Crom, But Not Forgotten
Conan The Destroyer
USA/Mexico 1984
Directed by Richard Fleischer
20th Century Fox Australian Blu Ray All Zones
Oh, well... I remember looking forward to seeing Conan The Destroyer when it came out in 1984 but, even then, I realised it was a bit of a mess. Fun but... not that great as a movie about Robert E. Howard’s memorable hero. Let’s make no mistake, Conan The Barbarian (reviewed here) was pretty much the last truly great film from the ‘heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery’ genre and still is to this day, in my opinion (Peter Jackson kind of screwed up Tolkien and the nearest thing we have to a modern fantasy adventure of this kind is probably the contemporary set Mandy from a couple of years ago, which I reviewed here). The fact that John Milius wasn’t able to return to the director’s chair here really sealed the fate of this film, I think.
What we have is an adventure fantasy movie with the emphasis on the more magical and mystical elements of Robert E. Howard’s Conan adventures... at the expense of the absence of a lot of the things that really worked so well from that first movie. The character is way too sophisticated in this sequel and the tone much too light hearted. The idea was to make the film even more box office friendly by making it appeal more to kids so the violence and single mindedness of the plot was kind of toned down in the hopes that it would get a lower classification in cinemas... something which kinda backfired in the UK, where the film still managed to garner an AA rating with nothing much to show for it. So, there’s also a lot less blood letting and goriness in this iteration and... that does kind of betray the spirit of the original stories, to some extent.
Asides from Sven-Ole Thorsen, who is playing a completely different character and who is in the majority of Arnold Schwarzeneger’s films, we have only two characters back from the first film. At least they are played by the same actors... Schwarzenegger as Conan The Cimmerian and Mako as the minor wizard Akiro. We also have a bunch of new characters payed by Grace Jones, Olivia d’Abo, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracey Walter, Pat Roach (as Thoth Amon, no less, who never even met Conan in the original stories, instead always staying at the periphery of the adventures) and, as the other lead villain (as if Thoth Amon wasn’t enough for them) we have, in the words of the Superman The Movie Topps Bubble Gum card captions, ‘the alluring Sarah Douglas’.
And, they’re all good actors and they jell quite well (well, I heard Grace Jones didn’t get on with some on the set but, yeah, I kinda expected that) and are all pretty good but, as I said, Conan has moved on and although he is still obsessed with the dead Valeria, the film seems like barely anything to do with the original. It’s a kind of half-hearted fantasy adventure which looks and feels more like Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only era films than the gritty, half exploitative, sword and sandal epic it really needs to be. I believe the tone of the film was not favourable to the director and that Schwarzenneger also objected to the ‘dumbing down’ of the character in this way which, I believe, went a good way to him losing interest in doing a third movie in the series (at the time... I’m still hearing the third part, King Conan, is still in development with him attached).
The one good thing is the late, great composer Basil Poledouris’ sequel score. He does recook several themes from the first one such as the main Anvil Of Crom music, the Wheel Of Pain music (when Conan and another character are trying to lift open a heavy door), a sped up version of the Wifeing theme (during a brief, static effects insert of Sandahl Bergam as the dead Valeria) and several versions of The Orgy (aka the greatest score cue in soundtrack history), which I always thought was supposed to represent the Cult of Thulsa Doom from the first movie and so, therefore, seems somewhat out of place but no less welcome here. Other than these, there’s a new heroic theme which also seems somewhat out of place, while still being fairly listenable but, you know, nothing new which matches the strength of the themes in the first one (nothing as cool as, say, the Theology theme at any rate). Still, Poledouris was a great composer and the score is probably the best thing about this movie, it has to be said. I wish Intrada would finally release that restored version of the score they’ve been working on for years... I really have no desire to purchase the rerecording after the travesty of the Conan The Barbarian re-recording.*
The only other thing I could say is that you do get the odd shade of the visual legacy of Conan thrown in, perhaps sometimes accidentally, from time to time. The main moment, to my mind, is when Conan is fighting the creature that Thoth Amon metamorphoses into in the chamber of mirrors, which strongly resembles, to me anyway, one of the Frank Frazetta covers from the 1960s/70s Conan paperback reprints. Which is nice and a rare flash of gold in an otherwise drab production, it has to be said.
And that’s me done with Conan The Destroyer, methinks. I probably don’t really have to watch this one again in my lifetime because it does kind of leave you with a bad taste in the mouth after the sheer brilliance of the first movie. For years I waited for a third movie to come along which would crown Conan King of Aquilonia but, alas, when a third film did come along it was a rebooted version of Conan The Barbarian (a review of this was forged by me here many years ago, when this blog was still young in the eyes of men) but, alas, it didn’t star Schwarzenegger and it got as much wrong as it got right, it seemed to me. The 1982 movie is still the one great Conan movie, as far as I’m concerned and, as the years pass, I begin to think it will always remain so.
*Actually, since I wrote this review, they have finally released it in 2022... still havent gotten around to listening to it yet, though.
