Counter-Currents
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Over the years, I caught bits and pieces of John Milius’ 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian — starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the big lug himself — on cable TV. But I was never tempted to watch the whole film. I finally gave in when I started writing my series on Classics of Right-Wing Cinema, and friends urged me to add Conan to my list. I admit that a film about Robert E. Howard’s iconic hero, with visuals borrowed from Frank Frazetta, starring the future California Governator, and directed by Right-wing Jew Milius sounds like a formula for a classic of Right-wing cinema, teeming with paleo-masculine heroics and illiberal political realism. After all, Milius wrote the script for Dirty Harry, which is a genuine paleo-masculine, anti-liberal classic of Right-wing cinema.
Sadly, though, Conan the Barbarian is nothing like Dirty Harry, but it is very much like its sequel, Magnum Force, also scripted by Milius, in which the character of Harry Callahan is systematically subverted in a decidedly anti-white and politically correct manner.
The Conan movie went through more than a decade of development hell before finally moving forward with Milius at the helm. Oliver Stone had apparently written a four-hour script set in a post-apocalyptic future. Milius discarded Stone’s script entirely, even though Stone and Milius share the final screenwriting credit. Instead of setting Conan in classical antiquity, Milius sets the story in the Dark Ages, borrowing elements from the Norse and the Mongols.
Howard’s Conan is a fearsome warrior, but he is also intelligent, witty, learned, and cunning. He can read and write. He is fluent in a number of languages. He can solve problems and crack codes. These traits set him apart in a world teeming with warriors, enabling him to become a king. In short, Howard’s Conan is no mere barbarian. Milius’ Conan is strong and cunning, but otherwise he is an oaf with very few lines. It is impossible to imagine this man becoming a king, because he really is just a barbarian.
But surely Milius used some of Howard’s 21 Conan stories? No, not really. He borrowed some names and events, but the plot is his invention. This is John Milius’ Conan, not Robert E. Howard’s, which is something of a cheat if you grew up liking Howard’s Conan. Ultimately, though, Milius’ Conan has to be judged on its own merits.
The story opens with Conan as a child. His father is a blacksmith who explains the “riddle of steel” to his young son. Later, Conan’s village is attacked by a marauding band. Actually, they look like a marauding heavy metal band: Spinal Tap, but with real axes. It is a bit much.
The band is led by Thulsa Doom, who is played by James Earl Jones. Jones, of course, was the voice of Darth Vader, so he was an iconic choice for a villain. But Jones is a black man, who is as absurdly out of place in Conan’s world as the llama we glimpse later on in the movie. Thulsa Doom has the power to hypnotize people, which he uses on Conan’s mother, who lowers her sword, allowing Thulsa to lop off her head.
The children of the village are marched off as slaves to toil in a mill, where eventually Conan grows up to be a giant, muscular brute played by Schwarzenegger. Then Conan is sold to another master, who makes a gladiator of him. Howard’s Conan was a free man from birth and would never have acquiesced to such treatment. Of course such an origin story could be compelling if Conan overcame it, for instance by gaining his freedom through strength and character. But no, at a certain point, his master just lets a highly profitable slave go. It makes no sense and adds nothing to Conan’s rather murky character and motivations.
Conan wanders a bit, finding a sword. Then he meets a witch, who seduces him. When she begins transforming into something unsavory, he simply tosses her into the fireplace and leaves. It is genuinely funny. At that point, I wondered if this film was trying to be camp, like Mike Hodges’ 1980 Flash Gordon, which was also produced by Dino De Laurentiis.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Part Four of the Trilogy here.
Conan then rescues Subotai, a thief who has been imprisoned by the witch. Played by Gerry Lopez, dubbed by a Japanese actor, and named after one of Genghis Khan’s generals, Subotai is our white hero’s non-white sidekick. Because those are the rules of Hollywood: no white hero can act without a non-white sidekick.
Conan wants revenge on Thusla Doom. The witch told him that Doom can be found in the city of Zamora, so Conan and Subotai set out for there. In Zamora, they meet Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), a strong, independent female thief, because the rules of Hollywood also dictate that no white hero can be depicted without a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need him.
When Conan asks about Thulsa Doom’s snake standard, he is told of the towers of the cult of Set: “Two or three years ago, it was just another snake cult,” but now franchises are popping up in every city. At this point, I was wondering if Lorenzo Semple, Jr., of Flash Gordon and the Batman TV series fame, had a hand in the script.
The three thieves sneak into the tower of Set, where they find one of Thulsa’s heavy metal band feeding nubile females to a giant serpent. They kill the serpent, steal some treasure, and go celebrate. Conan and Valeria become an item.
Suddenly, the trio are arrested and dragged before Osric, the king of Zamora, played by the great Max von Sydow. The fact that he played Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon reinforced the camp interpretation. But then Von Sydow does something quite unexpected. He takes a campy script and gives a riveting and passionate performance. His daughter has joined Thulsa Doom’s snake cult, and he wants to hire the thieves to bring her back.
Subotai and Valeria don’t wish to risk it. When Valeria gives her case for quitting while they are ahead, again it is well-acted and touching. It is the dramatic high-point of the film, which then lapses back into camp, spectacle, and mindless action. But for a few minutes, we get a sense of the great sword and sorcery movie Conan could have been if Milius had just played it straight, with sincerity rather than irony.
Conan wants revenge, so he heads to Thulsa Doom’s headquarters alone. Milius portrays the Doom cultists as degenerate, credulous flower children being exploited by ruthless sociopaths. Using an amusing ruse, Conan steals a priest’s costume but is caught. Doom makes a rather chilling speech about the relative powers of steel and flesh. By flesh, he really means the hypnotic power of his words over the minds of his followers, which he demonstrates by enticing one to leap to her death. This contrast between words and steel is central to the whole plot, but it also dictates a fundamental change in Conan’s character. Howard’s Conan was a master of steel (well, bronze) and words. Milius’ Conan is an inarticulate thug.
Doom orders Conan to be crucified on a tree, but Subotai rescues him. Then Subotai, Valeria, and another Asian sidekick, a wizard with an annoying voice named Akiro, use magic to bring Conan back from the brink of death. The wizard warns, however, that the magic will have a heavy toll. Valeria is willing to risk it. Akiro is played by an Asian, because a white hero cannot be aided by a wise white mentor, and Morgan Freeman was otherwise engaged. Those are the rules of Hollywood.
Once Conan is restored, the three thieves penetrate the temple, where Doom is presiding over a drugged-out orgy and cannibalistic feast. (These people are really disgusting.) Conan and Co. slay the guards and capture the princess. Doom, however, transforms into a serpent and slithers away. Later, as the thieves flee down the mountainside, Doom kills Valeria with an arrow. She interprets her death as the toll for bringing Conan back.
Conan and Subotai take the princess back to Akiro’s camp, where they prepare for the onslaught of Doom’s troops. His cult consists mostly of women and hippies, so not many men are capable of carrying steel. Using guile and brutality, Conan and friends kill off Doom’s soldiers. Doom flees back to his headquarters. Having lost his steel, he will take refuge behind the flesh of his followers.
Conan follows and confronts Doom, who tries to beguile him with his hypnotic words until Conan simply chops off his head. It has all the laconic directness of Alexander cleaving the Gordian knot. Call it the argumentum ad barbarum. It is still the swiftest way to silence liars.
Deprived of their leader, the cultists conveniently disperse, even though they could have mobbed and killed Conan. Conan then burns down their temple and returns the princess to king Osric. The End.
There are many good elements to Conan the Barbarian. Schwarzenegger looks great and moves magnificently in the action sequences, which are snappily choreographed. Bergman and Von Sydow are also good. Jones is out of place, but his voice and menacing presence are used to great effect. He’s a memorable monster.
The design of the sets, weapons, and costumes is frequently excellent, particularly when inspired by Frazetta. But these elements often stray into the realm of parody. For instance, Thorgrim’s huge hammer is ridiculous.
Basil Poledouris’ orchestral score is wonderfully old-fashioned and sometimes quite good. At its best, it brings to mind Miklós Rózsa’s glittering, barbaric music for epics like Quo Vadis, El Cid, and Ben Hur.
I understand why people on the Right like Conan the Barbarian. Conan is a paleo-masculine white hero using cunning and strength to triumph in a world that is savage but also refreshingly free of liberal cant and illusions. Thulsa Doom, with his word magic and hippy cult, is a superb image of modern liberalism: honeyed words and sentimentality on the outside, devil worship, cannibalism, and perversion at the core.
But Milius’ anachronistic casting of a black villain, plus giving the white hero Asian sidekicks, is pure Hollywood diversity propaganda. Beyond that, if you are going to make a Conan movie, why stray so far from the original character? Isn’t it fraud to call such a radically different character by the same name?
A Conan film that takes the character and original stories seriously could be great. How great? Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings showed us the heights that sword and sorcery films can attain when artistry and technical skill join with fidelity to the author’s vision and genuine love of the story.
Admittedly, Howard is no Tolkien. His stories are pulps, but they are classic pulps. They are loaded with anachronisms and improbabilities of their own. All of them could be deepened and tightened. But even unaltered, every one of them is better than what Milius has dished up. I prefer sincere pulp to smirking camp every time. Conan the Barbarian is not a terrible film, but the character and the audience deserve much better.
The Unz Review, May, 2021
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25 comments
There has only been one actor that can bring the the gravitas, and seriousness to the “Conan” character, and that has been Vladimir Kulich, who played “Buliwyf” in “The 13th Warrior.” But, he is too small, just as Arnold was too small. Robert E. Howard’s Conan was well nigh a giant (at least 6.8), broad in the beam, mighty of thew, and narrow in the waist. Conan’s speed was such that it would make a panther blush (I took that from one of the stories). Conan’s senses are more than human (eyesight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell). Conan’s strength was legendary in an era that was replete with strong characters. Conan’s instincts, intuition, and intelligence were sharp, but even with all these things going for him, he still barely survived his adventures–which is as it should be. Everything that has come out of Hollywood pertaining to Conan has been an insult.
I want to add to Conan’s preternatural senses, reflexes, speed, and strength, he possessed superhuman endurance, stamina, and durability. He just would not quit, you would have to kill him to keep him from coming back at you. Conan learned everything he knew about fighting on the battlefield, he took the best moves he observed in each fighting style, and did them faster, stronger, and better, and in his line of work he had only one chance to learn these lessons. Conan was not locked into one oriental fighting style, as we see in that movie–I hated that.
I saw the movie in its original theater run. I had been a Conan fan for years, and had read the paperbacks and collected the comic from its first issue. I was incredibly excited to hear that a Conan movie was coming. I was, however, extremely disappointed with their vision of my hero, his world and exploits.
I thought Schwarzenegger was totally wrong for the part. Let’s face it, his accent just sounds kind of comical, certainly not heroic. But it was his body that I objected to most. Schwarzenegger has a bodybuilder’s body, something no one from warrior history, real or imagined, would ever have. He’s just plain bloated. A real Conan would have been muscular, yes, but leaner. Someone with fast twitch muscle, capable of speed – something a Schwarzenegger would be incapable of. More like this: (that’s Charles Bronson, of course. But for his diminutive stature, this is something very close to my perfect Conan. (If you’ve never researched Bronson, check out his wikipedia page. Now that’s a real man!)
And yes, even then, I was disappointed by the multi-racial aspects of the film. Blacks certainly do not belong in a Conan movie, at least not in featured roles. When they got that basketball player (Wilt Chamberlin?) in one of the subsequent films, that was just ridiculous. And women as warriors is just stupid, in fiction and real life. The whole series of Conan movies was pretty much just crap, cheap and cheesy.
The Conan stories would make for a fantastic film or series of films if taken seriously, but I ain’t holding my breath for that to happen. Certainly, not in my lifetime.
But that’s okay, I wouldn’t give Jewish Hollywood one red cent of my money at this point.
Hey Doofus, you forgot the pic. Doh!
Hopefully this works.
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I’m thankful you guys got around to discussing Conan the Barbarian, but I’m a little disappointed with your reaction this movie. I realize it’s not Howard’s Conan, and Arnold is somewhat comical, but I think it captured more of Howard thematically than you give credit. Milius’s Conan is ultimately a distinct character, more tragic than Howard’s Conan, but memorable in his way. The film contains much philosophic depth, so I’m perplexed at your lack of interest. For example, at what point is the riddle of steel answered? When Conan breaks his father’s sword in the final encounter with Rexor, this proves that steel is unreliable. It can be broken and turned against you. The love of Valeria is stronger than forged steel, and ultimately that was unbreakable. Family and teamwork over self reliance. Conan could not have achieved his quest without Valeria, Subadai and the wizard. Thulsa Doom was wrong too. Flesh and mind control ended up not being more powerful.
I love the soundtrack. Notice how each character has a leitmotif that plays when he is in ascendance. The melody of the character with greater dignity will overpower that of the lesser characters. Thulsa Doom over Conan, but the princess’s theme overpowers all the others’. I think this is one of the greatest movie sound tracks, of Wagnerian proportions. Other composers can be better and more original in particular songs, such as John Williams or Barry, but for a sweeping soundtrack with dramatic structure and overall high quality, only the Good the bad and the ugly might compare.
Milius’s early move, The Lion and the Wind, also has some good thematic material, although it is a little slow compared to Conan. I don’t know, maybe I focus too much on things that are childish, but I keep coming back to this movie more than most others.
I also wanted to say, the scene where valeria returns from the dead comes from the story Queen of the Black Coast, which is ultimately from ligeia by Poe. I have to restrain myself because I would like to talk about this movie and Howard for hours!
The highlight of the soundtrack for me is “The Orgy”
Yes! That’s the princess’s theme. It’s orgasmic in its progression, like Guns N’ Roses’s Rocket Queen. I like beastmaster too, but that’s a pulpier movie than Conan. I could see making light of that one. But I warn you, don’t watch Conquest.
I made the unfortunate mistake of buying the dvd of Conquest on the strength of Lucio Fulci’s name. One of the worst movies I have wasted good money on.
I assume The Orgy was inspired by Ravel’s Bolero.
Great article, but please don’t ruin any more of my childhood favorites for me. I wanna hear nothing but the highest praises for Beastmaster!😄
If Lynch writes a stinkpiece on the Beastmaster, I’m defecting to NPI/Radix.
I like that King Osric’s daughter is no prize. She has good looks but a bad attitude, and she has no intention of learning from the mighty valor or the disgusting evil that she has seen. Even though King Osric has done the right things for the right reasons, there is no sign of a happy ending for Osric’s dynasty.
King Osric can stand for many good White parents in this corruption-addled age. You strive to save your own flesh and blood whether they deserve it or not, and so you should, but where’s your reward?
To the site moderator:
I was trying to leave a comment on this thread when I got a weird message ERROR 1006 saying that the website administrator had banned my IP address. After that, not only could I NOT comment, I couldn’t even access CC’s articles!
Two questions:
1) Was this a legitimate ban on me personally, or was it a) the result of a cyber attack against CC, or b) a sign that my computer has malware? Note that, lately, trying to access CC directly has involved some new step, whereby one’s browser gets “checked out” before the user gets redirected to CC.
2) If I have been banned personally by the site, why? I have been a fairly prolific (and intellectually serious) commenter here over the past 3-4 years. I was not aware that I had violated any terms of visit or use.
CC has been under DDOS attack since last week. Just send your IP address to [email protected] and we can fix this.
Thank you for your prompt reply. I’m happy to say that the problem seems to have resolved itself. If it recurs, however, then I will just use a proxy server; if that fails, I will seriously consider your offer.
Alas, I’m about 5 years from formal retirement, and need those years. I live in a very “blue” area, and doxxing could materially impact me greatly. I am therefore loathe to open up the slightest doxxing vulnerabilities, which is why I haven’t even joined the paywall. Once I quit working, I intend to relocate/retire to a very red state where I have relations, and then get more involved in nationalist activism (and maybe some writing, when I’ll have more time).
Of course, this site is an amazing intellectual resource for nationalists, the best of its kind I know of, so I would definitely act to avoid losing access to reading its wealth of learned articles, past as well as future. Good luck fending off these dastardly attacks.
I disagree, that a Black villain would be out of place in a Conan-story. They feature in a number of Robert E. Howard’s the Conan-stories; ‘The Hour of the Dragon’, ‘Queen of the Black Coast’, ‘Shadows in Zamboula’ and ‘The Vale of Lost Women’ spring to mind.
They are not even necessarily Conan’s antagonists. In both ‘The Hour of the Dragon’ and ‘Queen of the Black Coast’ Conan spend some time leading Black pirates. However, I never got the impression that either Conan nor Howard was ‘colour-blind’. Even in the two stories I just mentioned, the Blacks are described as unscrupulous and savage raiders.
In ‘Shadows in Zamboula’ the Blacks are all cannibals, and in ‘The Vale of Lost Women’ Conan breaks his alliance with a Black chieftain, to rescue a White woman captured by that selfsame chieftain, with no motive, besides racial solidarity.
So, Blacks are the original stories, hovering somewhere between monstrous beings and untrustworthy allies.
We’re really not going to discuss the Nietzscheian aspects of the film?
At Counter Currents?!?
Seriously?!?
***grumble grumble grumble***… Gonna need a minute….
I’ll be back.
Aside from the quote at the beginning, they were what?
There’s been a lot written about the influence of Nietzsche on Jack London. John Milius’s Conan is White Fang in human form. Their story arcs are remarkably similar; brutal childhood/slave/gladiator/hero. The Riddle of Steel is analogous to the will to power. It’s the main theme of the film.
Two things make the ending so memorable and cathartic.
1. James Earl Jones turns in such a great performance as a villain, that by the end of the movie the audience hates Thulsa Doom almost as much as Conan does. (IIRC, the fact that Jones is black caused much schvitzing and kvetching from Siskel and/or Ebert back in the day.)
2. There’s no trope of the hero reverting to slave morality. There is no, “Killing you would just drag me down to your level” moment. Conan exerts a greater will, decapitates Doom with his murdered father’s sword in front of his followers (Hyborean Last Men) and burns his temple to the ground.
One could argue that Conan never really becomes a hero (ubermensch) until the end of the film.
I don’t want to blabber too much, but I would say also the focus on personal realization on Conan in his cohorts’ part, set in opposition to the mystery religions and the life abnegating aspects of thulsa doom’s religion, which is an amalgam of various mystery religions such as Christianity and Buddhism(isn’t “emptiness” a goal of Buddhism?) examples nietzche’s preference for pagan vitality over post axial slave morality.
White Fang is a story of a wild beast being domesticated. Conan doesn’t start as a wild beast, but rather as a slave, he isn’t domesticated, rather he breaks those bounds and becomes a king.
Good review of a movie I saw and shamelessly liked in the theater in the summer before my senior year in college. I have never seen it since, though I vividly recall much of it. I also have never read the Conan stories (unlike The Hobbit and LOTR, both of which I read twice: in grade and then high school, respectively, and then again right before the movie versions came out). Back in ’82, I had a different reaction to the racial aspects (though now I see Lynch’s points better than I would have then). I thought it was cool that the villain was a black seducing and exploiting what I vaguely recall were mostly white dolts. I also didn’t then perceive a problem with the POC sidekicks. My impression was that Conan’s w0rld, unlike LOTR, was meant to be seen as having taken place somewhere in Eurasia, like primitive Central Russia – someplace where (it was implied) different ethnicities intermingled freely. The POCing of Hollywood was very underdeveloped at that point. There were very few nonwhite leading men (that I can recall).I also don’t recall the campiness (except for the annoying, “wise Asian” voice of “Mako”). But maybe I at 20 was still too immature to pick up on something like that unless really obvious.
1982 was a big year for this type of film. As well as Conan the Barbarian others released were Ator the Invincible, The Sword and the Sorcerer and The Beastmaster. One thing I found amusing about the latter is that the actor playing the villain – Rip Torn – is wearing what appears to be a fake hook nose.
Ah, Conan. I saw the movie then, and it was okay, although J. E. Jones was a tad jarring, but better than a later film with the atrocious Grace Jones in it. I remember a wave of sword and sorcery movies coming after Conan, all of them terrible, grist for Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I’ve read some of the Conan stories, and they’re well done, but I’m not sure they translate to the movies, where the action becomes somewhat one-dimensional and ridiculous. As for Arnold Schwarzenegger, I agree his body is too muscle man for Conan, but Hollywood confuses the two, as they confuse everything. The film did propel Arnold’s career, such as it was. As John Podhoretz said:
‘Arnold Schwarzenegger became an onscreen quipster of violence precisely because he couldn’t act, and because he was so inherently ludicrous as a physical human object that he was already half-cartoon. He was letting us know he was in on the joke.’
His Conan wasn’t believable, but neither were his characters in Commando, Predator, and other films. You just sort of go with it, and that was of the 80’s mores. I wonder if he would have done better doing a German film, or would he have been as wooden in German as he is in English? Once he played a character named Harry Phillips. Really? That’s a laugh in itself.
I think Conan was best realized in comics. I think the Marvel ones illustrated by Gil Kane and also John Buscema captured Conan, and they had good writers, so he came out as pretty cunning. Later, Dark Horse did a three part series illustrated by P. Craig Russell, who mostly does opera adaptations, and it was pretty good. He even has Conan wear Bermuda shorts, which seems silly to us, but that was actually how Conan was depicted in the 30’s. Russell is a big believer in following the original sources. Russell also did the script, and Conan is arrogant, clever, and funny…he’s a sharp guy. I don’t think movies can do that. They’re into dumbing down…a jewish concept first mentioned in the 30’s.
Russell also did a massive comic adaptation of Wagner’s Ring. You should take a look at it.
If some of you object to reading comic books, well, movies are paper comics, and I think the graphic novel is under appreciated by many in our movement. The problem is, we have been so inundated by anime that we think that’s all there is.
As for Beastmaster, not into it, but there was an Australian TV series done about the time Xena: Warrior Princess came out. It is, as one Aussie friend of mine said, the stuff you watch for an hour on Saturday between soccer matches, but the lead character is pretty good, with the usual villain chewing the scenery as he cries out ‘bring me Beast master!’, but he does it in an Aussie accent, so that’s okay. Or should I say: ‘okoi.’
The Conan film was fun, although Sandahl Bergman stands out to me more than Ahhhnold. Maybe her taunting ‘do you want to live forever?’ stays with me…originally said by Frederick the Great to his army.
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