Conan the Destroyer

I decided it was time to address the “other” Conan movie, (and I suppose I may have to get around to the more recent Jason Momoa version as well) and so I have taken the dive and present here the disappointing follow-up to the defining Conan the Barbarian. Two years after that movie made the Cimmerian a household name, we were presented with 1984’s Conan the Destroyer, which pissed away whatever goodwill the franchise had, and set the stage for its absolute nadir in Red Sonja the following year.

John Milius did not return to direct this one, so Dino De Laurentiis handed it off to Richard Fleischer, who had directed such old-fashioned adventure flicks as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings, so it might seem that he would have the chops for this. However, he did not have the same dedication Mulius did to keeping things violent and grim, and so he went along with De Laurentiis’ desire to tone the movie down and make it more family-friendly. I mean, the original Conan had only made $100+ million against a budget of $16 million, why would you want to replicate that?

The script for this was originally written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, but their draft was heavily revised, and the final script was by Stanley Mann, a studio hack who had worked on such duds as Meteor and The Omen II. Thomas and Conway were so unhappy with the final film they would later adapt their original story for the comics.

You can see the studio hands all over this in the scholcky fantasy-quest storyline and the severely disappointing fight choreography. There’s a lot more pro wrestling in the big, slow, stupid moves than the badass swordplay of the original. Plus, the film has to find excuses for Arnie to flex and lift heavy things, so we don’t forget he’s a bodybuilder. The story steals liberally from some of the original stories like “A Witch Shall Be Born” and “Black Colossus”, as well as the battle with the robed ape from “Rogues in the House”.

In short, Conan gets recruited by Queen Taramis to escort her niece on a stupid quest to get the horn of a statue that is apparently a sleeping god. They have given Conan a wacky sidekick for comic relief, and saddle him with a crew of companions that don’t really add anything – even the great Mako is criminally wasted, being called upon only to point at things and make car noises to indicate he is casting a spell.

The sets and costumes still look pretty fucking good, with the palace of Queen Taramis looking especially cool. The showdown between Conan and Toth-Amon in the chamber of mirrors has bad choreography and terrible editing, but the set looks amazing. The special effects – like the rubber monster face and the giant puppet of the arisen god in the climactic battle – are pretty fucking terrible, and look cheap even by the standards of 1984

The casting is a strange mix of inspired and bewildering. Sara Douglas gets great outfits and is a preening, prowling villain whenever she’s onscreen, which is not nearly enough. Olivia d’Abo – only 14 when this was filmed – is cute as a button and actually manages a little gravitas in a thin role. Grace Jones is. . . Grace Jones. She’s having a good time, and you have to admire how she throws herself into this, but it’s impossible to forget who she is. Casting Wilt Chamberlain was a bad idea, as he’s no kind of actor at all, and next to his seven-foot height, Arnold looks absolutely puny. Tracey Walter as Conan’s wisecracking thief sidekick Malak is just kind of inexplicable. It is nice to see Pat Roach get an actual speaking role, and as a wizard he is cast way against type.

This is not as bad as Red Sonja by any stretch, but it completely bastardizes the grim, violent mood of the original movie, and inserts far too much goofy comedy, complete with anachronistic banter and that embarrassing scene where Conan gets drunk and makes a fool of himself. The pace is glacially slow, and scenes seem to drag on and on – far longer than they need to. Basil Poledouris reprises his music from the original film, but he reworks the familiar themes into lighter, jauntier versions to the point where it almost seems like he is parodying himself. The dialogue is rote and tedious, and nobody here, besides Sara Douglas, is any good, really. The action scenes are bad, and the editing is consistently poor.

This didn’t exactly bomb when it came out, but it made less than a third of the hundred-million-plus gross of its predecessor, and the reviews were pretty bad. The experience soured Schwarzenegger on the Conan character, and since his contract was up with De Laurentiis, he refused to take part in the projected third film. It would be twenty-seven years before another Conan film saw the light of day, and as that was a massive bomb (that I will get to soon) this film can be largely blamed for the failure of Conan to make a comeback to this very day.

The Slave Mind

Banners flew from the walls of Irdru, and the sea was alive with hundreds of warships as the armies trod upon the ancient roads. The towers shook with the cries of bells and the sounding of war-horns, and crowds gathered to watch as the queen herself took up her armor and her sword, and led her legions upon the march toward battle.

She rode on a high saddle upon the back of her dragon, now draped with armor and with crimson silks. Well-fed and well-groomed, he was glad to be once more on the move, and the sun glowed on his golden-tipped tusks even as he left a trail of fire behind him where his flaming venom dripped from his jaws. The crowds cried aloud when they saw him, and he lifted his great head and roared in answer. Ashari stood tall in her saddle and held up her gleaming sword of shining glassteel, and she felt their adoration sweep over her like a wave.

In her wake came her legions of foot. Company after company of mercenaries all well-armed and armored with the best her wealth could buy them. They had lived well for years as her palace guard and city watch, now they would lift their swords in war for her cause. She left enough behind to secure her city and led thousands in her train. They drew behind them the wagons of supply and the war engines that would form the anvil of her strategy.

As they left the city and set forth upon the wide savannahs, they met the force that would be her hammer. The Horane peoples in their clans and war-bands, thousands and thousands of them all come to her call. She had spent years making alliances with them, making them welcome in the markets and bazaars, forging peace between the myriad tribes and lineages. Now they came in answer to her, and they came in a mounted horde that stunned the city-dwellers, who had never thought to see so many of them at once.

The earth shook as they followed and surrounded the army of foot. Keeping pace with the mercenaries was easy for the riders, and they laughed and galloped and chanted their battle songs beneath the rising red sun. Ashari moved on her path to war at the head of fifty thousands, and she was well pleased.

She had worked hard to forge the alliances that built this army, and now her efforts were rewarded. As queen of Irdru, she now stretched forth her hand, and she would close it into a mailed fist to strike at her enemy. Horane riders went forth ahead of her to scout the path, and she knew no ambush would escape them. She would meet the army of Kurux in battle, and he would find she still possessed her sting.

Conan: The Frost-Giant's Daughter and Other Stories

Conan has been adapted into comic form a lot, okay, a whole lot, and probably every single Conan story ever put down has been done in the comics at some point. Comics, after all, are produced on a relentless schedule, and that can make them voracious devourers of content. For many, many years the license belonged to Marvel, and they produced both the cleaned-up Conan comic and the much more artful Savage Sword of Conan series. Their license expired in the mid-90s, and the property was fallow for a while.

In 2004 Dark Horse started a whole new Conan series, unconnected from the old Marvel continuity. Like all the comics, it mixed straight adaptations of Howard stories with interpolated bits meant to fill in the blank spots in Conan’s biography. This first collection gathers issues #0 to #7 in this new run, and showcases the work of new writer Kurt Busiek and new artist Cary Nord.

Busiek is an Eisner-Award-winning comics writer who has worked extensively on well-known characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Aquaman, and a four-year run on Avengers. Even before he was a pro, he is credited with the idea that the Phoenix was not really Jean Grey, and so is at least partly responsible for the character’s resurrection.

Handed the keys to Conan, Busiek does a creditable job. He fits “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” into a larger story arc about Conan traveling through the northlands, teaming up with and fighting the Aesir and Vanir, all the while looking for Hyperborea – the mysterious land of sorcerers behind the north wind. The plot has some nice twists and turns, and does some good characterization of the hero without weakening him. Busiek’s character is aggressive, surly, and prone to violence at the drop of a coin – the way he should be. In fact the only problem with the arc is that Conan visiting Hyperborea seems like something he would remember and mention later on, and as such it doesn’t match up with the original stories.

The real star of the show, however, is artist Cary Nord. A comics professional who has drawn almost any character you can think of, most notable for his run on Daredevil, Nord won an Eisner Award for his work on this very series right here, and it’s easy to see why. A lot of Conan artists have walked in Frazetta’s shadow, and Nord is not really any different, but he seems less influenced by Frank and more by the built-up visual vocabulary that decades of artists have created, making the Hyborian Age as familiar as the Shire.

What Nord really does best is atmosphere and evocation. His faces and action shots are excellent, but it is really when he breaks out into a wide vista of the imaginary world that he takes your breath away. He has a touch with misty distances and suggested details with simple color washes or broad sweeps of the brush. Under his eye, the age of Conan seems to live and breathe in a way it rarely does in art. Too many artists focus on blood and gore and monsters, and Nord does not lack for those, but it’s the way that he pictures the world that really catches the eye – the way he paints the age undreamed of as a place both absolutely real and yet brimming over with mystery and magic.

In later stories, Nord seemed to lose his touch a bit, and turned in work that seemed rushed and not as clean as this, but here he is clearly fired up and excited about what he is doing, and the result is one of the finest visual renderings of the world Bob Howard created so many years ago. The best art, for me, is like a window you want to step through, and Nord succeeds in that beyond almost anyone.