Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius, there was an age undreamed of. And on to this, Conan, destined to bear the jeweled 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.

What? What? What? What we're fading out on? Really on Basil Poledorus' Anvil of Crom? When we were fading out? Oh my God. I think, I think, hi Paul, how you doing?

I am great. And I just have to say that, that is how you do voiceover narration.

That's right.

The great Mako, my God, my God. Yeah.

I mean, we're going to talk about this for the entire podcast, but I mean, just might as well be called The Hour of Basil, right?

It's one of the great examples of how a film score can make a movie great.

Oh my God, is it ever? Yes. And also the best use of French horns and the score that demonstrates that, unlike Hans Zimmer has taught a generation, French horns don't have to fart to be useful in a score, right?

Exactly.

Exactly. They can be deployed in their purest glory, in waves of majesty that just flow over you and take you on high adventure. That is the great Conan the Barbarian, John Milius' epic adaptation of Robert E. Howard's pulp hero that ushered in, if not unleashed, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. It might have actually leashed Arnold Schwarzenegger into cinema.

Well, for a time he is leashed for part of the film.

In light of many people who I know from another life, but I'll talk about that later. On that note, I'm Javi O'Creech, your Mark Swatch.

I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is Multiplex Overthruster: Summer of '82.

Thank you.

Paul, I'm about to commit heresy here, please forgive me. It's blasphemy and heresy. As much as our theme song has given me life, if it were to be replaced by the anvil of Crom, would we weep?

Oh, tears of joy.

Let's get to it, because there's so, so much to talk about here. So you have the recap duty today and you're ringing the bell.

This is a really big one. As I said at the top, this is classic pulp hero, Robert E. Howard's creation, Conan the Barbarian, brought to the big screen in the hands of John Milius, who co-wrote with Oliver Stone. And after many battles, was able to get Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead in a type of movie that we had kind of seen before, but never with this intensity and verve. And it is just a classic kind of hero story, little nihilistic, but kind of turns into a perfect Dungeons and Dragons movie for its time in 1982. But Conan is orphaned as a young child in a small village, son of a sword maker, who is then enslaved by bad people and grows into the mighty Conan, who is destined to become a great king.

I can't think of a better way to describe this film. So let's go to the bell and start talking.

Just real quick, remember, we are seeing this instead of The Secret of NIMH. This opened in early May, and in the chronology of our films for the summer, we are in July of 1982.

Lest we forget, we're also seeing it instead of Wrong is Right, the Sean Connery media satire. So I think we're good. Hey, Paul, let's ring the bell. Let's talk about...

Ring it!

We're gonna talk about The Secret of NIMH and how much, how sad it is. No, that's it.

Ring the bell with the hammer of Crom.

Okay, so, Paul, I want to launch hard into this, okay? And I want to launch hard in a way that's gonna like... You know how, like, I usually say, oh, I'm a horrible human being, and then you, like, talk about how I'm a horrible human being? So here we go. First of all, the first thing in this movie is that fucking Nietzsche quote that every fucking weapons-loving, fucking nihilistic military poser ever loved, which is what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Yes. So my note is fucking Nietzsche and John Milius. John Milius literally wept because he couldn't go to Vietnam, which dude, that shows you how blind this dude is. And every person of my generation who's been in the movie industry, perhaps you do as well, Paul, has a history of, some story of, I got to meet John Milius. I went into his office. He was standing in Joppers holding an AK-47 and smoking a cigar. So I'm going to tell you, like, I really like, as much as I'm going to talk well about this movie and also about Red Dawn, which is about a stupid, a piece of flag-waving, flap-doodle, gun-loving bullshit as there is, I just want to point out that I am not in agreement with any of the philosophies espoused here.

I have to agree that John Milius, for all his estimable qualities as a filmmaker, is also a fountain of right-wing nightmares. And that's an important caveat when approaching this film. I do think it is a very interesting philosophical collision on the writing, on the script between him and Oliver Stone at this time, which leads to a pretty interesting mix. But yeah, there is some inescapably fascistic messaging in this film that is given a celebratory ode, maybe not wholly appropriate or to be recommended, but setting that aside, this is a pretty incredible film.

I mean, I don't know if it's a great movie, but it is a great movie because it is so iconic. And look, I have my beefs with Milius as a filmmaker and philosophically and politically, but this movie and Red Dawn are very effective films. They just are. And honestly, Red Dawn was a movie that I really enjoyed as a kid. And when I read John Milius' original script for Apocalypse Now, I said, wow, he turned this into a pro-war movie. That's kind of amazing. But the monologues that he writes, especially...

I mean, it's just a feast of monologues that are so juicy.

And you can immediately understand the attraction to actors ranging from James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow. They just have such a great time.

It's like the scenery served up on a platter of iron. You're not given cutlery, you're given a dagger. And you have to cut the scenery with a dagger and then eat it. It's phenomenal.

Yes. And speaking of, the movie opens, again, with setting aside the Nietzsche quote, and I do wonder how popularized that quote was prior to this film opening with it. But then we get one of the great scores of all time, Basil Polidorus, who's shamelessly channeling Karl Orff and other influences, but to an incredibly effective degree. And we get this origin story right out of the gate of young Conan as a child. And we also get a very unambiguous worldview that is espoused by Conan's swordsmith father.

The Secret of Steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its little Conan, you must learn its discipline. For no one, no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts.

This being Steel, the sword that he has just forged, which is, we see forged in the title sequence, which is just awesome. It's so awesome.

It's a majestic title sequence, isn't it? I love how the title, by the way, like we gotta get away from the title, because it's gonna go to the scene, we're gonna be two hours in, we'll still be talking about the title sequence, but like the way that the title starts, it's black and you see sort of the credits starting, and then you see the kind of line of orange smelted iron and turning into, oh, it's beautiful.

I think it is one of the greatest main title sequences of all time. In terms of composition of visuals, of score, of font, like the title font that's chiseled, and it's just, it's so freaking perfect, and it plants a flag so firmly as far as this movie we're going to make. We're all in, we're all in on going hardcore, hardcore sword and fantasy, like nothing is going to stop us. It's going to be a Dungeons and Dragons movie, but with the aspirations of David Lee.

And with just a, if you can imagine a syringe of testosterone the size of a Mack truck, you know, it's a guy right in there, you know? So Paul.

Yes.

So the movie, so after this monologue, the movie might as well be a silent movie for the next half hour, beginning with the attack on Conan's village. By the way, I want to say Conan's dad is played by this actor that I really, I looked up his name, I've forgotten it, but he was one of those. William Smith. Yeah, William Smith. It was in everything. And I remember him as the noble and equal to Clint Eastwood's Street Fighter in, I believe it's Any Which Way You Can, which is the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose. And he was also one of the Russian commanders in Red Dawn, but he's just one of those faces you see in every movie in the 70s. And he's always amazing.

Yeah, I'm glad you pointed about.

William Smith was also on an early casting list to play Conan in this movie.

Yeah, he's worthy of being Conan's father. And he makes a memorable impression. And the earnestness with which he delivers that monologue is, yeah, it's just the perfect way to set the tone and open that film. The combination of that and then the Mako's opening narration as well is just pretty incredible. Because it is going to be quite some time before we hear any words spoken by our lead character.

Oh, or by anyone, but especially by our lead character.

Or really, yeah, but especially by our lead character. We'll get to that. But then we have this very efficient opening sequence that is, I think, a perfect origin story. Very iconic, very mythic. There is this small village that seems to be peaceful up in the northern wilds where Conan is living this blissfully bucolic life with his loving parents, his dad is a great swordsmith, and they are set upon by ruthless raiders from somewhere. We don't know who they are, although we then do see the standard that they carry, and then the reveal of Thulsa Doom, who leads them.

Thulsa Doom and his sigil are revealed, but we don't hear his name, because later in the movie, when we first run into him, it's a surprise. Holy shit, this is the guy who decapitated Conan's mom. So I got a couple of things I want to bring up. One of them is Kid Conan, really well cast. Kid does a lot of work with very little.

A great young Spanish actor who would later go on to star in Bella Pac.

Really?

Yes.

Wow, crossover, I like it. Shared universe, you think? No, anyway.

Other than both being filmed in Spain.

The two things I want to point out in this movie is, first of all, and we will hit this over and over again, Basil Polidorus, so much heavy lifting.

Yes.

Like just the chorus singing and everything, but also Thulsa Doom's two main henchmen who recur for the entire movie, literally look like Spinal Tap. I mean, they're literally Nigel Tufnell and Derek St. Smalls, or Derek Smalls. What are the names? They literally look like Michael McKeon or Harry Shearer and Chris Guest.

Yeah, they look like they've got a side hustle in a hair metal band.

Yeah, the first thing when that kind of pops up is Bruce Dickinson, what's Iron Maiden doing here? And the other thing is the fighting in this feels really real all throughout the movie. When you think about how stylized fight choreography is nowadays. I look at the fight choreography here, and I remember two things. One of them is that it looks really real and brutal and a little bit clumsy, which I think is appropriate when you're fighting with 50 pound swords. Also, Paul, do you remember when Nickelodeon was a real kids channel and not just a machine that turned out money-grubbing mercenary franchises for licensing, there was a show called Stand By Lights Camera Action.

Oh yeah.

And it was hosted by Leonard Nimoy.

Yeah.

And they did a show that had a long segment on Conan, which was kind of funny because this was a kids channel. And the two things I remember best from this were that the swords actually had buttons on them that activated a splatter that would come out of the blade of the sword. So that they wouldn't have to rig up the, when you're hitting somebody, they didn't have to rig them up with squibs. You literally could just do the same, hit over and over again, as long as you had a blood pouch in the sword. And the other thing was a lot of the movie was shot in Spain and it was really freezing where they were shooting.

Yes.

So the blood was actually cut with vodka. And the thing the swordsmith said in that was that the actors actually really liked it because they put it in their mouths and drink it.

Yeah, vodka so it wouldn't freeze.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. The ingenuity of a lot of the production and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention also the great production designer Ron Cobb, who creates this world with really incredible contributions by the great William Stout, also a production artist on it. But yeah, immediately we kind of get this very sense of a fantasy. This is not pretending to be in our world, in real history. This is a fantasy alternate reality world that is just so vibrant at every turn. But this opening sequence is so ruthless as Conan witnesses his father being slain. And then on top of that is then killed by attack dogs that ravage him. We get this iconic shots of Conan's mother protecting him, standing alone with a sword against Thulsa Doom and the raiding army. And they're the last two standing of the village. And there's a really mesmerizing exchange, really without words, between Thulsa Doom, giving us a sense of his sort of hypnotic powers and Conan's mother. And it is so incredibly evocative in terms of how well it's staged, shot, edited, performed. But it ends in the just vicious decapitation of Conan's mother as Conan is holding her hand and she falls to the ground.

And he watches her fall and he's just sitting there looking at his own hand like, what the fuck just happened? That kid does a really nice job. Also, I gotta say, like seeing a black actor, seeing James Earl Jones in this lead role in this movie, and so much of it is about exactly, he's wearing blue contact lenses, but so much of it is about just sort of his gaze and how hypnotic it is. And the fact is, he kind of charms this woman into standing still so he can cut her head off. And you see that later in the movie several times, and it's kind of amazing how beautifully used he is in this film.

And it's really interesting because at this point, we've known James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader, but we haven't really seen an equivalent intensity of physical presence by the actual actor. And to see him deploy both of those powers that he has, this incredible voice, but also his just mesmerizing physical presence and intensity, it's really something to behold.

So after the slaughter of his European super, not European supermodel, his European 1970s sort of Euro trash mom, I don't mean to call her Euro trash, but literally that actor looks like such a stereotype of somebody that was hanging out with Charles and Wallace when they were trying to be more modern in France. I mean, it's kind of, not Charles, George, yeah.

Conan's mom is undeniably hot.

So she gets killed. Conan gets sent to the Wheel of Pain as a young man. He gets strapped to this. Now, Paul, you're a fantasy fan. I bet you forgot more about fantasy than I've ever learned. Was the Wheel of Pain just there to hurt people or was it some kind of a mill? I mean, is it just a freestanding torture device for just the use of tyrants everywhere?

So I'm fascinated by this sequence and I think it is one of the great transitions in cinema. We get Conan and all the kids are sort of chained and led in a caravan to this desolate outpost where this giant horizontal merry-go-round from hell that they basically all have to push, that they're chained to for no apparent reason. It doesn't seem to necessarily be a water drill or like it doesn't serve any function.

It's not grinding coffee.

Yeah, it's not a mill. I mean, you would think that maybe there would be some functional paleolithic engineering purpose to it, but it just seems to exist to keep these prisoners occupied but also fortified in terms of developing their physical prowess. And one by one over time in this great montage, it seems like all the other prisoners chained perish or otherwise vanish and only one remains and we transition to the adult fully grown Conan in the form of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

An incredible introduction to the character. You see him as a kid going in, then you never see his face again. And then the very last thing is the camera is tilting up over one of the posts that you have to push to make the wheel go. And then he looks up and you see his face and you see his shoulders and it's like, well, I guess the wheel is a great workout.

And we see his legs too, first, but we see the kid's legs, and then we transition to these massive walking Arnold legs. It's pure cinema in terms of visual storytelling and it's so elegant and efficient. And I just, I love it.

Everything in this movie up until now and for probably the next 10 minutes, because all you hear is Mako's voiceover, it's a silent movie. I was just gonna say that the thing this also proves is that the Wheel of Pain workout, you don't have to have a separate leg day and a separate arm day. It works the whole body.

Exactly, it's comprehensive. It's really well designed to forge the ultimate warrior that emerges. So then we get this really great kind of sequence of kind of montages or whatever about his training as he is taken from the wheel because they realize, oh, we can maybe put him to better use than just literally walking around in circles for decades.

He's gonna become a gladiator, right? But they don't train him to be a gladiator at first. They throw him into this pit with a really frightening dude with fangs. I mean, I was genuinely like, the one thing during the scene before the training begins, before they actually go like, oh, okay, we can do something with this guy. Let's train him. They throw him in the pit with a tooth guy who's terrifying. And the tooth guy bites his jugular. And Arnold generally looks afraid there, which sounds like personal acting, right? And two, yeah.

Well, there are two really interesting things about it because yeah, it is sort of like, oh, we'll throw him in the deep end without any training or preparation other than the wheel. And let's just see what happens. And we also then get the first sort of dialogue of our hero. And it is unmistakably Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I mean, look, it's...

It's just so great.

It's the most convincing acting he does in the movie, first of all, I mean, because again, ah, you know, like, in context, there is a dude biting his shoulder with, like, fangs.

He's selling it, and he's an actor, and he's, and I just, I don't even know what that is, but those tones are unique in the universe, to one set of vocal chords, and they belong to Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is our vocal introduction to our hero in this film. It's, like, amazing.

It is also amazing to me, though, that, like, again, like, he's huge, and still, like, the movie still makes it credible that he's young, that he's untrained, and that in spite of his great physical health, this is a challenge for him.

And therefore, he earns investment, and then we get sword training, and it's impressive. Like, he's really kind of amazing. With the sword, we get then he's trained and taught literature, which is, like, just hilarious, and reading.

He is bred to the finest stock. And then we get a sequence that I like to call Conan the Thoughtful Rapist, which is where they bring in this very terrified young woman to his cell, and she's naked, and they kind of push her in, and they're all watching, hoping he's gonna, like, you know, have sex with her, and he kind of gives her this blanket, and thoughtfully twists it over her shoulders. What am I looking at here?

He is so dazzlingly problematic, because he is kept in a cage, so he is still a prisoner, and he is being, you know, fed and taught and trained and everything, because it's like, oh, he's gonna be this cash cow, this great gladiator.

Yeah, which is also why they give him literature and poetry.

Not quite sure what that's about, but it's cool, it's great, but it explains then why he can have conversations sort of later, but with this poor woman who is brought in, we presume not willfully, and he shows her unexpected compassion. Yeah, wraps her in this fur and kind of is very gentle with her and kind of brings her over, and you're like, oh, maybe he just wants a friend. Maybe he's just going to be, you know, kind and decent, kind and decent, but then he's like, ah, then it's gentle and it's as tasteful as this thing could be, but it is clearly what's happening is, yeah, then he just sort of.

Yeah, but we want to make sure we like him, so he's a thoughtful stud of, yeah, anyway, let's move away from this, because I feel like two middle-aged white men is talking about this shit. Every time we get into a movie, like where there's a scene like this, I'm like, oh, we're going to say the wrong thing.

It's very uncomfortable.

It's horrible, but weirdly, you know, in a movie that later will have a shockingly powerful main female character.

Yes.

So then he's sent to the East where he is taught by the shamelessly orientalist masters and another problematic, semi-problematic, I don't know, because also like Mako and Subutai are.

Yeah, it's a very mixed bag in terms of representation.

Yeah.

But I do think that on balance, the fact that we then get Subutai and the wizard, Mako, it's pretty remarkable to have such vibrant Asian characters in a genre film.

The four major characters in this movie are Conan, right?

Yep.

Then I would say Valeria, right? Who's Andal Bergman, who is every bit is equal. So one woman, then you have Mako the wizard, a Japanese man, then you have Jerry Lopez playing Subutai. So he's Hispanic and James Earl Jones is the villain. So for as problematic as so much of this movie is, it's interesting how much of the casting is diverse. It's kind of amazing in its own way.

It is astonishingly diverse for a 1982 film.

And I want to go on record as John Milius doesn't get nearly the kind of guff for doing this that we do on The Witcher for casting diversely. So I just want to put that out there.

Very important point to be made. But then finally, we get to the iconic and first real dialogue that Arnold has.

Yes, yes. He is sitting at a banquet with his Asian masters. And would you like to tee this up, please?

Well, he has posed a deep philosophical question.

Conan, what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

I don't know, like a bowl of soup is good too. That seems a little extreme. I mean, have I just lowered my priorities and my expectations, Paul, that I'm like, super penis? I don't know, like that sounds-

Yeah, I mean, give me a good split pea soup.

Yeah, right, okay.

Yes, there's-

And the lamentation of the women.

There's no hiding the misogyny in this world of this film and the setting. You know, thankfully we'll soon be punctured by the appearance of Valeria.

It's interesting because it is like, this is an unapologetically, sort of an unapologetically, like violent, bellicose, warmongering movie that believes might makes right, steel is steel above all things. And it is very much about those sort of very high, well, I mean, the series called The Hyborian Era in the Robert E. Howard canon. It's very much about that killer be killed ethos. And almost to the point where it passes, it's not really nihilistic because it's literally right makes right. I mean, it has a very different philosophy.

Yeah, true. And a sort of unambiguously toxic one, certainly by today's standards. And it's interesting looking back on it in the 80s, where this was very celebratory. And this quote became incredibly iconic and repeated. And it is so well scripted and delivered. And what a great introduction for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor, to get his first line of dialogue be that. It's pretty remarkable.

This line might have been written by the same person who wrote The Greed is Good monologue. I'm pretty certain that when Oliver Stone wrote this, he might not have meant it without irony.

Exactly.

Much like The Greed is Good monologue.

Yes.

But the director might have had other ideas.

I think that that's a lot of what this film is, is that how much of it is to be taken seriously versus how much of it is to be taken ironically, and how much of it is a cautionary tale versus an aspirational tale. And that's part of the messy complexity of it.

I think Milius won with the finding it aspirational thing, but I'm just going to... So there's a scene here where Conan is working out with a samurai sword.

Yes.

And then later in the movie, we see him doing the same, and these are sort of his signature moves where he's trolling the sword around. It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

But my understanding is that, I think this was in Starlog magazine back in 82, that Schwarzenegger had to actually stop working out for a couple of weeks because his muscles were so big. I mean, this was early in his career. He was still bodybuilding.

Uh-huh.

That he couldn't actually hold the sword behind his back the way that he does in the movie because of the size of his biceps. Which I find, wow. I mean, that's kind of, you know, wow.

I think he lost 40 pounds.

He lost 40 pounds to be in this movie?

I assume all of muscle, yeah.

Yeah, he had to be less bulky and more lean, relatively speaking, to be able to do the physicality and the fight choreography.

Yeah, the other really interesting thing about the sequence is that, as he's a gladiator and he's learning all this stuff and all that, Mako's voiceover tells us that this is how Conan, by killing a bunch of people in the Arabian, that's how he found his sense of worth.

Yeah, yeah.

Sort of in a Darwinian hellscape, sort of, yeah. That's an interesting twist that then happens and I can only surmise that it's out of respect for the fact that he answered the question correctly to the master satisfaction is that he is then freed, kind of in the middle of the night or something. He is let loose with no real other explanation or warning. It's a little out of the blue. Yes. But yet he is then set upon by dogs because it doesn't seem like everyone wanted him free and he is chased and then finds a tomb.

Yes.

Yes. This is one of these great fantasy sets and we're really getting into hardcore kind of Dungeons and Dragons kind of stuff here.

Literally, he does the perception check.

Yeah.

The dogs are chasing and he runs onto the structure and he falls through the roof.

Yeah.

Climbs onto the roof and he falls through.

It's a structure of rocks and stones. It's like this weird kind of assembly of boulders and stuff. He climbs on top to get away from the dogs. He very clumsily falls through and utters similar vocalizations as he did in the gladiator. Milius takes his time to build some suspense and slowly reveal what Conan has found and as he's exploring it. At the opposite end, sitting on a throne is a among their other skeletons and in this tomb, but there is a there is this majestic skeletal figure on a throne, still with some armor and with his palm holding a sword. And Conan regards him thusly. Which I just love, so what we didn't get in the beginning is that his father is telling him that their god is Crom. So here's a moment where Conan believes he is somewhat coming face to face with Crom.

Yes, and Crom, unlike the gods of the sky, Crom is a god of steel and iron, so he's from the ground. And also one of the things the father says is the riddle of steel, and that nobody knows the riddle of steel, and that presumably the theme of the movie is Conan is figuring out the riddle of steel, which is, I'm not sure if it's solved. I mean, other than that, it really is efficient at killing a lot of people and maiming and bludgeoning quite well. Believing he's seen Crom, the god of steel, he takes the sword and the armor, and he sort of becomes Conan the Barbarian, right?

Yeah, and it is the Conan version of the Arthurial Excalibur legend, of him meeting and finding his sword, or his sword finding him. And it is one of the most beautifully designed swords in all of cinema, the Atlantean sword. It's just gorgeous.

And I want to say, like you brought up Ron Cobb, and Ron Cobb is one of my design idols. And he had his hand in Star Wars, he had his hand in Back to the Future, he had his hand in Aliens, in Alien. He kind of is the father in a weird way of the junkie space look that Star Wars popularized. And then when you see an alien, how that ship is sort of like a giant truck in space. It's like, in fact, Cobb then designed a low budget movie later for Stuart Gordon named Space Truckers, which is a movie that I actually adore. Alien was literally about Space Truckers. And I feel like he is, as much as he is revered, he designed the time traveling DeLorean. He's somebody whose work has never quite gotten the recognition. You've got like Ralph McCrory and Sid Meade.

Ken Adam from the Bond films.

Yes, from the Bond movies. But I feel like Ron Cobb has never quite gotten his due. So I'm giving it to him right now.

I think it's metaphysically impossible for him to get too much due. Because, yeah, this incredible visionary artist and with just a sprawling influence. And to your point, in this tomb, we don't see a gleaming beautiful sword. We see an ancient artifact that is dusted over, covered in cobwebs and maybe some rust. But Conan sees through all that and sees the steel underneath all the centuries of whatever's accrued on it. And he takes the sword and he starts banging it like on an anvil to shake it free of all this crap that's on it. And as he's doing that, the skeleton on the throne collapses. It's just this perfectly beautiful kind of symbolic moment as Conan then takes the mantle of whoever that mysterious figure was. It's never explained. That's one thing I love about this movie is the confidence to say, we don't have to explain everything about this world. We don't have to explain the backstory. You just kind of are thrown in and we're just gonna trust the audience to go with it and accept things as they're presented.

It is a movie that's significantly more languid than you remember. And it's also a movie that lives in this world a lot longer than you remember. There's a lot of sort of travelogue kind of stuff in it here. And I'm not saying it's bad or good. It's one of those things where, in a way that you don't in a modern movie, you breathe and live in this world a lot more. The other thing is, you know, actually let's, Conan gets out of this too. Cause I want to get to the part where him and Subatai sort of like do their little running montage when they get to see the Hi-Borian.

Yeah, but we gotta do the witch first.

Not before Conan. Okay, so here's the thing. This is a dude whose only experience of women has been, you know, being the thoughtful rapist. And he's walking around this Hi-Borian wasteland. And the first person he meets just turns out to be some sort of a witch, a succubus. You know, he's walking around. She ushers, she says like, hey, come on in, I got soup. You know, and then the next thing you know, they're having sex.

Never underestimate the power of soup.

By the way, soup is a running thing in this movie. I wanna add.

It is. It is. There is some serious soup way off in the third act.

You think this is a pro soup movie, but at the end you find out this is the most anti-soup movie ever made. We'll get into that in a second. But so of course, because this is Conan the Barbarian, he winds up having sex with this woman. And she is prophesying about how he is a man of great strength, a conqueror, one who would crush the snakes of the earth, right?

And who will become king by his own hand. Yes.

The crown of Aquilonia will rest on his troubled brow.

Yes.

So then she grows fangs. She tries to bite him in the same spot as the guy from the gladiatorial arena, which I have issues with.

As they're having pretty explicit sex. It's worth noting.

But here's the thing. And I wouldn't bring this up because Paul, men of our generation drifted toward fantasy for one reason and one reason alone. And that reason is boobs. It was one place where horny teenagers could see bosoms and buttocks perhaps with near impunity. You know, like, oh, well, yeah, dad, but I'm reading. I'm reading Michael Moorcock, but you know, but I'm reading dad, you know. But what shocked me about it is that I remember this movie from 1982. Like I didn't get to see it in the multiplex because my parents thought I was too young to let me go. I saw it in cable later. I thought this movie was the most like sex ever. And then I watched the scene now and yes, it is fairly explicit, but it's also seems really tame. And I don't know if it's just because of pornography on the internet being so widespread that what you're used to seeing now, but my God, like I'm just saying access to nudity was really restricted in our time. And this movie demonstrates that if this was the pinnacle of it, we really were living in a much tamer era.

Yes, well for the time and in the context of the film, because that prior sequence, the breeding sequence, that pretty much happens off camera. We cut away before things really get going. It's just strongly implied. But in this scene, there is no subtlety. There is just, they are getting it on. And then it gets super freaky really fast in an amazing way. And it seems almost designed as a cautionary tale for teens. About the lookout, because things could go sideways in a scary way where there's a witch who's going to turn into a monster and try to eat you. And then Conan's instinctual solution is to fling her off of him into the fireplace.

Like you do. I mean, look, anytime I've been attacked by a succubus, who's offered me soup, I think the moral is don't take soup. It's not strangers with candy, it's strangers with soup. But again, like even though later on we see Conan having sex with Valeria and that becomes a very sex positive sort of thing until she is, of course, sacrificed for his story, it's really interesting because it is so, again, the sex is always so barbaric and kind of punitive in most of the cinema in the 1980s, you know? Like not a lot of sex positivity. So he runs off and then as he's going to the country, he meets a man who's been chained by Thulsa Dooms' thugs to be eaten by wolves. The guy asks Conan for food. They have a, well, why would I give you food? And he finally convinced him. This man turns out to be Subutai, who is in every great Dungeons and Dragons party, there is a thief, there is a mage, there's a paladin, and there is a tank.

And he's great. He is funny, he is charming, and it is such a welcome diversion, kind of out of the blue in this film. It's like, oh, suddenly, Conan has a friend. He has a sidekick. And they bond over a campfire, talking about their respective gods, and having a...

Well, my god is this guy, my god is this guy. Well, Crom is this, and Crom can beat up your god. No, the sky gods can beat...

It's a great scene.

It's this great, very amusing theological debate that they have. And if only our world had as good natured debates about faith and religion, then they basically go frolicking across the plains together. Not quite rocky three beach frolicking, but it's beautiful. It's like, it's, oh, it's this beautiful male bonding and friendship, and they're just having a wonderful time in each other's company.

I call this the run forest run part of the movie, because normally when people are traveling across vast plains, they're walking.

Yeah.

But they just, they jog together at a bouncy pace.

Yeah, they are just leaf bounding across the plains.

This is one of those travelogue parts of this movie, where like, you know, they go to a couple of cities that have nothing to do with the plot. Conan punches a camel.

Yes. Well, I was gonna get to that. So they come upon our first real city, and Sumitai declares, civilization, ancient and wicked. I just think is great. And we have this wonderful travelogue, and almost feels like a travel channel show of following the two of them. It really does. Through this ancient parallel universe medieval-ish city that is fully richly populated and decorated and everything. And there are lots of little vignettes and bits. Conan has a great line about, does it always smell like this? How does the wind get in here? There's this, and it culminates in them getting drunk and Conan punching a camel, knocking it out.

Here's the thing. And I also want to point this out because there's also a lot of anti-ruminant sentiment in this film, you know?

Yes.

And for example, like this sequence begins with Conan sees an alpaca.

He's excited.

Apparently he's never seen an alpaca because this is the hybrid. And he is really, he finds the alpaca funny. He's laughing at the alpaca. And then the camel kind of gets in his face and he punches the camel. Mocking alpacas is not what I thought I was going to get from Conan the Barbarian.

This sequence is so wild and it is funny. And the thing that's so striking to me is that this may be the moment that the movies discovered that Arnold Schwarzenegger can be brilliantly funny, if allowed to be. And God bless Milius for letting these scenes unfold and just, because again, they have nothing to do with the plot, nothing to do with the story. It is just about hanging out with these characters, kind of getting to know them a little better and having fun with them. And it is just so charming. And my God, Basil Polidorus' score is just, continues to just be soaring and lush. And it's just great. You just want to bask in this. It's a wonderful stretch of the film.

This is very much kind of the part of the Dungeons and Dragons adventure where you're in the pub.

Yeah.

You know, and you get in a fight with somebody and you're trying to get information, but you don't quite know what the story is for the module yet. So it's very much like that. But then the story is delivered to us on a silver platter in the form of Valeria, who is a thief. And what we find out is that the city, like many cities in this part of the world have temples of the snake, which Conan immediately, that pings him back into the story.

Or looking tower of the serpent. You know, it kind of goes back. Yeah.

Paul, why would anybody say snake when the word serpent is available? It's one of the great mysteries of my life. I'm like, you could just say serpent. And people say, I just said snake. Even snake pliskin. Like honestly, you should have been serpent pliskin. So much better. Okay, maybe not.

And so they get it in their head, Subatai and Conan is like, oh, there's this jewel in this tower. We could go steal it. Like that's an idea. That's something we could do. And it's just classic D&D quest. And then with wonderful efficiency, they just happen upon to meet our next character, the next member of our D&D party in a perfectly crafted three-way exchange that has her join them. And it's so great.

Neither are you. You're thieves, like yourself. Come to climb the tower.

You don't even have a rope. Two fools who laugh at death.

Do you know what horrors lie beyond that wall?

Then you go first.

Harry, come on. And she is smarter than they are? She's kinda tougher than they are, by the way. And wow, I just, you know what? I gotta tell ya, Sandal Bergman, who plays this character, is just wonderful as his character. She is, she's a dancer. She actually, her previous, the thing I think she did previously to this that I was most well known for was, there's a segment in the movie, All That Jazz, where Roy Scheider's character, who's Bob Fosse, presents this musical number that starts as a very happy musical number, that turns into the most darkly sexual, just horrible, but very sexual thing. And she's one of the dancers in that. She does a great job playing this character. There's not, you know, her capacity as an actor is, I mean, she's great in this movie as this character. I've not seen her in much of anything else. But her physicality is so great, because she is a very tall, very, she looks like a Viking shieldmaiden. She's gorgeous. I wrote later, nobody, nobody can crawl and sort of do the skulking, thieving around the way that she is an amazing character and an incredibly strong female character. And one that I think might actually have a stronger arc in this movie than Conan.

Yes, she is one of the great gifts of this film. And it is so unexpected at this point in the film. I mean, we're almost, I don't know, 45 minutes or something in, and she is really one of the big pieces of the puzzle left to add. And the entire dynamic of the movie changes as soon as she is introduced. She has a different energy and a vitality, but you completely buy her as being part of this world and of being able to stand toe to toe with all the men in this world. Totally. But not at the expense of her femininity.

Not at all. It's interesting because all the other female characters in them are victims. Yes. They're either rape victims or they've been kidnapped or whatever.

Damsels.

Yeah. Up until this point, the movie has not exactly been propulsive.

No.

We literally stopped for five minutes to watch Jerry Lopez and Arnold Schwarzenegger run around the meadows. Conan has not had a drive. Every once in a while, he stops and goes snakes all day.

Yeah.

But he's just sort of blundering around the Hyborian era. And every once in a while, he's just snake, sigil and ass about it. So now we literally have a character coming in and says, here's the Tower of the Serpent. I'm robbing it. Come with me. I'm delivering the plot of the movie to you on a platter. Let's go. And they go into the Tower of the Serpent where it just so happens that the basis from Spinal Tap, when we saw the opening thing, is leading a human sacrifice.

Yes. That's what you do. Yeah. We get a heist sequence. And it's great.

It is so satisfying.

And it's like, oh yeah, okay, here we go. Full on D&D.

But unlike the great type movies like Top Copy or Ocean's Eleven, they get attacked by a giant snake once they enter the vault, which is very different from Ocean's Eleven. In Ocean's Eleven, the worst thing we got to figure is Andy Garcia. Here we have a giant animatronic snake that I always remember as being one of the great animatronic creatures of all time. And I was watching it with my wife, who had never seen this movie before. And I'm like, isn't that a great snake? And she goes, I mean, it looks like a puppet. And I'm like, oh, shut up. I think the snake is great, but also I realize watching it now, how much they're editing around the snake's lack of motion, which is sort of interesting too.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's great to see that, oh, the tower of the serpent is not metaphorical. There's a giant freaking snake there in the base, guarding this jewel. This whole sequence, I just think, is so well done on every, every level. It's really satisfying and they succeed. They kill the snake, they steal the jewel, they all make it out and they go out on the town.

And just in case you thought the plot was kicking in, there's a five to 10 minute sequence of them getting drunk and fucking with their new found wealth. They literally just get drunk and they fuck a lot. That's a whole sequence there. I mean, I don't have anything to say about that. They spend their money. They're kind of like Ray Stevenson in TV show Rome. They literally just make money. They got nothing to do. They just go get drunk and fuck. I mean, right?

Yeah. They almost seem surprised at their success. And it's kind of like you could end the movie there like they won. They're set and Conan and Valeria have bonded through this adventure and they seem to fall in love. They have a very, as you've mentioned, very sex positive love scene and it's great. But you know, it's a bit of a cautionary tale about letting it go to their heads. Because? As Mako intones so eloquently.

But you know, success can test one's mettle as surely as the strongest adversary.

And that block here at the end is Conan's head plopping into his bowl of soup. Again, soup. Soup.

Soup will fuck you. And just before he can drown in the soup, though, the plot arrives in the form of guards who take Conan and Valeria and, and not Subatai, actually, because he's somewhere else.

Yeah, they catch him later.

To see King Osric played by Max Von Sydow, who literally just has one scene and he just, but there's no scenery left after the scene. It's kind of, that's why he probably can only be in one scene because he ate all the scenery.

I love this. So we're about, not quite halfway through the film and we finally really get the quest. I mean, other than Conan's formative quest for revenge that really kind of emerges once he realizes that's possible through the classic D&D quest that they are assigned by King Osric, whose daughter has been seduced by Thulsa Doom to join his cult. And, I mean, my God, every word out of Max Von Sydow's mouth is gold. But here is a bit of it as he expresses thusly.

There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

I find that, I mean, first of all, an amazing monologue, but also a shockingly humane sentiment for a movie of this type, isn't it?

Yes, it is in the starkest contrast to the worldview that's been espoused up until now. And it's so beautiful. I mean, this is a great movie. I think at this point, there's no denying this is a great fucking movie.

Look, I honestly like my feelings are so mixed because I agree with you. And yet, you know, like, I just find so much of the worldview of the movie so difficult to process.

Oh, yeah.

But I got to tell you, like, the thing that I like best about this movie right now is that they so basically Osric gives them bowls of rubies and Conan and Valeria and Subatai lap at them like dogs. Like, you know, you still see that these characters, though tough and big and mean, are there's something childlike about them. They're not educated people. They're warriors. Yeah, they've been abused. But what's interesting is that then Valeria and Subatai decide not to take the mission. They say the Stulsa Doom dude is bad news. He's taking over cities all over the place. We've got bowls of rubies. Let's fucking go. And she's literally like, hey, let's start a farm. Let's have alpacas and shit. Let's make soup.

Let's have a life.

And Conan is so hell bent on revenge that he goes at it alone and that never works out for anybody. A really interesting thing about this movie too is that in a way that a movie about a barbarian and a movie that is so monotheistic in its lead character, it really espouses the virtues of teamwork in a very touching way.

Yeah, absolutely. And it just gets better and better in that regard. But yeah, so Conan then goes on his own, which is a little heartbreaking.

But that heartbreak is ameliorated by a five minutes of tedious shoe leather, where he literally travels the country in a montage that goes on for fucking ever a silent montage. He's talking to people about snakes and he goes, snakes and they go, oh, that way. And then snakes, oh, that way.

Yeah. Because one thing we didn't mention in the Temple of Serpent or whatever, he finds the sigil that he saw carried by Thulsa Doom in the origin story as a child, and he hasn't seen it since, but he sees it there. So he realizes, oh, this is one and the same, they're connected, and it opens the door to a path for revenge that he feels is now possible. So he goes, again, another travelogue into the frontier, he sees the children of Doom who we're told, who are basically these cult members of Thulsa Doom. So he's trying to figure out, okay, how am I going to get into that and follow that? That seed is sort of planted. But there's one big piece of the puzzle, one member of our D&D party who we have not yet, has not yet joined us that he needs to meet. And that is our wizard, who we have heard in voiceover, but we have not yet met. And now we finally do.

It was here that I met my master, it was no accident.

And again, another great actor with great monologues and incredible presence and having Arnold Schwarzenegger bolstered by the likes of Mako and James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow. Like, that's so smart. And Mako now joins the fray with Conan and helps point him to where he needs to go and how he needs to get there.

Conan finally gets to one of the temples of Tulsa Doom, but he doesn't know how he's going to get in. So he of course meets the rapey priest, the rapey gay priest, because what would a movie like this be without a slur on gay people? So of course, the one guy he picks to steal his priestly robes is, let's go ahead and hear a little bit of the thinly gay-coded rapey priest, producer Brad.

Where do you think you're going, brother? I'm afraid.

To bear yourself? Why?

You're so big and so well grown.

You should be proud of your body.

How do you expect to reach emptiness without knowing your own body?

Could we talk over there, where the others do not see?

And of course, Conan beats up the gay man and steals his clothing, because that's dude I can't even. Really? Why did it have to be the rapist coded as gay priest? Couldn't it just be a dude? Anyway, okay. Milius.

Yeah. And it is foreshadowed by Conan adopting a very different clandestine persona to infiltrate the pilgrimage, carrying these flowers, and acting very sweetly to all the people he encounters and meets to try to blend in aside from his hulking presence that creates this real, obviously comedically intended dissonance. But yeah, then it has to go here, which is just like, oh, he really had to go there.

But look, it goes bad because Thal'Sadum makes him immediately. He knows he's the Infidel because that's how powerful he is.

But there's an extended sequence where Conan gets pretty far in these priest robes, even though he strikes a very different silhouette than the other priests in these robes, makes it to the mountain where the great temple is, the sort of headquarters of Thal'Sadum, you know, incorporated and is sort of getting closer and closer to infiltrate. Then he hands off the sigil to somebody who apparently, I guess, realizes that probably stolen. Then the henchmen of Thal'Sadum spot him and they capture him and Conan's plan is thwarted.

And the crowd pretty much sets upon him and he gets tortured. And finally we get to see Thal'Sadum. And then after Conan gets the shit beat out of him, Thal'Sadum decides he's going to have a chat with him. He explains his very real grievance against Conan. Shall we hear it, producer Brad, please?

You broke into my house, stole my property, murdered my servants and my pets. And that is what grieves me the most. You killed my snake.

Brother's got a point.

He does. And this scene bookending the origin of their first meeting as Conan was a child. And of course, Thulsa Doom has no memory of that. Because he has slaughtered so many people in his long life. We're told that he may be a thousand years old. But for Conan, it is his most potent, formative memory and experience. And he's come face to face with this guy for the first time. And it is, again, just a feast of dialogue.

Look, Arnold, we love him, but he is so outmatched in the scene that even his big line where he goes, you killed my father, you killed my mother, you stole my sword. Even that's sort of done in a wide shot, because I don't think he can sort of credibly portray that anger, but it's fine, because the scene is so physical. And then Thulsa Doom, honestly, it's a villain thing that I always really like. When Raoul Julia had a similar scene in the film Street Fighter, in which Ming-Na's character tells him, you killed my family, you murdered everybody. And he goes, ah, yes, for you, this was the most important day in your life. For me, it was Tuesday. You know? But Thulsa explains that back then he cared about steel. And this is a huge difference between Conan and Thulsa Doom. Thulsa Doom now believes in the power of the flesh. And I think we have a little bit of a snippet of dialogue to elucidate this.

The strength and power of flesh. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength of your body, the desire in your heart. Such a waste. Contemplate this on the tree of woe.

I love how much Conan fails in this part of the movie because he literally leaves his people behind. He goes on his own and he is outmatched and he gets fucked.

He is punished for his hubris.

Yes, honestly, I find this part of the movie really fascinating because it is so much about a D&D party needs, a tank, a paladin, a wizard, a rogue and a cleric.

And it is a complete contradiction and rejection of Conan's father's lesson in the beginning of the film. That monologue where Conan's father tells him, you can't trust anyone. You can only trust steel. And it turns out, no, you have to trust other people.

You know, like, look, if we want to break down this film a little bit more philosophically, that's very much sort of that tension between that man makes right, you know, the lone king on the throne, all this shit and how you actually survive in the real world. And I feel like that's a tension in this movie. And it's really interesting to see it at play this way.

Yeah.

But Conan gets taken to the Tree of Woe where he is crucified. He damn near dies.

I just have to recognize the beauty of the line which I feel I am probably going to start using more. Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe.

I just want a deliciously perfect line.

I just like it when he says, this is what grieves me.

I mean, just everything. This whole scene is so great. But yeah, it's like, that's not something you want to hear. And again, and then on top of it's like, oh no, no, literally crucify him. Like don't, don't, we're speaking metaphorically about kind of playing this on the tree of oil. We're going to crucify you on the tree of oil and then let vultures start to eat you alive. Puppet vultures.

Yes, puppet vultures, very important part of this movie.

Yes, one of which then Conan proceeds to retaliate against and bite on the neck and chew into submission and spit it onto the ground. It's really great. And it looks like he is done for, but then friendship is magic.

Only you could bring the world of Equestria into the world of Fiboria. I am so impressed. So basically Subutai and Valeria have actually followed him. They found the wizard. Conan is near death. They bring him back. And this leads to one of my favorite scenes in this movie where Valeria implores the wizard to bring Conan back. They paint his body with runes. They mummify him. And basically the wizard says, the spirits in this place demand a high price. Valeria is like, I don't care. I love this man. In contradiction to, again, you can't trust man, not man, not woman, not beast. This you can trust. Guess what? He puts it on the line. And it leads to this really awesome scene where the animated demons are trying to take Conan away. And Conan is tied. He basically has a rope that is tying him. He's sort of like a spit. And the funny thing is, when you see the behind the scenes on this movie, it was literally just two dudes pulling on the ropes to lift his body up and down. But when you see it done with the smoke and the fire and it seems to look pretty primitive by today's standards, but the way that Valeria like literally leaps on his body and she's fighting off these animated demons that are to me quite scary actually. I like how stylized it looks. And you see again, Sandalbert runs incredible physicality and she's literally stabbing at the demons with her knife and she basically protects her love from these monsters. It's amazing.

It is great mythic storytelling. It's a beautiful scene and one of just pure unadulterated devotion that she has and that she doesn't even know the price she's going to pay. She knows it's going to be high and she has said that doesn't matter. I will pay the price to save this man who I love. It's so evocative and yet primitive in execution, but potent in its symbolic and mythic power and it's really cool.

Look, I continue, and this is a conversation we're going to get to a lot and we've gone through a lot, but I continue to find it heartbreaking that a lot of modern audiences have difficulty looking at these older films and appreciating the VFX work because CGI VFX work is so realistic and so plentiful, you know, but I just think the sequence is really well executed and I love the animation in it.

Yeah, and those are hand-painted cell, frame by frame, spectral demons that composite it, and it's a lost art. It's really freaking cool.

In a great montage, not unlike a Rocky movie, Conan rehabilitates himself, and they come up with a plan that instead of approaching Thulsa Doom as warriors, they're going to approach him as thieves, and they're going to sneak into his palace and steal back Osric's daughter, who by the way, looks a little bit like Chloe from 24, which if you just look at the movie that way, very different movie.

There's sort of, not a cougar, but there's a leopard in there too, so there's another potential connection. Yeah, and they have this great sequence of applying their kind of camouflage war paint as they're preparing to infiltrate the mountain.

So iconic, and producer Brad had mentioned that had we seen this kind of suiting up montage previously in cinema.

The lock and load montage.

Yeah, the lock and load montage. It is a good old fashioned lock and load montage. Actually Apocalypse Now kind of has one. This actually feels evocative of Apocalypse Now when Willard is putting on the face paint, which Milius is credited with. I mean, Copel obviously rewrote it over three years in the Philippines while he was torturing his family and his crew. It almost feels like Milius is taking that back for himself, and the black and white war paint these people are wearing is incredibly iconic.

It's so cool. Just the graphic design.

But the lock and load part when they're snapping their swords in the scabbards and the editing cuts rhythmically. I don't think I can remember anything before this like that. This may be the first. I know Rambo 2, Cobra, I think Commando has it, but those are all later.

I'm not sure that I can put it to your bad, yeah. It is in every way iconic, I would say. Leading to the greatest sequence in this film, which is the kitchen and the orgy, which is also the greatest Basil Polador's cue ever.

Yeah, and can I just set the table? As we get in here, so they're going to infiltrate this mountain. It's the ultimate fortress of this evil snake cult. What nightmarish horrors are they going to find inside? They get in and they find an orgy. They find a subatai says, this is paradise.

Well, except that the people in the orgy are being fed with soup, and they have to creep to the kitchen, which has the kind of music, which is phenomenal. I wanted to play whenever I walk anywhere. They're making soup out of people.

I just have to say chunky style.

They're not flaying the skin off the bones and making it palatable. Whole body parts are fed into the soup. There's a great scene as they go into the orgy, which again, shockingly tamed by today's standards. But back then, that was like, hey, we're watching porno. So there's actually a scene where these masked, twisted men with giant muscles, but their faces are all maimed and they wear leather masks and they bring the soup in. This one woman from the orgy picks it up and she takes out her bowl and goes, ooh, a hand. And then she bites the finger off. It's amazing. The soup is also green.

And not split pea green. It's toxic waste kind of weird. Kind of weird.

Like a reanimator green, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a very strange, plasticky, bizarro chemical green.

And the best thing in the orgy for me, and again, it's a sequence that is so primitive by today's standards, but it's Thulsa Doom and Osric's daughter are watching the orgy and Thulsa Doom gets into a kind of orgasmic piece. Yeah. And then in a set of jump cuts, you go closer to his eyes until the last cut, because his eyes is out of a snake and then his face starts to expand a little bit. And then they cut and Thulsa Doom has turned into a snake.

It's so freaky.

I love it. And the snake looks just enough like, I don't know how you make a snake look like James Earl Jones, but they kind of pull it off. It's weird because you're like, that's a snake, but it kind of looks like the dude, but it's not. And he's a snake and no one's noticing this, which is fine because he's kind of a living God. And then when the shit hits the fan and Valeria crawling around in her beautifully erotic Broadway dancer, not ballet, like Bob Fosse kind of physical modern dance kind of crawls and sets the curtains on fire and the shit goes on and they start slashing at people. All the best. Oh my God. Like just nobody will ever crawl through a floor and put a candle against a diaphanous curtain the way Sandor Bergman does in this movie.

And then we get this fantastic fight sequence with the trio of our team, the fighters, going to town to kind of rescue, but really abduct the princess who is Thulsa Doom's acolyte.

And at the climax of this scene, Conan also has a little bit of a scuffle with the two men who are Thulsa's sidekicks, the bassist and the lead singer for Spinal Tap. Yes. He actually looks like what Thor would really look like. He's kind of a little bit fatter. He's sort of... Thor in reality would not look as good as Chris Hemsworth. He'd be a little bit tougher than that. The fight scene ends with Conan upending the soup tureen, which is a giant concrete piece, basically washing away his enemies with people soup, as the place blazes on fire, and as they escape, Phalsa Doom basically has a snake who doubles as an arrow that is a heat-seeking missile.

You thought he was mad when they killed his snake.

Infidel defilers. They should all drown in lakes of blood. Now they will know why they are afraid of the dark. Now they will learn why they fear the night.

And then he takes out a snake arrow and fires it into the night, as our characters are way, way away from him, and he hits Valeria. And when we get back to the wizard's compound, she dies.

Can you take a step back? When you say snake arrow, you mean he takes out a snake that he straightens into an arrow. It's a live snake.

Yes. And turns it into an arrow and fires the snake as an arrow into her.

As he says, Seek. Seek. And actually, in that standby lights camera action, one of the things they showed was how the snake actually had a little button. And when you push the button, the snake went stiff. So it was actually, they had a prop where they would actually stiffen up like that, which I thought was phenomenal.

But yeah, but she dies in Conan's arms.

And Conan gives her a hero's burial. She cannot be brought back. The spirits are tapped. And he puts her body in a pyre, burns it like a hero. And of course, Osric's daughter lets us know that Valsadum's men are coming. They've seen the fire.

And an important point, Subutai, who takes the torch to Conan from Mako, who first thinks that fire will not burn up on that hill because of the wind. The gods will not let fire burn there, but it does for Valerius' funeral pyre. And Subutai returns weepy. And Mako asks him this.

Why do you cry? He is Conan. To marry. He won't cry. So I cry for him.

The ultimate expression of man love is, I cry for my man because he cannot cry for himself.

It's not quite up there with, I can't carry the ring, but I can carry you. But it's like, this is depth of male friendship and bonding.

It's not quite there with Ace Hunter and his fallen friend either, but you know, and Henry Silva, but it's close. There's a certain homoeroticism to this movie, which is really interesting because manly men can love each other, but of course, if you're a fake, gate-coded character, you get punched in the nuts. So it's very interesting how that works out. I approve of none of it.

Yeah, but in another act of symbolism, Conan then rips off his necklace, which is very similar, looks like the wheel that he was chained to.

I always thought the necklace was the wheel of pain that was basically given to him when he was released, and that has sort of become kind of a token of him always being a slave, you know? And I think it's very symbolic than what happens here.

Yeah, and so he rips that necklace off that he's carried, this sort of totem and symbol, and he replaces it with the stolen serpent jewel that he and Valeria and Subatai stole, and that he had gifted to Valeria as a necklace that she had worn, and now he is going to wear that necklace himself, which is pretty beautiful. And then they prepare for battle, for the siege, and lay all sorts of insidiously devious traps. And this is just so geeky and cool and kind of stupid, but it's just cool. Yeah.

You know, Thulsa Doom is going to come get them. He's seen their fires. He's coming with his men. And, you know, he's got the entirety of Spinal Tap, and Iron Maiden and Judas Priest just at the ready. Three heavy metal bands are coming for our heroes. They kind of trip out the place with, like, spikes and punji sticks and all that. And then, you know, Conan, as the bad guys are thundering hooves, they're coming across the land for them. There's a montage. They keep cutting back and forth between Conan and the thundering hooves.

They're vastly outnumbered.

Yes, vastly. But Conan, for the first time... Well, I think... Shall we hear what Conan has to say? Because I think it's very important.

He has a moment of quiet contemplation.

Crom, I have never prayed you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought or why we died. No, all that matters is that two stood against many.

Barbar pleases you, Crom. So grant me one request.

And if you do not listen, then to hell with you.

Then to hell with you.

But here's the thing. And Paul, we're both, I'm as excited about this monologue as you are, but I got to point out. So here's my philosophical difference with this movie, okay? Again, it's this might makes right, I won't back down kind of bullshit, right? And I get it. In this case, Conan is right, right? But it's articulated as a kind of like what matters is that we held our ground, right? Now here's the thing, you know, when I think of that, I think of that Tom Petty song, I won't back down, right? Sure. You know, no, I won't back down. Okay, so here's what I think. What if you're demonstrably wrong? Like there's no shame in backing, like I, in this case, but it seems to me that the philosophy of this movie is saying is like never back down, even if it's to us how many, dah, and it's like, okay, Conan is the hero of this movie and they kill this girlfriend and all that, but dudes, this is not a life philosophy that a few stood against many and you got to do that no matter what, and it doesn't matter the, it actually matters what you're screaming for here, doesn't it? I mean, it's okay, am I wrong?

So first of all, I think that that monologue is great.

Yes, it is.

Here's the thing that I, there's so many things I love about it. It's so perfectly written for the character. It is surprisingly well delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, almost startlingly so, as like, oh, wow, he can act. Like this is a performance. This is a really great delivery. And the whole movie in a way has been building this because we have been getting monologue after monologue by these incredibly great actors with these epically grand voices of Mako and James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow, whatever. And finally, Arnold has this moment where he gets his little short monologue and he lands it. He sticks the land and he nails it.

He nails it, he nails it.

That, if anything, I think is the greatest triumph, the victory in this movie that he gets to say this prayer and it is this twisted prayer to his weird God.

His weird libertarian, I won't back down, no matter what, even if I'm wrong God, yes, exactly.

I think it's just so delightful.

I feel like the true arc in this movie is Arnold's acting from Crump the enemies!

No, no, no, his acting from, like literally, that we go from that to this.

Yes, no, you're right.

That, the arc of Arnold the actor against the backdrop of Conan.

I suddenly realize what this movie really is about.

I mean, this is a majestic moment and I feel like it's underappreciated in it being a critical cinematic fulcrum that at this point Arnold is in full bloom as a star, as an actor who then can go on and do Terminator and all the other things that he's going to do because he stuck this landing in this line, in this scene, in this movie.

I offer no argument. I think you're absolutely right. Now, then we have a battle scene that is epic. Hammer Guy gets faked out. Something he thinks is Conan's helmet and instead triggers a punji cord that fucking impales him in the chest.

I love that. This whole sequence is like all these MacGyver devices and Rube Goldberg sort of traps.

The wizard finally takes a life using a weapon which finally kind of consecrates him as a man in John Milius' view.

Teaming up with Subutai to take a guy down.

And finally, Conan fights the basis from Spinal Tap. And what's really interesting for me in this scene is that what's interesting is, first of all, we have the Deus ex Valeria, which is that the guy gets the drop on Conan. And then Valeria shows up as a ghost, as a shimmering Viking shield maiden.

Valeria becomes Valkyrie.

Yeah, she's literally wearing Sequence. I mean, it's Sequence chainmail.

And Chrome.

And there's a filter so that all of the light flares.

She goes full disco mode.

Oh, it's so beautiful. It's the best.

It's great.

She stops the bassist from spinal tap from killing Conan. And she looks down and says, Do you want to live forever? Which has been her line the whole movie. And when Conan stands up to fight this guy, it's actually it's the only time Basil brings back the theme from Anvil of Chrome. But it's slow. It's like the music goes da. And it's not a graceful battle.

It is.

It is two men just beating at each other.

Yeah, it's brutal.

And Conan finally finally kills the second in command and sees Thulsa Doom flee.

Yes. First of all, this whole sequence, this whole battle sequence is the most brutal and ruthless. It has the most gore and blood and kind of just cruel violence. Yep. Thulsa Doom has kept this distance as he's deployed his squad, thinking that this will be pretty easy. But no, they're all dispatched because of teamwork and Valkyrie. But then as he tries to take a parting shot with another snake arrow to a pleading princess who is chained to a rock in a very Frazetta-esque pose, but Subatai leaps into action, blocks the shot with his shield, saving the princess who is presumably startled to have been betrayed by the object of her devotion, Thulsa Doom, who is willing to just dispatch her and kill her. But yeah, Thulsa Doom flees back to the Mountain Sanctuary Temple and then we get our grand finale.

Conan goes up the steps and he finds Thulsa Doom and he goes up the steps.

The front steps are full.

Confronts him at his altar as he is, declaiming to his followers, and he's got a sword and Thulsa gives that speech of, I made you, I gave you purpose in life by killing your parents. I'm your father, if anybody's your father ever. And he's looking at Conan with those James Earl Jones contact lens blue eyes.

Yeah, he's putting the whammy on him. He's like using his hypno powers on weak minded Conan.

Now, I of course know Conan's not going to fall for it, but damn, they do a pretty good job of kind of selling it, don't they?

They do, they do. And for a moment you think, oh my God, he is going to subjugate Conan to his will, and Conan is going to be his new right hand of doom. But no, no, no, no, no. Conan's thirst for revenge, the memory of the slaughter of his parents, is too powerful a fire that burns in his soul, and Conan dispatches Thulsa Doom with his sword, decapitating him just as Thulsa Doom decapitated his mother as a child.

But what's interesting is he doesn't just decapitate him. He takes his time. Thulsa Doom decapitated his mom with one blow. Conan takes like three, four, but he's like wham, wham, wham. He's a chop of matter.

He takes a few swipes down at the shoulder and stuff and works his way to getting the head off. So yeah, he makes Thulsa Doom suffer to the aghast horror of the entire congregation of the cult that's assembled down the side of the mountain steps, witnessing this.

And then you get an iconic, iconic fantasy pose of holding the head of your decapitated enemy in front of his followers, you know, and he throws it down the steps and the cult realizes, oh, we've been on the wrong horse and it kind of dissolves right there. They all just sort of walk away sadly.

Cool.

Yeah. And walking away gloomily.

Yeah, they're dispatched into...

And then we cut to Conan as an older man sitting on the Iron Throne thinking because he ultimately became a king by his own hand and wore the crown, jeweled crown of Aquilonia on his troubled brow, but that is a story for another time. Promising us a sequel that never came because Conan then, you know, the Lawrence is fucked, Milius is over, and the sequel was Conan the Destroyer, and it was, dare I say, shite?

Yeah. So a couple things. So yeah, Conan has another quiet moment of contemplation. He sets fire to the temple. And then, yeah, we fade out to one of the most iconic images ever committed, which is King Conan on the throne, illuminated by offscreen flame and smoke. And it's this stunningly iconic image, and one of the great unfulfilled promises in film history of the King Conan movie. That Schwarzenegger still wants to make. And then we get a closing title card that inexplicably, this is my one big criticism of the film.

Why is it also the backdrop for the credits? Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Why are we robbed of Mako voiceover narration reading that end title card and closing bookending the legend? Because it's great and I am no Mako, so I'm not going to attempt to read it. But yeah, it promises this future of exploits and adventures and of him becoming a king by his own hand as the witch foretold. But that is another story and we're still waiting for that story.

That is another strident, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-soup tract that never materialized. Hey, producer Brad, how does this movie do?

It opened two weeks before Rocky III. It was number one for two weeks. For the year, it was the number 15 film. Of the films we've seen so far, it ranked ahead of Blade Runner, The Thing, Grease 2 and Megaforce.

And rightfully so.

And in the Schwarzenegger films, it's his 19th highest grossing film.

Wow. I think, Paul, we've talked about The Last Incultural. I mean, this movie is a fantasy touch. There is no fantasy show made or movie made that does not owe a debt to this movie, period. It literally took fantasy from being the realm of, you know, Italian sort of Hercules movies and Biblical epics into its own realm, right? I mean, I don't remember a fantasy movie looking like this ever before this, do you?

No, no. I think that it is this fusion of genres and influences that forges its own subgenre. And that has endured and continues and persists in different permutations. But yeah, its influences, I mean, not quite Blade Runner.

I think within the fantasy genre, you know, what it did was really bring that kind of Frank Frazetta, you know, Boris Vallejo, even the Brothers Hilderbrand were doing this kind of like fantasy art. Like it literally made that part of the visual canon of movies rather than just of, you know, pulp literature.

Right. It took something that was sort of underground, kind of cult art, and it turned it into pop art. It really siphoned it into the mainstream in a way that had never been done. And so for those of us that played D&D and stuff like that, like this was a big deal to see this break out in the way that it did and then, you know, play on and on cable and home video.

I think also because, you know, even though we mock sort of John Milius' kind of like pomposity and his kind of like militarism and all of that, like at the same time, this movie is, takes itself very seriously in a way that gives a certain gravitas to the genre that I don't think it ever had before, you know?

Yeah. And it's not without heart. And sometimes it's misplaced. But I think that there are enough kind of good hearted earnest elements of it that redeem its darker, impulses and messages. But I think, I mean, the other thing, too, is that this made Arnold Schwarzenegger an icon. And there was no Arnold in pop culture to the degree that there was prior to this film. And then after this, then, you know, this then followed up by Terminator, changed cinema forever.

Hey, Sue defined the action hero for our time, which is really interesting and weird. But hey, producer Brad, now, so we got to wrap this up. Producer Brad, what are our choices for next week?

Well, after a couple of weeks of too many choices, or for this weekend, not a choice, next week, there's only one choice. Next week is July 11th, 1982, and the only movie opening is Tron.

Whoa!

Ha ha ha ha! Paul, that's right, my friend.

Bio-digital jazz!

Okay, well, on that note, as you can tell, the nerds are restless. I can't wait to talk about Tron next week, and we will see you at the multiplex.