R'lyeh Review 005

R'LYEH REVIEW

Issue 005

Conan the Barbarian
Directed by John Milius
Screen play by John Milius and Oliver Stone

(Reviewed by Charles Hoffman and Marc A. Cerasini)

Excerpt from TV Guide, May 2, 1985

2:45 AM (9) MOVIE --- Adventure "The Son of Hercules vs. The Serpent Cult." (1982) Muscleman pits his strength against a sect of devil-worshippers to rescue a princess. Released in theaters as Conan the Barbarian. (90 min.)

What's this? Today's most highly touted fantasy film event, tomorrow's cure for insomnia? The answer is "yes" if the movie in question is John Milius and Dino De Laurentiis' Conan the Barbarian. To describe the inevitable reaction of Robert E. Howard's many fans to the release of this "film", "disappointment" is far too tame a word. "Outrage" is not. For compared to Howard's Conan of Cimmeria, Conan of the Cinema is something less than a shadow of a ghost. Make no mistake; Conan the Barbarian is a sad little movie, a wan, pathetic thing despite the millions lavished upon its production, made all the more laughable by the media hype heralding its embarrassing arrival.

Whether your reaction to this film is one of utter loathing or bored indifference depends on your regard for the classic adventure tales on which Conan the Barbarian is allegedly based. If you have never heard of Howard's Conan stories, or vaguely recollect hearing of them somewhere (perhaps the comics) then Conan is simply a bad movie. Incredibly bad, considering it comes to us not from some schlock production company, but from Universal Studios, the venerable studio that once gave fantasy film lovers The Bride of Frankenstein.

How could a movie with such a large budget ($19 million) be so poorly made? And it is indeed poorly made, the most amateurish-looking major release since Private Lessons. Mistakes in editing, mismatched dialogue, incomprehensible voice-over narration, overscored scenes where the dialogue is blotted out by the dreadful music; all manner of errors, deficiencies, shortcomings, and blunders abound. The writing displays both a total lack of understanding of the subject matter and the inability to tell a coherent story. The direction is so heavy-handed and clumsy that it would make the acting appear unprofessional whether performed by a former weightlifter or a renowned Shakespearian actor. This, combined with the slipshod editing, serves to lend the disjointed events a "pacing" that would be better described as inertia. The ridiculous costuming and lurid set design endow the film with an overall look akin to that of the most garish of underground comics.

If you are a casual filmgoer unconcerned with the original Conan stories, all you have to be upset about is having wasted the price of admission. On the other hand, if you are a Conan fan or an admirer of the writings of Robert E. Howard, the film is something more than a rip-off. It takes on the aspect of a sick practical joke thoughtlessly perpetrated by a group of disturbed adolescents. Milius, De Laurentiis, and company, a collection of small talents and large egos, have, like concentration camp butchers masquerading as surgeons, seen fit to amputate without anesthetic the heart, soul, and sinews of Howard's Conan saga, substituting for some unfathomed reasons a loathsome changeling for the real Conan. REH's Conan was an elemental free spirit, a son of the untamed wilderness unhampered by the conventions of society, a primal force that could not be contained. Milius's "Conan" is a slave, raised in chains and, like Sisyphus, broken by powers greater than he, and reduced to ceaseless, meaningless toil. After starting life as a whipped, dumb work-beast, Conan is taken away on a leash to battle in a dingy arena like a fighting dog or gamecock at the behest of his masters. When finally freed, he is ill-equipped to do anything but drink himself into a blind stupor and wander aimlessly from one silly misadventure to another. Such is the result of John Milius's attempt to "improve" on Robert E. Howard.

One can imagine a future collaboration between Milius and producer Dino De Laurentiis on a new Tarzan movie, one that (of course) only marginally resembles the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. "Hey DD," says a grinning Milius, "what a brainstorm I just had! Why don't we update it, you know, make it more relevant to today. Tarzan '83 and all that. We'll change the setting from the jungles of Africa to, say, the South Bronx! You know, the urban jungle and all that. Why, it'll be colossal!" Conan the Barbarian was conceived in a similar spirit, harking back, not to Howard's Hyborian Age, but the Hollywood Babylon of decades gone by, where Mammon was god and crassness and vulgarity the rule.

Putting all resentment, vehemence and sarcasm aside, one need only say that Conan the Barbarian is a bad idea poorly executed. It does not merit the viewer's money or time. Avoid this turkey at all costs.