What the hell?!?!?!?! I pull my head out of my ass, and God blinks.

First, Irish raped REPO MAN. Then, he urinated over the great THE THING. BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA gets defecated upon.

Yet for once, he gets the opinion right on a great 80's movie.

Donner's SUPERMAN and Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS start off as great myths that end up abandoning the mythic storytelling for finales full only of action sequences. I really love those movies, but you know I'm right.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN is maybe the only comic book "mythology" movie from Hollywood that begins and concludes as an outright satisfying myth of adventure and in storytelling.

Maybe its because of writer/director John Milius. He's more known as the right-wing gun nut who happened to be a scriptwriter of APOCALYPSE NOW, helmed the infamous RED DAWN, and the basis for John Goodman's character in THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Yet politics aside, Milius is a very philosophical writer with brains, and also not wanting to be a pussy in terms of action.

I mean Irish, you would agree that there is two thing about CONAN THE BARBARIAN that you won't ever see in Hollywood with such "comic book fare." One, the R-rating. When people get slashed, they get SLICED. People get rammed hard. There is nothing kiddie about this material.

Second, the finale. Any other comic book action movie, it would be yet another boring-ass finale fight between the hero and the villain. Instead, Milius rehashes the ending of APOCALYPSE NOW, and it actually works better for CONAN than it did for AN.

As for CONAN THE DESTROYER, its pathetic. Basically Dino DeLaurentiis got pissed that Milius told him to fuck off, so Milius was canned, and the movie's approach went from a hard-R to a PG-rating. The idea was that the sequel would earn more than BARBARIAN did, with the bigger tent theory.

The problem? the sequel grossed LESS than BARBARIAN. Besides, DESTROYER was mediocre, Wilt the Stilt not withstanding.

If anything, there are only two movies where Arnold Schwarzenegger actually acted, and acted WELL. That would be THE TERMINATOR, and CONAN. With his own hand, Arnold made himself King of Hollywood for a few years...but that is another story.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982) - ****1/2
CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984) - **