Thundering brass and Latin chants roll over grim battle sequences, while variations of the main theme play at just the right moments, and a gothic choir creeps in almost unnoticeably on the slow melodies. It is no exaggeration to say that Basil Poledouris’ compositions are amongst the most powerful ever written for any film, and this is agreed on by even critics who aren’t terribly wild about Conan. The film in fact anticipates Lord of the Rings in some interesting ways, but most fundamentally with the score. Battles are so violent that the film feels like an historical epic instead of fantasy, as if Hyboria were exactly as Robert Howard intended: a mythic version of the ancient world, like Middle-Earth. The first fifteen minutes alone make clear that Milius is about serious business and refuses to pull punches, as the young Conan witnesses his entire people slaughtered in a village raid, and his mother decapitated as he clings to her. The ’80s gave fantasy such a bad name that I came to view Conan the Barbarian as a one-time exception in a genre flooded by cliche and hollow characters, and not until Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings would I be forced to revise my opinion. Today it holds up well - astonishingly well, in fact, when compared to inferior PG cousins like Willow, Krull, Legend, and of course the abysmal sequel Conan the Destroyer. This was high adventure in which thieves robbed the temples of evil priests, rescued their victims, battled giant snakes, and stumbled on forgotten swords held in the clutches of cobwebbed skeletons - the kind of scenarios I fantasized about daily when throwing the 20-sided die. Conan threw me into a world of lust and brutality I was so unprepared for at age 13, but it also felt like a real-life Dungeons and Dragons game.
Come to think of it, it did take a while to recover. Between scenes of graphic sex - especially Conan’s coupling with a vampire who goes rabid on him at the moment of orgasm - and a deluge of blood and gore, I was utterly stupefied, and if not for the subject material which interested me, would have probably taken days to recover. It was my first R-rated experience and did a wonder on my youthful sensibilities. Together the hero and his allies must defeat both mortal and supernatural foes in this voyage to sword-and-sorcery land.Conan the Barbarian (1982) is a special film for me. The queen’s plans fail to take into consideration Conan’s strength and cunning and the abilities of his sidekicks: the eccentric wizard Akiro, the wild woman Zula, and the inept Malak. Unknown to Conan, the queen plans to sacrifice the princess when she returns and inherit her kingdom after the bodyguard kills Conan.
Howard, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Stanley Mann
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