Conan The Barbarian: Review By Fallenlords

How can this film not have a review!!!

This is one of the best, if not the best Sword and Sorcery films you are ever likely to come across even today. If you have ever read a Conan book or even a comic, this film typifies the hero Robert E. Howard had in mind.

A man of action not words. This is a time when a man can forge his own destiny through the strength of his arm and the steel in his hand. This is a time that pre-dates known history where even magic is possible. This is a world that only a pure fantasist could create.

A boy sees his whole village destroyed and his parents slaughtered. Taken into slavery he endures years of endless turmoil on the ‘Wheel of Pain’, grinding wheat for his captures. Over the years you see him grow from a boy into a man. Years of punishment on the wheel have built his body into a mass of solid muscle.

He is soon sold to fight in the Pits, where people wage money on the victor of this life or death sport. As his victories become too numerous to count, he is taken to the East as a great prize. There he is taught by the War Masters. Slowly Conan begins to unlock the ‘riddle of steel’; a riddle told to him by his father when he was a boy.

His master on a whim lets him go free and this is where the adventure begins. Conan looks to reclaim his father’s sword, stolen when his village was massacred. All he knows is he seeks a standard bearing a serpent. This leads him on to the path of Thulsa Doom, an ancient magician played by James Earl Jones.

This is where the adventure starts, as Conan seeks his bloody vengeance.

To my mind Robert E Howard is on a par with Tolkien. Those are perhaps bold worlds, but where Tolkien was descriptive Howard was all about the action. Conan was a larger than life character, almost superhuman, a huge Cimmerian Barbarian born on a battlefield.

To translate this to film meant casting a man larger than life into the main role. To my mind the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan was totally inspired. As we all know now, but perhaps didn’t then, Arnold has a certain charisma about him. He is a larger than life character, not only with regards to muscles but personality as well.

This one of Arnold’s first films and I still think today it was one of his best. He just fitted the part like a glove. Even his thick Austrian accent at the time, could easily have been Cimmerian as Howard described a deep guttural sort of language.

Ben Davidson is Rexor and Sven-Ole Thorson plays Thorgim, Thulsa Dooms sidekicks.

Sandahl Bergman plays Valeria, Conan’s love interest. Gerry Lopes is Subotai, Thief, Warrior, Archer he is Harkanian. They team up to rob one of the many snake temples that have sprouted up in the various cities.

Max Von Sydow makes a short appearance as King Osric, when the thieves are brought before him.

Mako is the Wizard and the narrator of the story.

Having a script written by Oliver Stone and John Milius, should give some credibility to this adventure even if you are not a fan of Conan. According to Oliver Stone, he saw this as one of many films. He had in mind Arnold coming back every few years as Conan, pretty much in the same way as James Bond. It is just pity it didn’t happen.

John Milius to my mind directs this film perfectly, perhaps due to Arnolds limited acting skills at the time compared to later in his career. The dialogue is to a large part underplayed. Instead it is all about a certain look, a gesture, posture more than say script. Milius to my mind just got it all right. He brought Howard’s Hyborian Age to life.

To me not only was Arnold inspired casting. But also James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom was inspired. Giving him contact lenses to change his eye colour and a wig of straight hair, really made him look like something from a different era. You could easily imagine Thulsa Doom being the last of the Atlanteans or some such race.

On top of all that you have a brilliant score from Basil Poledouris that really in a way almost tells the story. Remember there isn’t that much dialogue in this film as a whole, so in order to convey things the music has to do more in this film than most. It is done spectacularly well; the way the music is structured builds things up or quiets things down.

Everything with this film, apart from the large snake, has a sense of realism. You have to remember this film was made in 1982, things like CGI didn’t exist. If you wanted to show something on screen you had to make it. Hence the reason I can forgive the big snake, because at the time it looked real. I can remember watching this when it first came out I thought it was brilliant then as I do now. If this story had been all about effects I think it would look very dated now, but I think that is the skill of Milius. He created a film here that can and hopefully will endure.

This film is one of my all time favourites; watch it at least once before you die.