan for the first time on the wheel as he lifts his head and looks into the camera caused the crowd to go nuts in a 'all right, he's HERE, yeah!' sense. Really does make sense, yes.

"But there is so much working against it, like the slack editing, the boring fight scenes, the incoherent/bad script, the hit or miss cinematography"

Don't know how seriously we need to take things like quality of script/cinematography in an action film

re: inevitably
Perhaps Ebert is referring to the movie having been in development for years, with Arnold having been retained for it at the time of Pumping Iron.

i would totally read a book about this stuff. is it in an arnold bio or something? except too bad that arnold was a big jerk especially early on from what i gather.

The Arnold doc is worthwhile, if you haven't seen it. From my memory, "Terminator" is where Arnold truly crossed over to a household name. What's funny is that when "Terminator" came out, a lot of people were, OK, at least, here's the perfect project for this robotic actor. But Arnold is so naturally charismatic, in "Pumping Iron" but also in "Conan," that his taciturn "Terminator" role is almost an outlier. "Conan" shows him totally ready for the action big leagues: funny and goofy, good timing and a good sport, one of the only in the film that seems totally committed to the otherwise enervated fight scenes.

Don't know how seriously we need to take things like quality of script/cinematography in an action film

It absolutely matters in an action movie where the actions scenes are totally half-assed. The movie that came to mind as I caught up with this was, of all things, "Temple of Doom," which tackles a similarly garish pulpiness but by way of total competency.

Film editing has tightened up a lot in the digital era. Shots are much shorter and cuts much more frequent than they used to be when working with actual film. It's made a lot of modern action movies so fast as to be incoherent, but it's also made some classic old movies look as slow as synchronized swimming.

Yeah, but since I brought up "Temple of Doom," "Raiders," of course, was released the year before "Conan" and is tight as fuck. And that's just the first thing that came to mind. What came to mind rewatching "Conan" was a crew working at a much lower level. Which isn't necessarily fair - "Raiders" is peak everything - but even so "Conan" often felt like a TV production. Like, literally one of the first things you seen on screen is some inexplicably bad screen work. Like, check out the conversation between young Conan and his dad around at the 3:20 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81HUn352hZ4

This is just bad filmmaking, since a decision was made to do this and accept this when the conversation could literally have taken place anywhere. Felt very campy 1960s, not big-budget '80s.

Anyway, there are countless great action sequences in films made decades before "Conan." Like, the car chase and shootout at the start of *"Some Like It Hot"* is tighter and more exciting than anything in "Conan:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gh0SLV8Xg

John Milius is just not a good director, and his team was not up for this task, imo.

Counterpoint: this movie is amazing and you’re wrong!

i should actually watch this some time. i enjoyed that corny 3 minute long father son monologue set in some imaginary mountainland lol. not as much as watching arnold's arms sharpening his giant sword though. also learned this was co-written by oliver stone lol.

Like, literally one of the first things you seen on screen is some inexplicably bad screen work. Like, check out the conversation between young Conan and his dad around at the 3:20 mark:

OK, yeah, I'm just gonna say that this is a you problem and retire. This movie rules, and that scene is perfectly fine.

xxpost lol watch it again! I mean, it's not bad, it's just not that good. And it's the failure of the filmmaking that makes it fall short, imo, not the material. It's pretty cool (telling?) that the DVD has the isolated score as an audio option, though.

Worst scene of the movie may be the half-assed snake transformation, wherein James Earl Jones for no good reason veeeeeery slowly morphs in a giant snake (like a Temu "American Werewolf" transformation), slithers out of the room, then just appears as a human again the next scene.

I should also stress that it's totally serviceable and entertaining, not some Cannon disaster or something. Though speaking of which, I did learn this from the wiki:

Pressman did not receive any money from Conan's box office takings, but he sold the film rights for the Conan franchise to De Laurentiis for $4.5 million and 10 percent of the gross of any sequel to Conan the Barbarian. The sale more than paid off his company's debts incurred from producing Old Boyfriends, saving him from financial ruin; Pressman said this deal "made (him) more money by selling out, by not making a movie, than (he) ever have made by making one." He also arranged for Mattel to obtain the rights to produce a range of toys for the film. Although the toy company abandoned the license after its executives decided Conan was "too violent" for children, Pressman convinced them to let him produce a film based on their new Masters of the Universe toy line. The eponymous film cost $20 million to produce and grossed $17 million at the United States box office in 1987.

Also this:

Stone was, at this time, going through a period of addiction to cocaine and depressants. His screenplay was written under the influence of the drugs

The whole wiki is full of fun stuff!

James Earl Jones snake scene rules, you are once again wrong.

Haha, different strokes for different folks, I guess! I don't think we are watching different films, we are just watching them ... differently.

hokey scenes in sword and sorcery movies are a feature not a bug

But Arnold is so naturally charismatic, in "Pumping Iron" but also in "Conan," that his taciturn "Terminator" role is almost an outlier. "Conan" shows him totally ready for the action big leagues: funny and goofy, good timing and a good sport, one of the only in the film that seems totally committed to the otherwise enervated fight scenes.

I agree with this, he's great in Terminator obviously but I like him more in stuff like The Running Man or even Commando, who else could sell those lines

this is such an awesome and atmospheric movie that picking it apart is v much missing the point

I agree, I love the atmosphere! In fact, I wish it didn't have so much voiceover and just dropped you into this world of weird magic and camel-punching.

I've never read any Conan stories, but I've seen people say the movie is a handful of their best bits cobbled into this one film?

It absolutely matters in an action movie where the actions scenes are totally half-assed. The movie that came to mind as I caught up with this was, of all things, "Temple of Doom," which tackles a similarly garish pulpiness but by way of total competency.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 February 2026 bookmarkflaglink

Conan is much better than Temple of Doom though have these different brands of right wing overtones.

I think it has this entertaining quality of most entertainment films, which has to cone through whatever the work was input to make it work. Not sure what the purpose is in judging the action as 'half-assed'.

Counterpoint: this movie is amazing and you’re wrong!

― tylerw, Wednesday, February 4, 2026 8:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was going to say! The Conan movie is a total classic and does a great job of capturing the books/comics.

If you don't get a thrill from Doom turning the snake into an arrow then I don't think this genre is for you (and I regret to inform you your inner 12 yo has died).

You can't take it apart and the action is only part of it tho'. We also have:

- Conan going round in circles for about ten years as a way of acquiring this muscle mass
- The warrior training is hilarious, culminating in 'Conan, what is good in life?', which is funnier than fascinating fascism
- James Earl Jones is awesome as always
- Conan finding friends, and the encounter with the witch as this thing you either fuck or kill
- Killing this big, clunky snake (a bit like the shark in Jaws or something)
- The love scene between Conan and the woman is funny
- The score is really, really good too
- The narrator voiceover is frequently LOL
- James Earl Jones turning into a snake as a way to wind down for the day

What else..xp

it's been a very long time since i watched this movie but i've never thought of it as having pacing issues - it's supposed to be an epic, a picaresque. it's not meant to be Beverley Hills Barbarian

ok but real talk, anyone here seen "she is conann", if so, what do you think?

'She is Conann' is the only Conan adaptation that totally leans into, and even exaggerates, the strangeness of Howard's stories. But it's Bertrand Mandico so don't expect a faithful homage, it's total OTT camp but quite serious at its core. Elina Lowensohn's dog mask steals the show. I loved it but then again I've loved everything Mandico has done. There is also a companion piece 'Dragon Dilatation' which is like a sort of not-exactly-documentary meta-unpacking of 'Conann' mashed up with Stravinsky's 'Petrouchka', and a couple of related short films.

i would totally read a book about this stuff.

it's been a very long time since i watched this movie but i've never thought of it as having pacing issues - it's supposed to be an epic, a picaresque. it's not meant to be Beverley Hills Barbarian

This is the crux of my problems with it: I don't have an issue with the film's slower or more exploratory side at all (the atmosphere, as it were); I appreciate the long stretches of (relative) silence and stillness and introspection, which reminded me a bit of fellow 1982 vet "Mad Max 2." But I *do* have a problem with the *action* being boring. That is, I like the weirdness and adventuring, but then the fighting interrupts and I lose interest, because imo it detracts from the epic-ness by being, well, half-assed. You see these incredible sets and locations and costumes, but the swordplay is dull as dirt. Especially the final "battle." Great blood color, though. A nice deep red.

I have more than a hunch, though, that this movie is still probably better than many of the movies it inspired, some of which I no doubt saw bits of in passing on TV, between bouts of bad cartoons. My inner (pre) 12-year old has fond memories of "Dragonslayer," but I'm afraid to revisit it.

Lol I saw Dragonslayer at the cinema at the time and I remember more or less nothing. There were a lot of fantasy b-movies in the early 80s, including the all-timer Hawk the Slayer and a bunch of cute Italian movies we saw on VHS. Personal fave and recommendation is The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) which threw in some fun gore into the mix.

Anyway obviously budget-wise Conan plays in a different league, tho next time I watch it I'll see what I think about the swordplay

I remember thinking the sequel to Conan was pretty dull tho

The sequel iirc was shittier all around.

Wow, I guess "Dragonslayer" was 1981! Here's an epic making of I found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaHGpHiluG4

I love the Robert E Howard Conan stories as well as the Thomas/Windsor Smith:Buscema Conan comics and, even I remember, as a 12 year old Conan nut back then, that this movie sucked big time. Plodding and corny.

This movie (conan) roolz and is a perfect object. ivy and tyler m otm.

xp
*tylerw

Was Dragonslayer Disney adjacent or was that something else? All i remember of it was Ralph Richardson playing the Gandalf and a big impressive dragon corpse at the end

sorry for the badlywritten post. Dying iphone and fat fingers, by Crom!

xpost Just learned in the comments to that video:

Fun Fact: Dragonslayer is one of 2 movies coproduced by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions. The other movie was 1980s Popeye starring Robin Williams.

ok but real talk, anyone here seen "she is conann", if so, what do you think?

Oh it's great, all the separate short films and things too. Was an experience in the theater.

Last year I semi-accidentally wound up reading all of Howard's original Conan material. It is very funny that he starts out with Conan as this triumphant warrior king and takes a couple stories to realize ... right, it'll be vastly more interesting to describe the exciting adventures and travels he had before rising to this position. I was reading through a bunch of similar stuff from that era, and I'm honestly not even sure how to talk about it in terms of "good" or "bad?" Lots of it is formally or mechanically bad, but then the central aim of the stuff is simply to feel involving and imagination-capturing, and sometimes it gets there in ways that "better" writing might not. Months of reading all sorts of old pulp, and I actually came away wishing I saw more quality modern writing that has that some of that Weird Fiction vibe of, like, desperately trying to grab the reader with a cool bewitching idea, writing like next month's rent depends on cranking out something that sparks brighter and faster than any of the other people mailing stuff to that magazine.

Its my favourite sort of American fiction. Writing for rent feels really American to me.