owned by an austrian

heya

so time an circumstance has facilitated, for me, the chance and opportunity to watch (considerably) more films than had been the case of late, look you see. rather than use this wisely to see a few films from the last couple of decades that i have not been or felt able to, of course i have rather gone ahead and watched a thirty seven (37) year old b (or c) grade film what i have seen a fair few times before. there is every ounce of comfort in familiarity. 

yes, then, i found myself watching Conan The Destroyer recently. this would be the thus far, and increasingly appearing to be only (sadly) sequel to the riotous, insane original Conan The Barbarian, once again featuring a prime Arnold Schwarzenegger in the titular role. for the sake of completeness, indeed i did see the remake, re-imagining of the original, starring him out of Game of Dragons and that super hero thing where he was Water Bloke or whatever; it was pretty good but like this particular film did a trifle suffer from being all rather toned down. 

provenance appears to be an important consideration for many of you reading these. well, to go back, the first time what i saw this film was early one Saturday or Sunday morning. i rented it off of petrol station at Marton Shops, back when they both let you have petrol stations right next to school and the video nasty scare really had not happened yet, so basically anyone of any age could walk into a video shop and pretty much rent any title. great days, somewhat revived by that "internet" thing, where just about anyone can access anything, irrespective of the wishes of any censors. me and a mate, who i am not sure i can mention the name of with all the fuss around privacy these days, watched it and found it to be good. subsequent to that i probably watched it another few times in the late 80s. 

i got a little distracted there. anyway, this potentially final watching of the film (to clarify Conan The Destroyer) came via one of them DVD things. one which i got really, really cheap. any by accident. on a whim i felt compelled to have some Grandmaster Flash (occasionally but by no means exclusively with the Furious Five) on the go in my vehicle as i drove around. this i found in the form of one of them free discs what newspapers gave away in the late 90s and early 00s here in the UK. someone had got a load, and was selling them off along the lines of getting 5 for the cost of 4. he had them all priced different, but i think i ended up with 5 (five) discs for just north of £4. most agreeable. indeed i have enjoyed hearing Grandmaster Flash at the correct volume once more, but surely it is more appropriate to discuss the film i have raised as an ostensible subject here. 

the plot? a vaguely but well defined thing. it seems that Conan had opted to spend his spare, or if you like free, time after Conan The Barbarian moping around the shrine to his deceased lover, praying and meditating and what have you, just waiting for people to come along to either offer him a quest or present themselves as being ready for a twatting off of his massive sword. both happen, with evil queen Sarah Douglas (out of Superman II) offering to bring his lass back to life if he succeeds with a dangerous quest. Conan finds this a most agreeable deal to broker. 

 

above is indeed one particular highlight of the quest Conan (and his chums) go(es) on, where he has to twat a great big sort of lizard type man, bearing a vague resemblance to them alien things out of V what was being made or broadcast around the same time this shall have been in production. but of course this battle requires Conan to use both his impressive strength and generally unheralded cognitive thinking, and i shall leave you to work out who may well have won the duel. 

now, rather than then, i found this to be rather comfortable, relaxing and agreeable viewing. back in my just prior to teenage years and then in early teenage years i no doubt found this very exciting, great and quite class. in the present (or of writing) time, i found it enjoyable enough to watch a movie what i more or less recalled what happened in, but was pleasantly surprised by the one or two moments i had forgotten of. maybe it is an age thing, but i find more enjoyment in watching what i know rather than committing to exploring something new, mostly. 

had i not stumbled upon the disc whilst i was looking for something else (having honestly forgotten that i purchased it), no, i probably would not have watched Conan The Destroyer again. if it were so that i was going to specifically watch an 80s made sword twatting film, then i surely would have selected or chosen the greatest of them all, the magnificence of The Sword And The Sorcerer. which, now that i think, i may well watch again soon. second choice would indeed have been Conan The Barbarian. but, as an accidental find and watch, it worked out fine. 

should it have been so that i wished, in a specific sense, to watch a Schwarzenegger film then it is equally unlikely i would have directly chosen this. my leaning would have been to once again watch his brilliant homoerotic romantic comedy Commando, or possibly the anthropological based, botany project joys of Predator. or yes, that one where he was the naked robot out of the future. but again, this one did just fine, thanks. 

there are many known flaws with the film. for some reason, and against all advice, a decision was made to attempt to make this film accessible to a wider audience than the original. doing this meant toning down several of the elements of the original. sure, there is a significant amount of decapitations and other sword based misfortunes in this film, but nowhere near as graphic or frequent as the original. also, all of that sort of thing (sex) is gone. whilst the original was a dark, gruesome and often erotic fantasy for a mature audience, this is kind of a lighter adventure thing. 

oddly, or strangely, this "toned down" version of Conan actually still worked. brilliant, or at least interesting and engaging, storytelling does not really need excessive tricks like sex and violence, nice though both are from time to time to watch. everything about this film says that there could have been more films, but at the time audiences were not particularly interested in the genre or the less saucy approach, and Schwarzenegger was not all that interested either. 

ah, yes, an unequivocal triumph of Conan The Destroyer is the very, very welcome and excellent presence of Grace Jones as a dangerous, somewhat demented wandering (and very violent) bandit type character. she is class in general, and i would say this is her finest film moment. of course, many would quite reasonably argue her greatest moment was that time when Sir Roger Moore very nearly got, to be frank, f****d to death off of her as May Day in A View To A Kill, which was agreeable. but here at least she has considerably more to do that use her apparently immense sexual prowess to knack Sir Roger, and does so with class and style. 

for those of us in the UK (or as it was, if them with no grasp of reality or in particular economics get their way and break the union so as to live in squalor), there was a somewhat more direct in terms of interest in the cast of the film. 

yes, quite poorly filmed off of the tele by me but still, that is indeed Pat Roach, better known as Bomber out of Auf Wiedersehen Pet. or however one spells it, much like English i would not say languages are a strong point for me. here, in Conan The Destroyer, rather than playing a bricklaying wrestler, he is cast as some sort of warlock or wizard, the keeper of a massive diamond what is needed to unlock the horn for some statute or other. 

Bomber out of Auf Wiedersehen Pet (or whatever) actually had a fairly strong cinematic career in the early 80s. from memory, i believe it was so that he ended up getting twatted twice by Indiana Jones in two different films. also, he twatted Sir Sean Connery a bit in Never Say Never Again, before getting twatted by Sir Sean. he appeared not to get cast in any romantic roles, or anything overtly dramatic. 

the final scene of Conan The Destroyer (perhaps i should have put a spoiler warning somewhere, but never mind now) promised a third installment, be it King Conan or Conan The Conqueror, with the latter likely to maintain a sequence of titles. despite being mooted, and finance being solicited, over the course of the last thirty or so years, it never got made. a bit of a shame, really, as there was every potential to make decent adventures with the whole concept, but there we go. 

perhaps i shall go and buy a somewhat larger telly (or tele) than what i am currently using, which is a serviceable but limited 19" (i think) screen one. this, i think, would be an appropriate and respectable thing to do to watch The Sword & The Sorcerer once more, now that the film has come to mind. class, it was, full of all sorts of violence and nudity and what have you. well, mostly them two. 

right, well, that would be that. i mean there is probably more i could say on the subject, but i would imagine doing so shall just test the patience of anyone reading.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!