I can sit down and watch the movie any time, and be pretty happy, though I'm much happier now that I have it on DVD, since 1) I can see every detail in the dark lighting, and 2) I can fast forward over any scene where Arnie's thief girlfriend, or Subotai, the Hispanic archer, talk.

I've hardly talked about Conan the Destroyer (the sequel) on this site, and it's such a cheesily-awful movie that I refuse to do an entire blog or review of it. I will give it a quick categorized review though, much as I did with Aliens 3 and 4. 

Conan the Barbarian is definitely the worst movie I'll ever give a score higher than 5 to. I will not spend a second arguing the relative quality of the film; my scoring is entirely based on it being cheesy, fun, violent, vengeful, merciless, and full of cool battles and other sword/sorcery type stuff. In addition, there are 4 or 5 scenes, moments that stick in my memory always. I'm grading this one on the good parts, while overlooking the majority of it which is amateurishly acted and full of sets that would have been glorious, if they'd had another few million to spend on the film.

As for Conan the Destroyer, I feel dirty even giving it those scores. If it were some SciFi movie of equivalent quality, or a straight to video cop movie starring Segal and Stallone (Frank or Sylvester, does it really make any difference at this point?), I would merrily pass out 1s and 2s down the whole row and wonder at the sanity of whatever person financed it. But since it's Conan, in a genre I like, and it's got a few half-decent sword fights, I can't hate it entirely. Just the realism of the horn Conan yanks off of the demon, and the trickle of gooey ichor that oozes out of the horn's socket, is worth a bonus point.  So it gets a 7 in action and a 4 overall, Despite Arnie's regression in sword play and acting ability (they shouldn't have required him to talk so much, since he has always labored painfully to read his lines), the evil wizard's impossibly cheesy rubber monster suit, the "acting" displayed by Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain, and the full roster of special effects and costumes generally on a par with what you'd expect to see at your local Kiwanis haunted house.

August 5, 2003

After some dinner we started to watch Conan, mostly wanting to get to the immortal Chinese dinner speech, which I had recited from memory in the car, thusly sending Malaya into gales of hysteria.

Chinese Warlord: "Conan!  What is best in life?"

Conan: "To crush your enemies.  To see them driven before you.  To hear the lamentation of the women."

It's nothing in print, you really have to hear it in the whole robotic, heavily-accented, almost-incomprehensible Ah-nold delivery to truly appreciate it. 

"Due crutch yaw enuhmees, due zee dem drippen befaw you, due ear de lamendashun of de wimpunz."

And yes, I do a passable Arnie impersonation. At least I think so, and it's good enough to crack Malaya up, anyway. The DVD version of Conan has a few added scenes throughout the film, most notably to the very ending, and will make a decent blog topic some day. But not today.

March 5, 2004

Another email from yesterday, this one with less malicious intent. 

I'm not usually prone to commenting on your film views and reviews, but I feel that now, you leave me no choice.

"Trashy films like Conan the Barbarian..."

Steady on, old chap, from such innocuous sounding snippets do great injustices grow, in fairness, I completely agree that Raw Deal and Commando are utter bags of cack, but Conan? Conan the Barbarian is a beautiful, soulful and stirring epic that fully captures Robert E. Howard's swords and sorcery style; I doubt you'll see a better example of the genre being made again - ever.

Sure, Arnie can't act, but that's hardly the point; if that's a problem, then let's slate him and not this superb movie. And with lines like: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women," then who needs acting ability?

I think a full retraction is in order.

My warmest regards,
Jeremy

It was somewhat creepy reading this one, or at least seeing the subject line, which read "Regarding Conan." I didn't remember discussing Conan in the blog on Tuesday, since mine was a rather passing mention.  What I did remember was sitting through the last 2/3 of the very low budget Conan sequel, Conan the Destroyer.  The one with Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain, and the big cheesy demon with the horn. It was like the emailer had a secret view into my living room!  But then I remembered mentioning Conan the Barbarian in the blog.

As for Conan the Destroyer, I hadn't seen it in years, but it was on AMC and Malaya happened upon it and once we started watching, it was impossible to stop, even with frequent commercial interruption. It's such a bad movie.  Impossibly useless and annoying sidekick, constant stupid plotting, fake fight scenes, dreadful special effects and monster costumes, a cast composed entirely of non-actors, and so on.  They even reuse all of the music from the superior first Conan movie, regardless of how inappropriate it is for the scenes in question.

As for Conan the Barbarian, I refuse to back off an inch from calling it "trashy." It's ubertrashy, with low production values, very little dialogue, cheesy special effects and giant fake snakes, anachronistic costumes, an annoying love interest with no acting ability whatsoever, an ethnically-inaccurate sidekick, and an archetypally cliche plot. That being said, it's 100x better than Conan the Destroyer, and it's one of my favorite movies of all time.  I've seen it at least 50 times over the years, from watching a VHS tape I made of it off of HBO at least 30 or 40 times to the DVD version Malaya and I have watched half a dozen times since we got it back in August of last year, as described here (scroll down a bit).

I wouldn't say it's a great movie, or even a good movie, but I love most of the combat scenes, I love Conan's miserable and painful childhood and how he overcomes it, and there are some great scenes of quiet in the film, as well as tons of really good music. My two favorites:

2) When the hammer bad guy gets skewered by the spike and Conan stares at him while he dies and all you hear is the wind whistling and him groaning and the hollow bang his arm makes when it whacks spasmodically into Conan's shield.

1) The grand finale, when Thulsa Doom is talking to Conan on the balcony, and hypnotizes him, and Conan only snaps out when his gaze falls upon his father's sword, which he then uses to messily decapitate Thulsa.  The shot that does it for me is when you see him from behind, methodically chopping down at the sides of Thulsa's neck while holding him by the hair, and the crowd screams in chorus with the chopping impact, then fall into a horrified silence when Conan chucks the head down and it rolls, with hollow clopping noises, down the stairs.

Whoever said trashy movies couldn't be great fun to view?  After all, it's pretty clear that The Punisher is trashy, but that was my whole point in the update, that I want to see it just for that reason.  I don't hold out hope that it'll be as much fun as Conan the Barbarian

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