Conan The Destroyer

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.

The People That Time Forgot

Forget Me Not

The People That Time Forgot
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK/USA 1977
Amicus/AIP
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Another near end spoiler.

The third film in Imprint’s wonderful Tales Of Adventure Collection Volume Nine, following on from my favourite in the box, At The Earths Core (you can read a very old DVD review I wrote for that years ago here... be kind) is the direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot (reviewed here). Namely, The People That Time Forgot, which was actually the very last, uncredited, film co-produced by Amicus studios. And once again, of course, based on the book by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the second of his Caspak trilogy of novels).

This one takes place a few years after the events of the first movie which, if you remember, left Tyler (played by Doug McClure) and Lisa (played by Susan Penhaligon), stranded on the island by the end of the picture. This sequel, which I did see at my local cinema back in 1977, felt a bit of a let down as a kid, mainly I think because I hadn’t seen the first one in the series at the time. And, I have to say that, looking at it now, a film I can barely remember through the intervening  years, it’s not a good movie and certainly inferior to the much more fun first film.

Again, though, it’s a bit of a star studded cast, as four loyal crew members are taken to near the Island from the first film in search of Doug McClure... having received his flask with the message washed up from the sea. Four of them fly a bi-plane above an ice wall and onto Caspak (the name of which, again, gets no mention) and crash there, after an aeroplane and machine gun battle with a pterodactyl takes a turn for the worse. The four are Tyler’s old friend Ben, played by Patrick (son of John) Wayne, photographer Charly, played by the great Sarah Douglas, sporting the same hairstyle as Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie (although this one beat it out in the UK and it wasn’t a deliberate lift, it would seem), dinosaur expert Norfolk, played by the always watchable Thorley Walters and, as Ben’s fellow American, the great Shane Rimmer.

And from here on it’s shenanigans as the four try to find Tyler, dodging dinosaurs and fighting various species who want to kill them or sacrifice them to their volcano God. Luckily, they stumble upon Ajor, played by the glamourous Dana Gillespie who here, it has to be said, manages to be wearing a costume even more revealing than the one she wore in Hammer’s The Lost Continent (reviewed by me here). And in some ways I have to say ‘thank goodness for that’ because, although it’s not really a good thing to say that Gillespie’s huge assets are a better special effect than any of the dinosaurs (or the matte paintings) here, it does at least give a certain percentage of the film’s audience something interesting to look at when the film is flagging and... yeah, it flags quite a lot. 

And when they do finally catch up with Doug McClure’s Tyler towards the end of the film, after they’ve been captured by a masked race of people who, for some reason best known to the production designers, are all dressed in something very similar to samurai armour and have Dave Prowse as their chief executioner, it’s all for nothing. Not long after finding Lisa has formerly perished at the hands of the leader of these Samurai people (played by Milton Reid, who tried to kill James Bond in a scene in The Spy Who Loved Me, reviewed here), Tyler himself sacrifices his life trying to get his rescuers to safety. They take Ajor with them back to civilisation as the island starts to get all volcanic again. 

And yeah, this is by far the inferior of the two Caspak movies from this period and, although I found John Scott’s score to The People That Time Forgot much more interesting, it doesn’t really save the film. It’s not too badly made as a piece but it does seem like it’s badly paced and, yeah, not enough dinosaurs on the rampage... only Dana’s rampaging bosoms, which are pretty good but not something you can really hang a movie on, no matter how much you can appreciate her performance here. I did like her better in the aforementioned The Lost Continent, it has to be said. Not a recommendation but, it is at least an interesting choice for a sequel and worth watching the once, I reckon. 

Strippers VS Werewolves

Stripping Yarns

Strippers VS Werewolves
UK 2012
Directed by Jonathan Glendening
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment 
Region 2

Warning: A few little spoilers might start
howling at you from in here somewhere.

I have to admit that, judging from the handful of comments I’ve seen bandied about the IMDB on this movie, I’m in somewhat of a minority in having a positive outlook on this lofty work. That is to say... I think I may be the only person who liked it. Oh, well... wouldn’t be the first time I guess.

Strippers VS Werewolves is a very low budget British “horror comedy” which, I suspect, didn’t really make it into a general release at UK cinemas. I use the term “horror comedy” loosely because, frankly, this movie isn’t really going so much for the horror element... it’s definitely going for the jugular in the humour stakes though and using high levels of gore and, um, werewolvery to drive the laughs and very simple story forward.

Starting off, briefly, with a flashback to a strip club in the eighties exploding, the movie starts off proper with a guest appearance by Steven Berkoff, playing a gangland boss, who, with the aid of his hired thugs, is indulging in the “interrogation” of a man tied to a chair. Werewolves come to take the whole gang out, including Berkoff, but when the grateful man in the chair is thanking his perceived rescuers and shouting out their “hero werewolves” stature... he is shown the error of his ways when said beasts eat him too.

Meanwhile, a stripper called Justice (played by someone called Adele Silva?) is giving a private dance in a room to a customer who is getting decidedly hot under the collar. Not just hot, in fact, but positively hairy and as he lunges after Justice, the young lady does what anyone in her position might do in the heat (and hair) of the moment, and stabs the punter through the eye with her pen, killing him. Of course, when the owner of the establishment and the security/bouncer from the place come to investigate, the dead “wolf in punters clothing” has already changed back to his human form.

Now the movie could have easily gone off in the direction of the stripper in question not being believed for the first third or so of the movie, but it doesn’t do that, refreshingly. The owner of the club, Jeanette, who is played by Sarah Douglas (or The Alluring Sarah Douglas as the caption on the old Superman The Movie bubblegum cards used to go), has had experiences of this type of thing before. She asks Justice if it was a silver pen with which she stabbed her howling customer and, when this is confirmed, Jeanette knows enough to suspect trouble... for it was her strip club which exploded in the 80s, when she trapped a large group of werewolves inside.

After some shenanigans as Justice and the bouncer try to discreetly dispose of the body of the dead wolfman, we get to know the rest of “the gals” and the story goes into romantic first date territory for a little while as Justice’s friend gets frisky with the bouncer, but then that subplot is violently curtailed as the pack of werewolves from the start of the movie eat the guy whilst trying to find the people who killed their friend/colleague/pack member. For some reason, these wolves seem to have no source of regular income and are happy just going around murdering people. This could have been “filled in” a bit better I think.

One of the werewolves is Justice’s boyfriend, unbeknownst to her. She is worried about telling the boyfriend, who she thinks is an estate agent, that she’s a stripper. However, when she accidentally bites him in her sleep, she is infected with his accursed wolf’s blood and so this is another potential problem for our canine antagonists. After a brief cameo by Robert Englund (and if you like it, there’s another brief cameo by him after the end credits) the stage is set with a battle royale between the werewolves and the strippers... and also Justice, the new were-stripper, so to speak.

So okay, this is not the best movie in the world but some of the humour is quite good and there’s some light but blatant references to other, famous “wolfed up” movies... such as the prison Robert Englund’s character is residing in being called Chaney prison after the 1941 incarnation of the Universal's The Wolfman. There’s plenty of quite gory violence if you’re into that kind of thing, but there’s definitely a lot less nudity or actual stripping in the movie than you would expect from a film with this kind of title. I’m not complaining myself, but I can see how some people’s expectations would have been built up by the “not quite doing what the packaging on the tin implies” status on this one.

The girls are all lovely characters (thank goodness we have another movie here not frightened to stand up to the negative portrayal of sex workers in mostly anything else... give people some respect and credit for their career choices please) and the chemistry between them is great. All the performances seem more than competent (and in some cases pretty good) to me. On the other hand, the werewolves are quite derogatory, misogynistic f***wits who any self respecting male (or female for that matter) would not want to spend any time hanging out with... but that’s what helps define their characters as the villains, I guess, so I can’t complain about this element really. The characters are, presumably, meant to be abrasive so you cheer when any of them get taken out.

There’s a brilliant character who spends his time on the periphery of the main story... well, on the phone most of the time actually, but also the periphery. The boyfriend of one of the strippers is also a Van Helsing monster hunter type, who speaks of incidents like The Vampires Of Dagenham and such like and who spends most of his time in the film trying not to be killed by two sexy, lady vampires while giving werewolf killing instructions over the phone. He’s pretty cool and has major involvement in the epilogue, which takes the survivors of this tale following on from all out Strippers VS Werewolves war, and gives them a new start on a different career path... let’s just say that the movie sets things up for a sequel which I would love to see but suspect will never get made.

Strippers VS Werewolves won’t be winning any awards for best horror movie of the year, I suspect, and nor is it a fan favourite (obviously, from the bad word of mouth I’ve seen). It doesn’t quite seem as professionally a polished product as other “British comedy horror” movies of recent years... such as Dog Soldiers or Shaun Of The Dead, but you can see there’s more than a spark of an idea and you can tell that the production team were really trying hard on this. And, as a result, I did find the movie quite watchable and entertaining, in a weird kind of Redemption Films prologue meets Troma kind of way... but I can see why it isn’t for everybody.

However, as a nice slice of the genre pie for people who are into low budget gore flicks with a warm heart and which doesn’t take itself too seriously, you can do a lot worse than sitting down of an evening with a warm shandy and a spin of this little movie in your DVD player. I’m glad I picked this one up and may even give it a second spin sometime in the next few years.