Vacation Rabbit Hole: Conan the Barbarian

The calendar aligned this new years to give a very nice long vacation with the expenditure of very few vacation days and with it I went down a long and varied rabbit hole exploring Conan the Barbarian. Read on if you dare!

Historical Context Part I

At some point in the 80s (can’t remember the exact year, but remember that I was a very young maybe at that point not even teenager) I went with my big brother and some of his friends to a double feature at the Strand Theater in Redondo Beach. We all called it the Strand, but think its name had changed at that point and was called the Marina:

The double feature was none other than two of the most incredible movies made ever: The Road Warrior and Conan the Barbarian. I am unsure how I was allowed in as both are rated R movies, but somehow I was, and boy what an impact these two movies had on my prepubescent psychic. We had recently began playing Dungeons and Dragons so after Conan we spent all sorts of time discussing and analyzing the different weapons and armor used. I really can not express enough how crazy cool these two movies were and are, and to see them back to back when you are like 11 or 12 really marks a before and after.

Historical Context Part II

The Strand / Marina theater was torn down as happens to all cool spots in Redondo Beach to make ugly apartments, but by then I had moved with my older brother to Northern California to live with my dad. We had a VCR and one of my dad’s friends who had Showtime or something recorded a couple movies and passed us a tape that had two movies on it: Conan the Barbarian and Quest for Fire. When we first moved with my dad it was summer and we still had not started school and had no friends so basically spent all summer watching both of these movies, over and over and over. I am quite fortunate that my dad’s friend passed us a tape with such good movies.

Historical Context Part III (and last)

Years later when I moved to Spain and was driving from Madrid to Galica we passed by an exit on the A6 highway to “Zamora”. I instantly recognized Zamora as the city that the witch moaned while Conan was making the beast with two backs with her as hint of where he should continue his quest to find the killers of his village. I had heard that Conan had been filmed in Spain so kinda thought the Witch got the name from there and was only later that I have learned that Zamora features in the original Conan stories as well.

Rabbit Hole Begins

A couple weeks ago I was looking for a movie on The Pirate Bay and as I do whenever visiting the bay I checked the most popular comic Torrents and saw there was a link for Conan the Barbarian - Epic Collection - Queen of the Black Coast so I downloaded it. I had mostly forgotten but at the start of the new years staycation I remembered it, and thought it would be a great way to take advantage of my newly recoved Surface Go as it is the perfect comic reader and I wanted to see if even with Linux I could use it as a comic reader and was very pleased to find MComix in the Debian Software application:

and even more pleased to see that it loaded the 346 page Conan the Barbarian - Epic Collection - Queen of the Black Coast without any problem and I was off and running:

I have never read any of the original Marvel Comics that they started publishing in 1970, rather I have more focused on the Dark Horse versions that were published between 2003 and 2018, mostly because when I was in my comic phase as a kid it was right when Dark Horse got started and had much higher quality paper and more interesting themes than the super heroes that Marvel peddled and have never caught my attention. So, I was very pleased to find the Marvel Conan comics are great and pulled me right in.

I really can’t believe that these things used to be 25 cents, but then again inflation over 56 years adds up:

So as you can imagine, 346 pages of comics occupied lots of my free moments of my new year vacation, but the rabbit hole was just beginning!

Rabbit Hole Turns Right

So at some point I decided to download the Conan the Barbarian movie and watch it as well. I had just started, and as the armed dogs are running through a red forest at the very beginning, I paused it and said holy sheep shooters those are european red pines just like in Cercedilla! So I had to search to see where the exact filming locations were here in spain, and was very pleased that this english guy Alex Sargent has been doing all the heavy lifting finding the actual spots were the movie was filmed back in 1982 and visiting them to see how they are now:

Rabbit Hole Turns Left

Once I had finished watching the movie I was really struck with just what a darn good movie it was and this was not just my boyhood memory. I mean a really good movie, while the next one Arnold made, Conan the Destroyer, is so, so bad. How can that be? The first thing I thought of was that way back when my friend Julio had given me a definitive edition DVD:

And bark like a dog it has two DVDs! The first with the movie and the option to have the commentary of Arnold and the director (not too interesting really as I do not think Arnold had seen the movie since he made it) and the second with all sorts of interesting extra content including a “making of” documentary that was pure pay dirt with interviews of all the main participants that made it what it is (producer, director, set maker, composer, actors, etcetera). This is when I realized a major force in making it so good was the director, John Milius.

Rabbit Hole goes deep

So I began reading about this director. Hummm. Had no idea that he was also a product of the USC film school where his classmates was George Lucas, and pals with Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. And wait, he is the one who did the surf movie Big Wednesday and pretty much created the whole Dirty Harry persona, complete with make my day punk and his other famous one liners. Hummm only logical next step is to download all the movies he directed and watch them!

  • 1973 Dillinger
  • 1975 The Wind and the Lion
    • IMDb 6.8
    • Wow a really good movie with amazing actors, visuals, and historical context. Can’t believe I have never seen this before or even heard of it. Was also, like Conan, filmed in Spain.
  • 1978 Big Wednesday
  • 1982 Conan the Barbarian
    • IMDb 6.9
    • Well, what sent me down this rabbit hole…
  • 1984 Red Dawn
    • IMDb 6.3
    • Wow. I remember this from my youth as well but did not remember it like this (maybe because I did not have a pirated VHS copy that I watched almost every day in the summer of 1984). Good movie but not as good as I remembered it.
  • 1991 Flight of the Intruder
    • IMDb 5.8
    • The last movie John directed and it is pretty bad, despite the fact it has great actors (Danny Glover and William Dafoe) and a really interesting plot line. So clear it takes lots more then just the director to make a good movie. Especially easy to compare this with Top Gun, which is also a movie from my youth that I have seen recently, and it IS as good as I remember it.

Results of this deep dive: I still have not made it through all of them, but would appear a major deferential in his best movies are that they were made in Spain!

Rabbit Hole Exit

So as all vacations must inevitably do, my vacation has ended and I must get back to work and stop reading comics, watching youtube videos, and watching movies. I really enjoyed this rabbit hole ride and appreciate the Conan movie more and think maybe that the next rabbit hole could be his creator, Robert E. Howard!

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).