Hey everyone! (apparently a lot more than two of you if the numbers on the article I posted yesterday are accurate at all! Thank you all so much!) Previously, my most-read article on this blog was my Escape from New York review, with 59 views in the last uh... two years or so? Snake Plissken, my top performer!
But, inexplicably, since the posting on Monday night of the first part of this deep dive into muscle-bound 80s fantasy, I've gotten over 190 reads on that one! That's a... well, it's a bit of a shot in the arm to the old ego, and I appreciate it...
You didn't come here for my imaginary award acceptance speech though, so let's get back to work shall we?
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| LET'S GET READY TO FLEX!!!! |
So where did I leave off yesterday? Something about Darth Vader being...something... I had a few more references to Star Wars than I thought I would... Oh RIGHT!
BAD GUYS!
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| "Heard you were callin' Darth Vader a bitch..." |
Yipe...
III: "THEY WILL ALL DROWN IN LAKES OF BLOOD...": Sinister Sorcerers of the 80's Fantasy Movie Renaissance
Villains are just as important to a story staying memorable as the hero, if not more so. Would Star Wars have hit the way it did if Darth Vader was, in fact, a little bitch?
Would Vader be as intimidating if the asthmatic breathing was punctuated with an inhaler, or perhaps if Grand Moff Tarkin took a break during his monologues to apply Chap-stick?
Of course not.
And a big part of what made Darth Vader memorable was a Mississippi-born stutterer that had come up through the ranks of actors on the strength of his powerhouse performances and his powerhouse of a voice, regularly used to give something the gravitas it was lacking. Like he did for this little fantasy picture here.
That's right I'm talking about James Earl Jones, nearly throwing his damn back out carrying this movie over the finish line to respectable status back in the day because "Oh, HE'S in it? But he's like, a real actor..." And yes, he's in Conan the Barbarian playing the immortal leader of a snake cult.
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| And looking fly as fuck doing it, thanks very much. |
I will remember Thulsa Doom for as long as I live for a lot of reasons, not the lowest of which is how striking he is on screen. I mean there's stage presence and then there's convincing a little boy that you're an evil sorcerer who was born in Atlantis and has the voice of God from a stop-motion movie about the Book of Genesis we had when I was little. That's what is colloquially referred to as The Real Shit.
A big part of this is really cool choice made by the production team and director John Milius of wanting to fully recreate what Atlanteans looked like according to Robert E. Howard. In his essay "The Hyborian Age" and his works about the proto-Conan Kull the Conqueror, the natives of Atlantis are described as generally having straight black hair, dark drown skin, and piercing blue eyes. And sure, the effect is simply achieved with a wig and contacts, but LOOK at the effect it gives:
This, combined with Jones absolute commitment to bringing his A game to this, (even though he joined the production pretty late, signing on to play Doom just a few weeks before filming began) creates a character that is downright otherworldly, especially to kid from the painfully rural sticks whose first meeting with an actual, real black person was still several years in the future from his first viewing of Conan. If you'd have told me that he had blue eyes in real life, and wore brown contacts to not freak people out, I would have believed you.
That's less of a testament to the power of Jones' performance here and more to how tub-thumpingly dumb I was as a kid, but still.
Like, I almost feel bad pivoting over to Beastmaster here, because when comparing to something this iconic..? Any comparison is going to come off as a dunk on the other movie and I am trying to be fair, y'know?
So yeah, let's talk High Priest Maax.
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| I'm just gonna re-use this pic because it looks metal as hell, and he needs the advantage in this match-up. |
I'll start off by noting a big similarity in the characterization of both Maax and Thulsa Doom that might have led folks to think there was indeed some copying of homework here.
Both of the bad guys in these films know the same secret about really making it big in savage, lawless ur-civilizations from the mists of pre-history: Doing the Brutal Warlord shtick and leading your Huns across the tundra for plunder is fine for if ya want a little fun in your work and building up your seed money for a larger venture, but the REAL MONEY? We're talking the BIG BUCKS?
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| "Can I get an AMEN?" "AAAGGGHHH!!!" "Halfway there, keep going!" |
Being the leader of an Evil Death Cult is where it's at, baby. You offer people power, structure, and a seat on the Mother-ship and man, they will swallow anything! And no, I don't think that fruit punch has a funny aftertaste, at all. You enjoy, though! I'll be over here with my bottle of water- I'm trying to cut down on my sugar.
Where the comparison of these cults begins to show the difference between our chief antagonists though, is in their motives for forming them. Maax is all about grasping for power at all costs, usurping the throne of King Zed, gouging out the Kings eyes and throwing him in the dungeon, and taking his pet horde of barbarian warriors out for a nice pillage now and then to help gain new resources and slaves for his burgeoning totalitarian theocracy. And to be clear, that's fine. This is all stuff right out of the Dark Sorcerer Playbook and he's just following all that shit to the letter, doing it all exactly right. But that's pretty much his only motivation, and his insistence upon total domination coupled with his demands for constant ritual sacrifice, (along with turning all his dissenters into animalistic, barely controllable, living homunculi called Death Guards) has left the city-state of Aruk looking kind of like that town that used to really nice until the mall died.
Doom, on the other hand, is rumored to be over a thousand years old, and when confronted with the brutal realities of his destructive rampages and the effect they have had on out hero Conan's entire existence up to now, he sighs and ruefully says, "It must have been when I was younger..." in a way that presages Raul Julia's take on M. Bison and his brilliant delivery of "For me? It was Tuesday..." by quite a handful of years.
He barely remembers burning down an entire village and beheading a kid's mother before her child's eyes, then selling that child off into slavery because he has been at this whole Dark Sorcerer bit for SO LONG that he has honestly been kind of coasting for the last 300 years or so, moving from one little passion project to the next, corrupting and toppling city-states, plundering, gathering brainwashed followers to do it all again, rape, pillage, repeat and it's all gotten a little... samey...
Such to the point that he's created a whole new Doom Cult complete with hordes of followers, big-ass snake temples in every major city in the tri-state area of the Hyborian landscape, and a fortress headquarters known as his Mountain of Power (playset available now!), where he proselytizes to his worshipers, leads huge R-rated orgies of sex, death, and cannibalism, and occasionally turns into a giant snake. All this is Thulsa Doom...on auto-pilot.
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| "Imagine what I could do if I was really trying..." |
Where Doom does fall down a bit is that his minions are kinda bland, with his right and left-hand men both basically just being bigger, dumber, evil versions of Conan who, while they look impressive, contribute all of zippo to the story.
Maax on the other hand, does make up for his own pettiness and poor management style with a plethora of fascinating diversity hires: We have the Witches dor style, along with his Brotherhood of Richard O'Brien Look-Alikes, keeping themselves busy until Alex Proyas makes Dark City in the 90s, His Jun Horde and their bat-helmeted war chief, then for flavor we have Maax's S&M berserkers called Death Guards, who I believe I've already mentioned.
Could one uncharitably call this "Quantity over Quality?" Perhaps, but me? I've always liked a bit of variety in my play. In other words, if say Thulsa Doom had a trio of Hustler House of Horrors Witches, a bunch of Warduke lookin' minions that just got back from their cover shoot for Pillager of Fortune magazine, Bondage monsters, and the Brothers Riff-Raff in his Mountain of Power (playset comes with everything you see here, Orgy sold separately), I don't think there would have been any debate in my mind which was better because that would have been the greatest shit I ever saw.
Icons on both sides to be sure, but one is clearly carrying his weight in the long haul and the other is getting killed by a ferret.
IV:"Us pilgrims should stick together..."- Supporting Cast and Story
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| Don't call yourself a metal fan if you can't name this band... |
I want to start with the ones who so often get overlooked, even when they're on the poster, those characters that only ever seem to exist to be at the feet of the hero looking ever so impressed: the Ladies. In pulp Sword and Sorcery tales of the time, Robert Howard was constantly being told that they wouldn't take his stories unless there were pretty girls in them, so that then there could be pretty girls on the cover, and therefore magazine would sell. Howard tended to roll his eyes and acquiesce because we all gotta eat, bro.
And as such, until he got really tired of the whole damsel/bimbo archeype always cluttering up his stories so they could heave their bosoms on the cover of Weird Tales and created some real fantastical heroines in characters like Belit the Pirate Queen and Red Sonja, that was the template he set out for other artists to follow. And it's... deceptively simple, because there's actually a lot to unpack in there. A lot of attitudes that view women as not-quite-people, or simply prizes to be won, or that at least most of them are. And I'm hardly starting a revolution here calling out sexism in old-timey stories written in the 30s by men for men, it is still disappointing to see so much of it still on display fifty years later in these offerings from 1982. Cruising on towards nearly 100 years from when these tales were told, it feels like maybe we're finally getting somewhere. And here is where I get off that particular high-horse and address another way that Conan outshines Beastmaster, but it's only just. Sadly, both of them have aged pretty poorly in this regard.
But let's start by saying that Kiri is no Valeria, that's for damn sure.
Conan: "You're not a guard..."
Valeria: "Neither are you."
Kiri, on the other paw...
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| I think I had this calendar as a kid... |
...is introduced while enjoying a nude swim with an equally buxom friend, and...
Look, I don't want to throw terms around that might ruin something for you, but I am just going to say it: even if we frame the first meeting between Kiri and Dar as being playful and not creepy (which it very is), there's still no getting around that she's an example of the Slave Girl trope, and therefore really can't consent to anything. And that makes the encounter feel like it just dances throughout on the very bleeding edge of assault. To Dar's credit- when he realizes she's a slave, he basically 100 percent backs off and is like "Oh, fuck, this just got a little too real..." BUT- if he had tried anything like that shit with Valeria she would have cut his balls off...
They do tack on a backstory that Kiri is actually some breed of warrior priestess later on, but that's all it feels like- something tacked on in a second draft, and the late Tanya Roberts never looks like anything but a swimsuit model carrying a knife; whereas Sandahl Bergman took intensive dancing training and channeled that into her fight training, then went so hard during the filming of her battle scenes that she nearly lost a finger.
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| Pictured: Sandahl "I tend not to fuck around" Bergman |
Now, this isn't to say that Conan comes out the clear winner here, either- the older I get the more I find the "Bred to the finest stock" scene gross and troubling (from the overt Orientalism of the entire 'trained in the East' section of his origin to the way they are both compared to live stock in the scene and the narration), and there is no getting around that Valeria lays her whole ass heart out to Conan in a scene of intense and beautiful sincerity of how she wants to do whatever they do together and never be left to fend for herself in the world again now that she has him, and that what they have is greater than any king's ransom or revenge... And he just leaves. Because in the world of Conan, revenge is more important than being a good partner, I guess. And in the long run, her biggest role in the story is to die to motivate Conan to further vengeance against a guy he was already dead-set on avenging himself upon. And a character that is such a clear descendant of Belit deserves better than the fucking Fridge...
And on yet another hand, once certain familial ties are revealed with another supporting character, Tal, the film-makers of Beastmaster don't bother to clarify much as to whether Kiri is Dar's cousin or not...(she's not, but the film never bothers to correct the assumption that she is) So sadly the ladies remain a mixed bag here.
As for other supporting players, that is an area that Conan the Barbarian has always shined brighter than many fantasy films of the period. While the main trio were relative unknowns, with Gerry Lopez literally being a surfing buddy of John Milius before being cast as Subotai, to say the cast of Hyboria is star-studded can be an understatement: Along with the previously-fawned-over James Earl Jones, we have appearances from William "Big Bill" Smith, Max Von Sydow, and the utterly incredible, life-changing performance giver, Uncle Iroh HIMSELF, mother-fucking MAKO.
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| Pictured here, wondering where the fuck his jasmine tea is... |
So having such incredible folks around him can take the edge off how out of his depth he can be in certain scenes, especially when having Von Sydow as a scene partner, or when Mako amiably carries him through his scenes with the Wizard, whose contributions as narrator really help give the film its overall mythic quality. Indeed, the film speaks best when it's not speaking at all- that opera feeling being the most evident in such sequences. As such, the supporting players contribute to the tapestry, but the story remains pretty straight-forward from first moment to last.
Outside of the colossal fuck up at the end of act 2 that leaves Conan dying on a tree, even characters like Subotai and Valeria are basically just along for the ride. They rescue him, but it's also never explained how the hell they even found him. We're just kind of left to assume the Wizard did it, somehow.
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| Which is fair, I guess... This guys seems to know his shit. |
The supporting cast of Conan shine more in character scenes than they do in scenes that further the story, with my favorite being what my friends and I jokingly call the "Comparative Theology with Conan and Subotai" scene, where our heroes split a roast beast of some variety and discuss what gods they pray to, and why one might be better than the other. A lot about who these two are as people, and what values shape their outlooks on life, and why they get along, is laid out in very little here, and it's just pure film magic.
Fuck Joe Rogan, I want THIS podcast...
In Beastmaster, the supporting characters don't get a lot of moments like this. In fact, many are not even human until about halfway through the movie, but they make up for lost time in inventive ways. See, while Dar was growing up in the village of Emur and honing his powers in the wilderness, the story of Aruk kept right on truckin' and a few characters we meet early on make much more substantial appearances, notably from former King's bodyguard Seth, played with easy-going bad-assery by the great John Amos, otherwise known for shows like Good Times or his appearance in the Coming to America movies as the owner-operator-founder of McDowell's.
He's continued to protect what he can after escaping a royal urge with the King's son... no, the other one, a young boy named Tal.
Zed, Dar, Tal... they sure do like to keep things simple in Aruk...
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| "You boys aren't with the McDonald's people, are you? I don't want any trouble..." |
When Dar crosses paths with them, they become fast friends, and I like to think that Amos brings a sort of nostalgia to Seth that makes that easy to believe. Dar, despite knowing nothing about his lineage, is very much made to resemble his father in a lot of scenes, and Seth seems to recognize something of the king he once swore his life to in both the young men he travels with. And Dar has one up on his father, in that whenever he gets wind of someone wanting to kill someone he cares about he ends that mother fucker.
So with Seth and Tal basically coming in from the story that's been going on in the background of Dar's life and returning to the forefront in the manner they do, it really does a lot to evoke the 30's pulps in an important way: the heroes of such tales were not so often directly tied to the antagonists or the stakes of a particular tale- they just kind of wandered in, killed the bad men, bedded the good women, and sometimes the bad women, and then they got out of there. Next story.
In this case, Dar happens to be directly tied to things, but that element could be removed and Dar would still be going along with the tale for reasons that are valid. There's injustice, he's the Beastmaster, he fixes that shit. And there's a pretty girl involved, this is S&S 101.
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| Ahh, sweet home Aruk-bama... |
And that's an element of the story telling in The Beastmaster that I really enjoy: there is an episodic aspect to some of his early adventures, as we get into cool fights and get new friends, and then occasionally just wander into some weird shit, like some of my favorite monsters in any fantasy flick:
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The Eldritch Flashers |
These beasties are not really given offical names, though I've heard them called the Devourers or the Hawk-people, for reasons that become obvious when they spare Dar for being friends with a hawk, which they seem to worship.
But this whole sequence, where Dar just stumbles into their territory, faces some dark dangers, and barely escapes with his life after encountering eldritch horrors, not only feels like it could have been a Weird Tales entry with a name like "Lair of the Devourer", but is also another flourish from a horror director having an absolute ball putting creepy shit into this fantasy movie.
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| "Before you go, would you be interested in some literature? We have pamphlets.." |
And they even come back in the finale, feeling like if the Tall Man showed up to help save the day at the end of the Hobbit- but in way that actually isn't as tonally dissonant as that sounds.
OUTRO:"This is good... but what is best in life?"- or, So Which Film is Actually Better?
Hoo boy, here we are, I guess...
And it's a harder question to answer than I thought. See, in watching the double feature of these guys back to back, for the first time in some years, I found myself feeling what I think some of you might have guessed already from the way I've talked about them: that I was enjoying Beastmaster more...
And honestly, no one was as surprised as me with that feeling- I had always held Conan up in my mind as the A-picture and Beastmaster as the B-movie. I mean, the comparison is obvious right?
One has what is arguably the biggest movie star of the 80s in a role that helped make him famous, before The Terminator made him a house-hold name for the rest of his life. The other has that guy from the V miniseries with the invasion of the Alien Iguana Nazis.
One was a huge box-office success that started a boom of imitators and similar projects, that the other was unfairly lumped in with. And of course, our counterpart flopped in the box office and really only succeeded when it was re-broadcast on cable to a wider, more receptive audience, leading to the old joke that HBO stood for "Hey, Beastmaster's On!"
So why was I enjoying the b-movie more this time round?
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| Even Thulsa Doom can see I'm on some bullshit... |
And well, I can honestly say...it's not the better movie. but it IS the better Pulp Fantasy movie.
Because sure, Conan is a film opera, a big grand, sweeping bugger that sweeps you up in it's beautiful score, and the magnetic presence of its actors- but let's be honest, isn't it also a tad pretentious?
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| Remember this? Thought I was done with this pic, huh? Surprise! |
Sure, in a way they are both B-movies, the sort of fantasist fare that wouldn't get taken seriously at the box office again until decades later when The Lord of the Rings would win all the Oscars for the next three years. But in so many ways, Conan through the lens of Milius has started to show his age with me. After getting shouted at in forums by so-called Conan fans about the results of the 2020 election, or seeing what looked like a Hyborian cosplayer get sent to prison after January 6th, well- I guess some of the blush was off the rose with the more right-wing talking points that Milius kind of insisted his version of Conan be about. And I remembered just the more unadulterated fun that Beastmaster had largely stayed, the one scene I already called out notwithstanding.
And like I said, Dar's adventures have curses, witches, monsters, and just...FUN. Because Marc Singer is less jacked, he's also more agile in his fights, throwing out kicks to the head and getting acrobatic where Conan is more direct and simple. And speaking of simple, the big finale's of these movies really show the fun factor on display, as the end of Conan is tightly focused and personal, but the Beastmaster?
That movie's last big set-piece is an ad-hoc army taking on the Jun horde against the backdrop of a moat of flaming tar, while Dar gets into an axe-fight with the war chief who killed his dad and eventually hurls that mother into the flaming tar by the axe that's already stuck in his back! Then monsters show up and eat the rest of the bad guys! I MEAN, CMOOON!!!
So while the case can be made that one of them is the better film, my yardstick is which one is the better fantasy film, and by that measurement, it's Beastmaster all the way.
This is just my personal opinion though, and individual mileage may vary.
I can assure all of you that I'll never stop watching either of these movies and have hugely enjoyed the experience of doing this deepest of dives into both and just swimming around in it, luxuriating in the adventures of these unique but kindred heroes, and I hope you did too.
And no I'm not doing their sequels, BYYYYYEEEEEE-
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