There was so much potential set up from the first movie. You had Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his two defining roles as an actor (the other being the Terminator from...well, Terminator) and a dark-edged fantasy world that managed to be dark without getting into the gritty grimdark we would see later on. It was clearly very adult-oriented and wasn't afraid push the boundaries of what was acceptable in 1980's cinema, even if it seems absolutely quaint by the standards of Hollywood today.
...by the way, did anyone ever give that Thulsa Doom minion his jar of jam back?
Conan the Destroyer has only two members of the cast returning - that being the aforementioned Governator and Mako once more as the wizard Akiro. Other than that...well, let's get into the plot before we start hacking apart the new characters.
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| "GAAAAH! STRANGLE ME! I WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS MOVIE!!!" |
So, however long after the first movie, Conan has been traveling around since burning Thulsa Doom's stone temple to the ground and has traded in Subotai for one of the FBI agents from Matilda, Malak (Tracey Walter). To say that this is a downgrade would be the understatement of eternity. Nevertheless, we have Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas) hiring the pair on to transport her niece, Princess Jehna (Olivia d'Abo in her feature film debut) on her quest to find and restore the horn of Dagon, a mystical artifact that will reawaken the sleeping god...or so Conan and company are led to believe originally.
By the way, Taramis only gets Conan to agree to this by offering to resurrect his lost love, Valeria.
Along the way, Conan collects some familiar faces and some not so familiar ones. I already mentioned Mako joining up as the wizard. The captain of Taramis' royal guard, Bombaata joins them as well. Now for the sixth individual...that would be Grace Jones.
Yes, she's called "Zula" and has a backstory and everything and it's Grace Jones. Because Dino DeLaurentiis and Universal Pictures looked at just how successful the first movie is, they decided (after snorting what I assume to be several bricks of unknown weight worth of cocaine) that what this film really needed was a pop star from Jamaica pretending to be a Zulu warrior.
I'm joking, at least about the cocaine part. I don't actually have any proof that they did that besides it being the 1980's.
However, DeLaurentiis and Universal did decide that the first film would have been so much better if it hadn't been so uber-violent. Looking back on it, as I said, it's remarkably cute that they considered the first film to be uber-violent and "realistic" even for the time. Nevertheless, against decency and good sense, the decision was made...and the entire film is more comedic, and feels hilariously wrong because of that.
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| This is a pretty cool scene, visually. Not worth the entire movie, but still cool. |
If Arnold weren't in the cast, you'd have a hard time telling this was a sequel as far as tone goes. Watching Barbarian and them coming to Destroyer is like watching the Richard Donner Superman and then immediately popping in Man of Steel. It's almost comedic in how absolutely jarring it is, and the film honestly suffers because of it. Even if it weren't a sequel, this film has some really awkward, goofy crap even for a 1980's Sword and Sorcery flick.
It doesn't reach the levels of offensively nihilistic bullshit that Deathstalker pulled off, but it feels very much like a Saturday morning cartoon version of Conan than an actual Conan movie. The film made around $31 million again a budget of $18 million, which means it did make a profit (if only just) and would later be followed up by Red Sonja, a movie that has nothing really to do with this or Conan the Barbarian except for the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is in all three.
A third Conan film was actually planned, but after some contract disputes with Arnold it eventually became Kull the Conqueror after a completely unrelated Robert E. Howard character. I mentioned Red Sonja as well, but the Conan franchise was pretty much dead until 2011, when the reboot with Jason Mamoa happened.
That is a far better movie than this.
But I'll be getting to that later. Final thought: don't watch this movie, not without some booze or psychedelic drugs. I'm usually the first person to defend a "so bad it's good" movie, but...this just ain't it. This is just torture, and every single person involved in the making of it should really feel ashamed of themselves.
Especially Dino.
Conan the Destroyer is now available from Universal Pictures and the Dino DeLaurentiis Company.
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