All the high adventure of the books and illustrations remains intact, with bloody encounters with Doom's henchmen the order of the day.
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Everybody has to start somewhere. Big Arnold started in 1970 with "Hercules in New York," followed by a half dozen other films that got him known as a body builder, like "Stay Hungry" and "Pumping Iron," but just barely as an actor. His real break was "Conan the Barbarian" in 1982, and he's never looked back. Putting the world's most muscular physique into the comics' most famous warrior was a stroke of genius, or luck. Whatever, Schwarzenegger marketed himself with canny sureness from that point on with a Conan sequel and then "The Terminator." The rest is history.
Universal's new Collector's Edition provides not only a greatly improved picture but the studio's usual bundle of rewarding bonus tracks.
"Conan" the movie appeared at the height of the Heavy Metal craze, an exaggerated hard-rock style that found its visual counterpart in improbably curvaceous women and brawny men. Schwarzenegger was a perfect fit. But he doesn't say more than a few words in the entire film. My wife suggested it was because he hadn't as yet learned to act and speak at the same time, which may be unkind. He didn't need to do much acting or speaking. Arnold just needed to posture and strike poses to imitate the hero of Robert E. Howard's stories, later illustrated by Frank Frazetta, and he does it with consummate skill. Schwarzenegger IS Conan.
In keeping with the comic-book nature of the action, the story, co-written by director John Milius and Oliver Stone, maintains a slow, deliberate, yet, when need be, turbulent pace. Like most filmed versions of superhero stories--"Superman," "Batman," "The Shadow"--this one starts by giving us a history of the man. Set in a faraway mythical kingdom of prehistoric times, we see the young boy Conan witness the death of his mother at the hands of the villainous Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones in a quietly sinister role). Then we watch Conan sold into slavery, we observe his growing up, his education, his training as a gladiator-fighter, and his eventual release into freedom. At that point, about a third of the way into the movie, the central plot begins.
Although twenty years pass, Conan is still understandably grieved by the death of his mother and sets upon a quest for revenge to find Mr. Doom and put an end to the scoundrel's skullduggery. But Doom has gotten even more powerful in the meantime and has become a mesmeric cult leader with a massive following. An old king (Max Von Sydow) hires Conan and several of his friends to find and bring back his daughter (Valerie Quennessen), who has been duped into becoming one of Doom's cannibalistic snake worshippers.
The friends, played by Sandahl Bergman, Gerry Lopez, and Mako (who also narrates the tale), are fellow thieves, which Conan himself has become in order to survive.
All the high adventure of the books and illustrations remains intact, with bloody encounters with Doom's henchmen (Ben Davidson, Sven Ole Thorsen) the order of the day. Presented in its full 129-minute form, the thin story line is stretched beyond its limits, and there is much that can only be charitably described as "filler," pawned off as atmosphere. Sometimes, you wish just to turn the page and get on with it. But for its fans, and that's most of us, it's an epic venture, a grand spectacle that vividly inspires the imagination. It is violent, to be sure, yet good fun for older children and adults. And this middle-aged child has always enjoyed it immensely.
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[release]4465[/release]