Allow me to set the scene. It’s the early 1980s. Beggar is approximately 10 years old. His favourite film in the world ever is Return Of The Jedi. His small world revolves around movies featuring spaceships, aliens, robots, laser battles and decidedly PG violence. One day, while round at the house of the nice lady who looks after him until his Mum finishes work, the following conversation takes place:

Christine (daughter of the Nice Lady); “I rented a video, would you like to watch it?”

10-year-old Beggar; “Yes please. What is it?”

Christine; “It’s called Conan The Barbarian.”

10-year-old Beggar; “Sounds interesting.”

Mako, as Conan’s unnamed Chronicler; “Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jewelled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his Chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

10-year-old Beggar; “…holy shit!”

For those who haven’t seen this film – and shame on you if you haven’t – what follows this intro is some 130 minutes of cinema at its best. For one thing it kicks off with what is simply the finest opening credits sequence EVER, as Conan's Father (William Smith) is seen making a magnificent elk-hilt sword. Young Conan (Jorge Sanz) and his mother (Nadiuska) watch as the steel is poured, hammered, cooled and finally embellished into a weapon of stunning beauty.

Conan Sr. then tells his son of their God Crom, who accidentally left the Riddle of Steel on a battlefield long ago, where it was found by Men. Legendary bodybuilder William Smith is terrific as Conan’s dad, but sadly we don’t get long to enjoy his company because shortly thereafter a war party attacks Conan’s snowbound village and slaughters the inhabitants. Poppa Conan fights bravely with his new sword, but is eventually killed – first with an axe between the shoulders, and then he’s torn apart by wild dogs.

The architect of the slaughter is one Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), ancient warlord and sorcerer. He and his lieutenants Rexor (footballer Ben Davidson) and Thorgrim (bodybuilder Sven Ole Thorsen) have come seeking swords, and Conan’s Dad’s is the one they have their eye on. Conan’s Mum soon finds out how good it is: Thulsa Doom uses it to behead her in front of her child. The young boy is taken with other captured children, enslaved and forced to push a great grinding wheel.

Many years pass, and all the kids appear to die off - all apart from Conan that is, who has grown up into the imposing form of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He gets so big that he’s taken by a red-haired guy (Luis Barboo) and entered in a series of brutal gladiatorial combats. Not only does he win, but it turns out he has quite an affinity for all the hacking and slashing, and before long is being trained by a freaky Samurai-type guy from ‘The East,’ something we are told is a ‘great prize.’ He also gets to learn to read, screw hot babes and sit in the middle of the table during banquets - where he engages in stirring philosophical debates about what is best in life (to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women, apparently).

Eventually Conan becomes so damn scary that the red-haired guy lets him go, and our hero runs off into the night pursued by wolves. While seeking shelter, falls into a tomb, the last resting place of some long-forgotten Atlantean king. There he finds a sword that is, if anything, even more remarkable than the one belonging to his father.

So our hero, now armed, sets off in search of his family’s murderer. He first meets a witch (Cassandra Gaviola), who promises him information in exchange for sex. Unfortunately she has a tendency to get all fanged and homicidal while screwing - I hate it when that happens. Next Conan encounters Mongol archer Subotai (Gerry Lopez), and the two quickly become friends. Reaching the city of Zamora on a tip-off from the witch, they attempt to infiltrate the tower of a snake cult. There they encounter another thief, Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), who lets them use her rope. The trio sneak inside to discover that Rexor, one of the attackers from the start of the film, is the high priest. He and his followers are about to sacrifice a young maiden to their giant snake, and are quite put out to discover that Conan has already cut it in half.

Our heroes escape and start living it up on stolen booty, with time taken for Conan and Valeria to have lots of sex (I hope Subotai managed to find some comely lass to make it with too, nothing worse than being the fifth wheel). Eventually they are summoned before King Osric the Usurper (Max von Sydow) - his daughter has been mesmerised by Thulsa Doom’s snake cult, and he wants the trio of thieves to rescue her. Valeria and Subotai are reluctant to go, given the tales of Doom’s magical powers, but Conan won’t be dissuaded. His mind firmly set on revenge, he sets out alone.

On his travels, Conan finds the wizard who will become his chronicler (Mako) living close to more ancient Atlantean mounds. The wizard describes Doom’s Mountain of Power nearby, and soon Conan is trying to bluff his way in. Unfortunately he isn’t as handy with the old brain cells as he is with a sword, and is swiftly captured. Tortured by Rexor and Thorgrim, the plucky Barbarian is taunted by Doom, who reveals to him the truth of the Riddle of Steel; that a sword is less strong than the hand that wields it. Oh yeah, and then they crucify him on a really ugly tree.

And all might be lost, except that Subotai and Valeria have found their courage and come to the rescue. But Conan is almost dead, and only the wizard can prevent demons from the Other Side coming to claim him. The wizard warns Valeria that there is a heavy price for defying these creatures, but she is unrepentant.

Conan recovers, and with Subotai and Valeria slips into the Mountain through the tradesman’s entrance - the kitchen, as it turns out. There Doom’s secret is revealed: he and his followers are cannibals, and many of his flock have ended up skinned and spitted in Doom’s huge larder. But the good guys refuse to dwell on this, and even interrupt an orgy to steal back the Princess (Valérie Quennessen). Doom is incensed, and uses a bit of snake archery to kill Valeria.

Conan prepares a magnificent funeral pyre for his beloved among the mounds, despite the wizard’s warning that fire cannot burn there. But it seems the Gods made an exception in this case, because the pyre blazes to life with an unnatural fury. Conan, now more determined than ever to get revenge, prepares for an attack by Doom’s warriors Thorgrim and Rexor, the latter of whom is armed with Conan’s father’s sword...

To say that Conan had a profound effect on me is akin to suggesting Paris Hilton is a bit dim. I had until this point dwelt in a world where people in movies and TV died in a mostly bloodless fashion, zapped by a laser blast or a lightsaber. Why, the crew of the Enterprise just knocked people out, while TV heroes like Wonder Woman, the Hulk and Steve Austin just kinda slapped people around.

Not so Conan. When the big guy (or one of his comrades) hit somebody with his sword the usual result was an agonised scream and a geyser of bright red blood, and he hit people a lot. And if that wasn’t enough, barely-recognised stirrings in the wee Beggar coincided with several of the, um, girls in the cast taking their clothes off! In front of other people and everything! Truly, I had found my place in the World, where chicks got naked and men had BIG SWORDS.

Of course back then my barely-formed brain was mostly unable to discern the difference between quality movies and crap. For the young me, Disney’s howler The Black Hole or Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond The Stars were nearly as good as The Empire Strikes Back, though even then I could tell Starcrash was rubbish – I was inexperienced, not stupid. But even then I could tell that Conan was streets ahead of the myriad rip-offs that came later, most of which I saw on crappy rental tapes during my ‘completely obsessed by chicks & swords’ phase. Not that I’m out of that phase yet, mind you.

So while I still have a nostalgic fondness for Conan, to me its appeal is far deeper than mere reminiscence. I’m not the sort of reviewer who can eloquently discourse on the film’s subtext, all I know is there’s a big guy, a hot blonde and a vaguely Asian dude who kick ass. But they kick it in a way unequalled, for me, in all of filmdom. If you could take a complete badass – Bruce Lee, say - and boil him down to the very essence of badass-ness, removing all the Eastern philosophy and kung fu skills until only pure badass remained, you’d look down the microscope at your sample and Conan would be staring back at you, preparing to smash your stupid face in.

So Conan is the most badass dude in the Universe, ever, but luckily all his friends are badass too. Take one of the movie’s best scenes (and this is one of those rare movies where all the scenes are best scenes), where Conan is giving Valeria her fiery, Viking-style send-off. Subotai is crying noisily, and when the wizard asks why he replies, “He is Conan! He will not cry, so I cry for him!” It may well be the most ridiculous testosterone moment in Cinema history, but dammit, it works! And that’s the great thing about John Milius’s movie: it’s unashamedly a Boy’s Film, but it plays its machismo so damn seriously that it gets away with it.

Of course it helps for a film with so little dialogue that every line is of the ‘quote endlessly with your mates down the pub’ variety. If there’s a better pre-battle speech than Conan’s prayer to Crom, I haven’t heard it (well, there’s that Henry V thing I suppose, but it’s hard to sound like a stone killer while talking about someone called Crispin). It certainly doesn’t hurt that Schwarzenegger delivers his monologue with such a great ‘don’t make me come into Valhalla and smack you one’ tone.

Many critics will talk about Schwarzenegger’s wooden performance, but to my mind it’s an advantage, much like in The Terminator. This is a character who learned to read only after a life of servitude and torture, culminating in being shoved in a pit to kill people night after night. He’s probably going to be a little slow, and stumble over his words somewhat. The rest of the cast seem born to play their respective roles, from dancer Sandahl Bergman to surfer Gerry Lopez to acting teacher Mako as the good guys, and footballer Ben Davidson, bodybuilder Sven Ole Thorsen and the great James Earl Jones as the bad guys. Jones in particular is awesome, easily equalling the level of malice he managed to convey in a certain trilogy of popular sci-fi films – as well as providing the young Beggar with the cool revelation that Darth Vader was black!

The action was crafted by stunt coordinator Terry Leonard, with the cast first having been trained by sword master Kiyoshi Yamasaki, and it’s great stuff. There’s a palpable sense that rather than fencing, the combatants really are trying to hack each other apart. The final battle among the mounds is particularly brutal – even with padding and blood bags up the wazoo, being hit by Schwarzenegger’s giant axe must have HURT!

Of course none of this would matter if the setting in which the characters existed wasn’t authentic. Fortunately production design legend Ron Cobb managed to create a world that absolutely convinces. Sets, costumes, weapons and more all look like they may have, no, should have existed in the distant past. In particular the story’s two main swords, the elk sword made by Conan’s father and the Atlantean Sword found by Conan, are stunningly beautiful objects, and worlds apart from the glorified tin (and in the case of some of the Roger Corman ones, wooden) letter-openers featured in the rip-offs. I can’t think of another fantasy world as well realised as this until Peter Jackson brought Middle-Earth to life. The scenery of Spain, a last minute replacement for then-politically unstable Yugoslavia, is a fine substitute for the Hyborean landscape, and proves that not all the cool fantasy locations are in New Zealand.

Binding everything together is a magnificent score by Basil Poledouris, some of the finest music ever created for film. Poledouris abandoned modern lyrical strategies in favour of Middle Age musical construction. Taking inspiration from Orff's ‘Carmina Burana’ and the Gregorian chanting of ‘Dies Irae’ he created a brutal, semi- prehistoric score that is virtually another character in the film. And to think producer Dino de Laurentiis wanted to use pop music to underscore the movie... Crom would be ANGRY!

While I credit my love of movies to Star Wars and Superman, my love of B-movies comes from Conan The Barbarian. Here was an impressionable 10-year old encountering brutal violence, a fair amount of nudity, blood, human sacrifice, cannibalism, torture and more – and yet had a great narrative, memorable dialogue, solid acting and a sense that one was watching something significant. Every time I watch this movie it kicks my arse from here to Christmas, and from Conan I’d expect nothing less.

At least until the sequel...

Dave Thomas, 12^th August 2004