"Conan! What is best in life?"

[elfs]

Omaha and I went last night to see the midnight showing of Conan The Barbarian. No, not the one currently cluttering up the cinema, the original one, with a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and a powerful James Earl Jones, directed by Dino DeLaurentis, and full of lovely frontal nudity by Sandahl Bergman and other beauties before the routinizing of cosmetic surgery. You know, back when women weren't an assembly of every last possible sexual cue, no matter how ill-fit-together, but instead just had it, the way nature intended. (How, I ask you, is it at all possible that IMDB has no headshot photo of Sandahl Bergman!? The shame, the shame!)

Arnie doesn't say much in the film. Whole scenes go by where he says nothing at all. He grunts and groans a lot in that famous Austrian accent, of course, and he looks absolutely marvelous, such a hunk of man. (I'm a little disappointed that we never got to see much of Gerry Lopez' body, but that's a different story.) But surprisingly, he does hold the film together and he is wonderfully expressive with his face and eyes.

Ultimately the film has aged very, very well. The fight scenes, despite the obvious 70's choreography, look more brutal, harsher, more like fights and less like choreography. Thulsa Doom's lieutentants, "Red Hair" and "The Pict," still look like they ought to be fronting heavy metal bands. The terrain filmography is gorgeous, the sets and outdoor constructions are actually, you know, wood and stone rather than pixels, and when Conan gets to burn down the big set at the end of the film it's damnably satisfying.

The audience was wonderful, too. Half people old enough to remember the original, half hipsters out for an experience nobody else would appreciate, everyone cheered when Arnie came on the screen, laughed and grunted along at the first scene where he falls down into the barrow, and when the time comes for Arnie to deliver his signature line, the answer to the subject line, the entire audience chanted along:

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

Comments

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

I love that movie far to much. didn't learn about the whole Gerry Lopez thing until recently and now I can't help but hear the line as "I am Subatai, thief and surfer". :P

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's the same Gerry Lopez? Awesome!

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

yup, same one. He was friends with I think the director. still pretty awesome seeing him in Conan and then later seeing him in endless summer 2 and going "wait a minute, that guy looks familiar...".

[caraig.livejournal.com]

Huh, I thought Red Hair and the Pict WERE fronters for heavy metal bands!

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

nah, they where weight lifters that Arnie knew, but they sure do look like they should be making the live action version of metalocalypse don't they?

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Conan is also a throwback to the halcyon days when -- every once in a while -- a script would actually make it from the mind of a single author and onto the screen relatively unmolested. And it's hard to think of a better person to write the Conan script than John Milius.

(Speaking of which: did you watch the HBO "Rome" series from a few years back? I highly recommend it: also scripted by Milius, so it's got a lot of the same uber-manly feel to it, but there's also pretty naked manflesh as far as the eye can see...)

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Ooooh yes, we've been watching it. Haven't finished it entirely, but yes....mannnnnn flesssssshhhhhhhh.......

[gromm.livejournal.com]

That's funny. Just tonight we noticed that Netflix Canada has Conan the Destroyer as a new release, so we watched that.

We also noticed that they have this one, which of course is much, much better. We plan on watching that, but it sounds like the theatre experience was the better for it.