IDK abt CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

I feel like he really punched that camel.

I should start by saying that I’ve never been a huge fan of high fantasy, or anyway, that I’ve never found it particularly escapist. I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy in middle school, and while I remember tearing through the first book, the second and third were a slog—probably because the focus pivots, at some point, from the arcane jewelry of wizards and elves to the excruciating troop movements of men. When it comes to high fantasy, there’s a sweet spot, I find, in the ratio of sword to sorcery, heavily favoring the latter: I want a few hunks and babes, sure, but more so magic, mystery, atmosphere—which didn’t seem like a huge ask from director John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian.

Now, I should also say that I didn’t go into Conan completely blind: I actually read a couple of Robert E. Howard’s original short stories over the pandemic, and I recall thinking at least one of them (I honestly tried to figure out which one, but the titles are all pretty nondescript) was a lot of fun, and even a little scary (sorta fantasy-cum-horror, with black priests and whirling snowcap labyrinths); and around the same time, I watched 1985’s Red Sonja, which (from what I understand) is generally considered the nadir of the Conan film franchise (even if it’s not officially a part of it), but was actually a real 80’s banger, with sapphic death cults, and balls of light that zap all the men, and an amazing sword fight between Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger that’s both funny and sexy.

But perhaps I let my expectations run too high, because Conan the Barbarian, while certainly funny, is anything but sexy. Indeed, while it was filmed in 1981, it feels more like a relic of the 70’s: dry, dirty, dull. At two hours and twenty minutes, the movie is long—with a story that, despite the implied scope of its world, feels disappointingly “street level”. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a star, certainly, and he’s never looked better, but the rest of his band (which he amasses haphazardly along the way) are deeply uninteresting. Even James Earl Jones struggles to make anything of the villainous Thulsa Doom (beyond that wig, anyway), who’s meant to be a vague amalgam of warlord, priest, and sorcerer, but feels, frustratingly, like none of them. There’s no sense of time, space, scale: Conan rides his horse through southern Spain, ad infinitum, but I couldn’t tell you how far he’s traveled, or how much time has passed. The movie’s big set piece, Doom’s Temple of Set, sits flat against a hill, and is so poorly shot, I thought it was a model until the last scene of the movie. And greatest sin of all: the action kinda stinks (snake arrows excluded). Which isn’t to say there aren’t a few amazing moments along the way: the gristmill and the cottage witch, Jones’s transformation into (spoiler!) a giant snake, and that last scene in general, where Conan peers down from the top of the temple and we’re finally offered a whiff of cinematography. I wonder if they chopped 30-45 minutes off the runtime, these scenes wouldn’t feel so few and far between. As it is, the magic, in every sense, is stretched too thin, and we’re left with a film that I wouldn’t even recommend as a B-movie—especially when Red Sonja’s right there. Maybe I should try Conan 2 instead: I feel like Grace Jones goes a long way.

NEXT TIME!