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Conan the BarbarianRating:
Release Date: 24 February, 1998 Retail Price: $24.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (12 total) |
Conan the Barbarian Reviews
back when Schwarzenegger had a body
I think this is the best sword and magic/ fantasy movie ever made. Unlike the secong Conan movie the Destroyer which was a big disappointment) this is dark, dirty, violent (with a harsh way) and most of all faithful to the original Conan by Howard. By that I mean that Conan wasn't a joker and babyoiled coverboy like in the sequal. Only part of the movie that i weren't content about was the childhood of Conan, the part where he grows up spinning some goddamn Wheel of Fortune, Howard simply points in many novels that Conan was grown free in Cimmeria.
"People have no grasp of what they do!"
"People have no grasp of what they do!" One of the few great lines delivered by James Earl Jones in this film.
I really cannot add anything to the previous reviews that have been written, each explains a little bit about the film to give the reader of the reviews a good grasp of this edition of the DVD. So in that sense this will be a different review - not of the movie itself (which was an good barbarian genre film, especially for one filmed in 1982), but this review is about the special feature on the making of Conan.
That special feature alone is worth the price of the DVD. Great detail is given by everyone who was largely involved in the making of this film. It is a good history behind the film and how it developed. Everything is covered from the actors and how they were chosen, all the way to the music and why it was written the way it was to match the tone, mood, and texture of the film.
However, there is one portion of this special feature that needs to be corrected. The director, John Milius, when describing Robert E. Howard, declares that Howard was 'insane,' that Howard believed that the town's people [in Cross Plains] were after him so he boarded up the windows of his home, and loaded up his rifles in order to protect himself. This is simply not true. In fact John Milius in this description is speaking in serious hyperbole and exaggeration. REH was eccentric, he was 'mad' in a certain type of way, but he never acted the way Milius had described him as acting.
I have been a REH fan since 1981, having grown up in Abilene, which is only about 40 miles north west of Cross Plains, where Howard lived, wrote, and died. I have read just about everything he ever wrote. I have also researched histories that were written by him or about him including Glenn Lord's collection titled "The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard, and "One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard - The Final Years" written by Novalyn Price Ellis, who actually dated REH the last two or three years of his life.
I was actually flabbergasted when I heard John Milius make these remarks and wanted to make sure, in a review here at Amazon, that these statements were corrected. Otherwise, the special feature on the making of the movie was great and very informative.
If you are a Howard fan I highly recommend you make a visit to Cross Plains, Texas and see the REH Home and Museum. It is well worth the trip. I wish more Conan movies could have been made, but perhaps in the future someone else will pick up that project. In the mean time, I recommend the newly republished versions of Howard's works which have been periodically released by Dell Rey Publishing (The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, The Bloody Crown of Conan, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, The Conquering Sword of Conan, etc.), you can get those here at Amazon.
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