CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical*

Whenever I've viewed CONAN THE BARBARIAN, I've noted that the film was for the most  part well-written for a barbarian adventure, though one of its standout dialogue-passages—the famed “Conan, what is best in life” passage—has come in for endless mockery. CONAN THE DESTROYER is far more deserving of mockery. However, because the film has no standout lines of dialogue, good or  bad, it doesn’t generally get the “bad movies we love” treatment given to cinematic oddballs like TROLL 2 and the whole Ed Wood oeuvre.

Given that the same producers approved both BARBARIAN and DESTROYER, it’s tempting to suppose that they fundamentally had no understanding of the Conan  franchise, not unlike the relationship of the Salkinds to the Superman franchise. In the third Superman film the Salkinds seemingly did everything they could to reject all the elements that director Richard Donner brought to the table. Similarly, in CONAN THE DESTROYER, producers Pressman and de Laurentis seem to willfully reject John Milius’s Nietzchean warrior in favor of the blandest possible excuse for sword-and-sorcery thrills.

       The film’s utter failure even to deliver decent thrills is even more amazing when one knows that the core ideas for this lumbering bore came from two comics-writers, both at least familiar with the property. One of them, Gerry Conway, didn't set his hand to the sword-and-sorcery genre often—though he did pen a few issues of Marvel's KULL THE CONQUEROR title—but the other story-contributor was Roy Thomas, who was primarily responsible for bringing the whole Robert E. Howard corpus of works into the Marvel Comics domain. Thomas wrote the CONAN comic book for almost ten straight years, so one would think that he and Conway—with whom Thomas occasionally partnered on comics-scripts—would have cobbled together a really good story, whether a direct Howard adaptation or a reshuffling of Howardian motifs, like Milius’s BARBARIAN script. True, the final screenplay is credited to one Stanley Mann, but if he improved in any way on the original story, it was probably in the nature of polishing a turd.

While movie-Conan need not be in any every way a fairhful adaptation of the character from either the prose stories or the comic books, DESTROYER starts off with a pointless mischaracterization, wherein the dour Cimmerian, usually skittish about sorcery in any form, is persuaded to make a Faustian bargain with a sorceress. The film apparently takes place not long after the events of BARBARIAN, for the stoic hero is still mourning for his great love Valeria, killed by Thulsa Doom. Conan has also, for reasons undisclosed, teamed up with a shrimpy guy, one Malak, whose only talent is to provide unfunny comedy relief. The sorceress Taramis (Sarah Douglas) has a bunch of soldiers try to capture Conan and Malak, and Conan fights them off. Taramis then appears, not even bothering with the usual “I had to test your mettle” excuse, and offers her bargain: in exchange for Conan’s services, she’ll bring back Valeria from the dead.  This thin motivation doesn’t even really match up to the characterization of the Milius film, and seems designed to do no more than set the hero on his path as quickly as possible.

Hardly any background is devoted to Taramis or her plans, but she wants Conan to escort her niece, the princess Jehana (Olivia d;Abo), on a quest to steal a fabled magical jewel from a sorcerer. In what seems a loose borrowing from medieval myths of virgins and unicorns, Jehana is the only one who can handle the jewel without ill effects and bring it back to her native city for a special ritual. Little does Jehana know that the ritual calls for the sacrifice of the virgin princess. The jewel will also bring to life the evil dragon-god Dagoth, who presumably will enrich the mortals who revived him with some other Faustian deal. Conan, his dopey buddy, and Jehana are accompanied in their mission by Taramis’s soldier Bombatta (a sullen Wilt Chamberlain), but on the way Conan manages to pick up two more helpers. One is Akiro, a shaman seen in the first movie, and again played by Mako, while the other, female warrior Zula, is represented via the dubious thesping of Grace Jones Even for a sword-and-sorcery film, it’s a pretty motley crew, and the script doesn’t make any effort toward forging any “esprit de corps.” 

The real reason Jehana has to go along, of course, is that she has to fall for the allegedly “handsome” warrior, and he, to some small extent, with her. The raffish group finds its way to the sanctum of the wizard who holds the sacred jewel. The wizard proves to be a minor threat even for a secondary villain, for even when the heroes choose to camp out for the night, the wizard doesn’t choose to attack them in their sleep. He makes things easy for them by simply spiriting away Jehana, for some wizardly purpose of his own—after which the heroes penetrate his sanctum with ridiculous ease. The sorcerer’s only defense is a super-strong demon who manifests out of a hall of mirrors. The demon gives Conan a rough time until the barbarian lucks onto the creature’s weakness: smash his mirrors, and he dies. After that, Conan takes out the sorcerer himself. About the only good about this tedious sequence is the fact that when Thomas and Conway gave their catchpenny conjurer the name “Toth-Amon,” I think they were admitting that he couldn’t be compared with “Thoth-Amon,” the genuinely compelling villain of various Conan stories.

Even after the jewel has been obtained, the script then takes a page from various ‘sword-and-sandal” films by having the heroes get sidetracked several times. In the process Conan finds out that Jehana’s supposed to be sacrificed, so Bombatta betrays his princess by abducting her and taking her back to the city for the ritual. Conan and his loyal followers give chase, infiltrate the city, and invade the throne-room just as the dragon-god is brought to life. Their advent prevents Jehana from being sacrificed. However, evil Taramis—probably not a virgin—is suffers the somewhat phallic fate she intended for her niece, that of being gored on the horn of the dragon-god—for, just like the aforementioned unicorn, Dagoth has a single horn in his skull. Conan, though he hasn’t attempted to steal Jehana’s virginity during the whole film, earns his “destroyer” status by ripping off the god’s symbol of virility, thus vanquishing it. After the god has been banished and the villains defeated, Jehana tries to keep the barbarian with her, but he’s off to his next adventure—which never took place, at least as an actual Conan movie.

The best thing I can say about the film is that in 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger was still in his prime, so he looks great, particularly in his heroic battle against the dragon-god. Everything else, though, is largely a misfire, and, given the production budget involved, it seems a more egregious failure than even direct-to-video fodder like THESCORPION KING 3. Even the most intriguing psychological angle of the original script is botched. It’s a given that, whenever you have an older queen seeking to get rid of a young princess-type, it’s an “age vs. youth” conflict. But this aspect might have been enhanced if the standard release had included an early scene in which Taramis seduced Conan before sending him on his way. Of course, the rest of the film would not have devoted any attention to a competition between aunt and niece over Conan’s prodigious pectorals, but even the sight of the barbarian being tempted by both comely age and burgeoning youth would have added a little spice to the overall tedium.