A Desert Island Movie GIANT-SIZE DOUBLE-FEATURE!!! Conan vs the Beastmaster!

 Welcome, everyone! (like, both of you?) to the next in the Desert Island movies series...

Today, we're gonna talk about a couple movies in a head-to-head double-length double feature of Swords, Sorcery, and... accusations of "stealing" and copy-catting? 

"Alright... which one of you did it?"

At least that's what critics at the time thought. Were they onto something? Or will Crom cast them out of Valhalla and laugh at them?

Let's find out in part 1 of this 2 part deep-dive into two of my favorite fantasy films!

INTRO: WHAT IS THE RIDDLE... OF "STEAL"?

Starting from the top, let's get one thing out of the way: I love both these movies, and anything said about either of them, even in jest, is said with a lot of respect for the artists and craftspeople involved in their creation. They've both given me literal hundreds of hours of joy, and I'm not making this article to roast either of them. They have my eternal respect.

I feel differently about their critics...

As such, I want to kick off by crushing one of the first and most pernicious movie rumors concerning The Beastmaster and Conan the Barbarian: No, Beastmaster did NOT rip-off or cash in on the popularity of Conan the Barbarian. That didn't stop a lot of critics from thinking it did, but that just proves one thing beyond a doubt: many critics have never actually been involved in the production of a film. They have no conception of how long a film takes to script, cast, scout, shoot, cut, score, and distribute. Why do I know this?

Math.

Conan the Barbarian came out on May 14th of 1982.

The Beastmaster came out August 16th... of the exact same year. 

That's less than three months. Hell, it's lucky if you can get a script everyone agrees on done in that time, but a whole film? Especially one that is quite simply as damn GOOD as Beastmaster? 

Forget about it.

Dammit Dar, EDIT FASTER! 

So just like that, BOOM, there goes one myth already. No, these films are not plagiarizing from one or the other, but were actually in production around the same time, totally unaware of each other, and on opposite sides of the world to boot! (Conan was largely filmed on location in Spain, while Beastmaster was bit more locally grown, being shot in Southern California)

But then, WHY, aside from ignorance, did so many think that it had?

Well, that one is a little simpler. 

See, they ARE really similar. Two sword-swingin' epics about muscular men in savage realms seeking revenge on the one who burned their village down? One could be forgiven for thinking someone copied another guy's homework here.

And then add on top of that, they are both trying to evoke the pulp fantasy adventure stories of Robert E. Howard and the peplum  sword-and-sandal films the likes of old Steve Reeves Hercules flicks? That's a VERY specific bag of tropes you're pulling from. And well, in a few short months, these two flicks came out and, buoyed by one another's different breeds of success, led pretty directly to the boom of S&S films in the 80s and into the 90s. 

And obviously, the same way every sci-fi film was trying to be Star Wars for about a decade there, these two set a template that absolutely WAS subsequently copy-catted and plagiarized quite a fair bit. 

So eventually, those initial reviewers crying foul became a cacophony of folks agreeing that it's not just The Beastmaster ripping off Arnold's big success- so are Deathstalker, Ator the Fighting Eagle, Sorceress, Amazon Queen, Conquest, and a few hundred other examples I could care to list off. Hell, rival body-builder Lou Ferrigno's pair of Luigi Cozzi-directed Hercules movies were trying to cash on the fantasy AND sci-fi crazes simultaneously! 

(By the way, I will cover at least the first of those beautifully wacko movies, eventually. And if you want my thoughts on my favorite of those Conan rip-offs The Barbarians take a look here, at our sister blog The B-Movie Express!)

But in the similarities between the two, we can find a lot of differences, and some fun insight into how different artists can approach what is, spiritually and in terms of content, the same tale in myriad ways. So with that, lets dive into our first category:

I: "Let me tell you of the days of High Adventure!" DIRECTORS AND TONE

Let's start by acknowledging that while the films are similar, their directors? 

Definitely are NOT...

For example, this is how John Milius chose to open up his take on Robert E. Howard's Cimmerian barbarian: with a quote from the only guy with a name harder to spell that Schwarzenegger.

"Oooh, somebody's gonna get laid in college..."

The sheer, almost guffaw-inducing, ballsiness of this move lets you know right off the bat: this Film would like, very much, to be Taken Seriously. I remember thinking as much in high school, that this was a serious, thinking man's fantasy film. I realize now that I thought that because a quote from a big, famous philosopher at the beginning of his movie about swords, revenge, and getting laid feels like exactly what a high-schooler might do. Sophmoric gives it too much credit, as it implies that perhaps it got into college.

Not to say this isn't the perfect, if in fact, the ONLY way to open up such a poe-faced and operatic take on the character as this- it totally is. But it also puts the man Milius is into perspective, along with bringing his history as a somewhat controversial figure in Hollywood into relief. See, the guy who directed Conan is also the director of the first two Dirty Harry movies, and if THAT doesn't put into perspective the whole reason that so many weird far-right nutjobs are attracted to the world of Hyboria, maybe this will: Milius is also a former board member of the NRA.

And he looks EXACTLY like you thought he would, doesn't he?

And it goes without saying that the same troubling messages of "might makes right" and "real men don't follow rules, or cry, or fuck it, even TALK if they don't feel like it" that flow through 70s copaganda like Dirty Harry are just as present, if not more so, in John Milius and Oliver Stone's take on Hyboria.

Hm? What's that? Yeah, THAT one...

Oh yes indeed, Oliver Stone wrote the first draft of this movies script. And it was apparently over four hours long and was set in the incredibly distant post-apocalyptic future and featured Conan cutting through wave after wave of wasteland mutants. So with that in mind, know how MUCH of the re-write was Milius putting his own personal brand of machismo and ideas of what being a man even IS into the setting and story. He opens with the Uber-Mensch, sure- but the symbolism doesn't stop there. See, he envisioned a three film epic, each concentrating on different themes. His second and third themes aren't important here, as those films never materialized. But his first theme? Was STRENGTH.

And SWORDS! Y'know, Phallic stuff!
....MEN!

 And as such, it opens with a montage of the forging of a sword, foreshadowing (or forge-shadowing?) how this film will tell the tale of Conan being molded into a barbarian hero, and consequently the Ideal Man. 

It's also accompanied by the rousing, beautiful score by Basil Poledouris; one that has lived on as one of the finest pieces of fantastical film scoring period, right there with more contemporary compositions like Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings score. And that music helps with the tone of the whole picture, selling that term I used earlier but will re-iterate here: OPERATIC. This film shall be Taken Seriously because this is Cinema. It is basically "Wagner: The Motion Picture"!

"KILL DA WABBIIIIIT!!!"

So no matter how closely the film hews to the style of those kind of ridiculous pulp stories of dark wizards, evil cults, giant animals, and the curses of cruel gods, we are asked to take it all Very Seriously. And the music downright demands it.

Which brings us to our other director Don Cascarelli:

Pictured on the right, posing with uh...
I dunno, his uncle or something?

Kidding aside, Don came up through the more independent, home-spun horror scene of the 70's into the 80s, making his everlasting mark on horror cinema when he kicked off the deliriously, delightfully bonkers Phantasm franchise in 1979. And while sure, Milius was ballsy, Don's movies had real big, shiny ones! And they could fly!

 And the difference in the film's openings are stark. To clarify, there are really only two 80s fantasy film intro choices: You either have raiders attacking the village, or you have the young or infant Chosen One being spirited away in the dead of night, and usually getting stowed with some kindly farmer or something. And while Conan starts with raiders, (after all that sweet, sweet sword-forging footage) Beastmaster actually has BOTH...eventually.

With the beginning scenes between a trio of Macbeth-style, prophecy-spewing witches and the scheming High Priest Maax (pronounced 'May-ax' and played with the energy of a turkey vulture by Rip Torn of MIB and Dodgeball fame), Don shows the kind of oddball sense of humor of a horror director undertaking a different genre than usual and doing so with gusto, with his take on Witches being a prime early example: all of them are played by utterly gorgeous, scantily clad swimsuit models... with the most hideous, running wax, dried-apple doll faces to top it off.

Which just goes to show that while it's still a big, grand fantasy adventure- there's a puckish sense of humor and fun to the whole thing largely absent from the deadly serious Conan. (Though the latter does have lighter moments, my favorite being the comic beat provided by Arnold's ability to just face-plant into a bowl of soup with as much conviction as he chops off heads.)

And from beginning to end, this is a fantasy adventure directed by the guy who brought you Phantasm and IT SHOWS...

Same energy in these two pictures.

Witches, prophecies, curses, monsters, and super-powers are all present throughout in a ratio that far outstrips its competition. Though, let's save who truly does what better for the end of this little head-to-head, shall we? 

Next, I want to explore:

II: WHAT'S IN A LOINCLOTH? On the Contrast of Barbarians and Beastmasters

Every story needs a protagonist, of course. But adventure stories like this one have Heroes! So in what ways are Dar the Beastmaster and Conan like?

Oh... Just a couple slabs of  USDA

PRIME

BEEF

Yes, in a move shocking no one, the heroes of these dueling classics of 80s fantasy cinema are both musclebound beefcakes who spend a decent amount of time in loin-cloths. And while one has dark hair, and the other is blonde, that is really... about where our similarities end, if we're being honest.

And even that is not as similar as it sounds, seeing as Conan is played by the legend unto himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, umpteen-time Mr. Olympia, Mr. Universe, debatably the biggest, and un-debatably the most famous body-builder of all time. Of course he's beefy. In 1982, being beefy was what literally paid the bills in the Schwarzenegger house. In point of fact, he actually had to become a bit less beefy before things could properly get going on the film, as his sword trainer noted that his arms were too thick to do everything required of him in the fight choreography. 

(Side-note: there's an amusing parallel here in the modern equivalent of an 80s S&S flick, The Witcher series on Netflix, and poor Henry Cavill being so swole the leather in his armor started to break down in the arms because it was rubbing together too much. Such are the hazards of being a burly boy.)

In comparison, Texas-raised Marc Singer is a tad wiry, though watching him from a modern vantage, there is a distinct similarity between him and the way most Marvel stars are legally required to look, and it's even noted in the director's commentary in the dvd that Marc was ahead of his time with his regimen, doing "ripping before ripping was popular" as he puts it. This gives Marc a very different profile to Arnie, making his Dar a more lean, agile hero- a big cat in juxtaposition to Conan's almost bull-like presence.

But fear not, this whole part of the article isn't about these guys physiques. Just this bit. Because muscles only make the hero on the poster, not in the film itself. As I said, the true comparison stops there. Character wise, they couldn't be more different.

Conan, in the film, is a boy in Cimmeria- a harsh mountainous realm. The son of a blacksmith, he is taught that he must one day learn "the Riddle of Steel" (which one presumes his father knows, being a blacksmith, but isn't gonna just tell him apparently), and the quest for answers in this regard informs his decisions as a character throughout. But before he can get very far at all in this, his village and his people are attacked by vicious raiders, his parents murdered before his eyes and his village burned to the ground, and himself enslaved, taken far from his home, and tied to the Wheel of Pain, where he walks in circles for many years until pushing that big sum-bitch turns him into Arnold.

The Wheel of Pain, common ancestor of all gym equipment!
All THIS can be yours for the low, low price of
your total enslavement.

And from there, his journey takes him across the world of Hyboria- becoming a brutal, pit-fighting gladiator, learning the art of the blade in the East, then finally earning his freedom and setting off on his quest to avenge his people against the folks who set him on this course, hunting high and low for them. He makes boon companions, like Subotai the archer, and Valeria the beautiful warrior and love of his life, plus he learns valuable lessons, like "Never let your guard down on a hook-up" (while nearly getting killed by a shape-shifting demoness) and What is Best in Life, which according to him (and say it with me now) is: 

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women..."

"And pushing da Wheel is good too..."

And all this leaves Dar as, if you will forgive the pun, a very different beast...

"Oh ha-fucking-ha, blogger-boy..."

Dar starts off a bit away from the humbler beginnings of Conan, in that he is royalty (though he spends a majority of the movie being unaware of it). The unborn son of King Zed of Aruk, Dar is fated to kill that guy Maax I mentioned, so Maax decides "Not if I kill you first, ya little fucker!" and tries to get his witches to do it for him after he's banished for life when Zed gets wind of what he's doing.

Using a bit of bizarre, body-horror witchcraft, the witch steals Dar by magically transporting him into the belly of an ox (don't ask me how she got a full-grown farm animal into the royal bedchamber, this movie doesn't have time for such vagaries). 

Spiriting the beast of burden away to the wilderness, she cuts it from the bleating animal, brands a literal baby with the symbol of their brutal god Ahhr, and is about to sacrifice the kid when fate intervenes.A passing farmer happens by and goes into full "What's all this bullshit?" mode and reaches for his piece (a strange hybrid of switch-blade and boomerang referred to in the film as a "kay-pah" that is right up there with the Glaive from Krull in the sheer fuckery of its powers and uses). 

I dare you to stat this in D&D...

Vanquishing the witch and saving the baby, he takes him home with no further questions asked. Just, "Hey, cool- a baby. Mine now."

 The baby grows into a boy, who turns out to have the power to speak with animals, and even bend them to his will in extreme situations (like bear attacks!), and is told by his father to keep this a secret, cuz it would really freak people out...

And eventually, Dar becomes a man, his village is burned to the ground, and who should be in charge of the raiders (in this film referred to as the Junn Horde) but old Beak-Nose himself, Maax!

And from there, you know most of the words to this song by now- he sets out for vengeance, he gains companions, goes on adventures, etc... But where this one stands out is Dar's companions, at first, are all animals: Shirok the hawk, a pair of ferrets named Kodo and Podo, and a black tiger named Rhu.

If you have a problem-
If no one else can help-
And if you can find them,
maybe you can hire-
THE A-TEAM!

Dar eventually makes human friends too, but the film sets him out clearly as an outsider first, which I have always found interesting.

So there you have two very different origins, and as such two very different heroes in the way they go about things.

It's noted with Conan, while he is rolling with Subotai, thief and archer, that the Cimmerian is "too big to be a thief". And he's not wrong as basically any time that subtlety and stealth are called for, Conan pretty monumentally fucks it up- from sneaking into a snake temple to steal a jewel, to infiltrating a Doom cult he basically botches it because he's just so damn big that somebody notices the new wall over there and goes "Where the hell did he come fr-aaaggghhh!!!" and Conan has to fix it with what's called Heavy Stealth, ie: no one can sound the alarm if they're all dead. 

AKA: Now you see me, soon you WON'T...

And in that he's second to none. Whenever he's chopping up bad guys, he's got it in the bag basically every time.

Dar, on the other hand, leans very heavily on his team dynamic- letting his animals distract bad guys while he goes in for the kill, or sometimes leading bad guys to a place where they really can't do anything BUT get killed by a giant tiger. Coupled with his kay-pah and willingness to improvise, it always makes for fun fight scenes.

Plus, when Dar needs to be stealthy? He's basically regular size, so if you put a poncho on him no one goes "Who's the giant in the poncho?" so he comes out ahead a bit there too.

Dar and Conan both have a real clever streak to them as well, using traps and unique abilities to come out on top in situations other characters simply wouldn't. Like, in one of my favorite sequences in Beastmaster, Dar is temporarily blinded by one of the witches, but uses his ability to see through his tiger friend's eyes to overcome it and kill the witch. 

And in the climactic battle of Conan, he and his buddies use their familiarity with a maze of burial mounds against the vastly superior numbers of sorcerer Thulsa Doom's minions, using guerrilla tactics and traps to ensure that two men and a very freaked-out wizard can stand against a small army of killer zealots.

And in presentation there's an interesting comparison to be made as well- Conan, as a character and as presented by John Milius, is very much an aspirational figure- in every shot that frames him as conquering against greater forces, or surviving things that would kill lesser men, even in his fumbles, Conan is presented as the Ultimate Man. And while he's hardly portrayed as utterly invincible (he does get crucified on a tree for a bit, and would have absolutely died without the help of his friends), he does also get over that in record time, ready to swing a sword and rescue princesses again after about a week or two? Maybe? And Arnold is the perfect vessel to deliver this, being so above what most people will ever look like, and channeling the stoic power of Steve Reeves as Hercules in an earlier era of Hollywood mythology. He may not have been able to act much at this point, but there is no denying the reality of Schwarzenegger in his prime being essentially a living special effect in much the same way Ferrigno was in the Incredible Hulk series of the 70s. To paraphrase, one producer of the film was quoted as saying: "If Arnold didn't already exist, we'd have to build him."

And in the same way that Milius presented Harry Callahan as a Real Man/Ultimate Cop, seeming like a throwback to an imagined earlier, more righteous age, so is his Conan framed as almost a commentary on something that we as modern humanity have lost, or are believed to have lost, and should try to regain. A sort of holy idol to the Divine Primitive. Which is another route through which I see those right-wing weirdos I mentioned creeping into Howard fandoms; because such a thing in fiction is a debatable point, but such same viewpoints in politics are some of the ur tenets of fascism.

Pictured: every one of said right-wing nuts
flexing up their typing hand to come
 at me in the comments...

Dar, as presented by a more working class film-maker like Cascarelli, feels more inspirational rather than aspiration. From his more grounded physique to his cool but not flashy superpowers, Dar has a strong Every-man quality that especially shines through in his performance from Singer. Charming, affable, but capable of giving that almost John Wayne, big Texan swagger when the role calls for it, Dar is perfect hybrid of the Western hero of the gunslinger that comes to town to solve a problem, coupled with the wandering swordsman of a Kurosawa flick and a questing knight all in one, while starting as the simple farm boy.... 

In my mind, it is no coincidence that they
cast a guy who looks like the Luke Skywalker
in the first posters for Star Wars come to life as Dar.

An outsider with a sense of justice and representing humanity in balance with nature, not exploiting it- Dar is an update on the classical ideal of the Hero, as not someone with strong values or great deeds attributed to them, but in the old world definition of what the term meant: One who was chosen by the Gods. And in a lot of ways, that could be any of us. We don't know when the world might call on us to do something incredible or even impossible- and Dar shows us that we can rise to that and use what makes us unique to help others.

SO-

Now, I suppose you see why I opted for this to be a two part article, huh? Cuz yeah, this is me at the half-way mark for my thoughts on this spiritual duology.  I've given a lot of space in this one to the heroes, so our next one, we're gonna start by giving a proper spotlight to:

THE VILLAINS!

Because only Darth Vader can make
Darth Vader look like a bitch...

Til then!