cult film freak: DIRECTOR RICHARD FLEISCHER SECONDS 'CONAN THE DESTROYER'

Title: CONAN THE DESTROYER Year: 1984 Rating: ***1/2

John Milius's CONAN THE BARBARIAN was a passion project for the ruggedly raucous auteur, who loved Robert E. Howard's short stories but with Oliver Stone's overlong and brooding, revenge-driven Spaghetti Western-inspired script, there was hardly anything Howardesque about it despite becoming a rabid cult phenomenon...

And journeyman director Richard Fleischer's far more mainstream and conventional and therefore fan-maligned CONAN THE DESTROYER, replacing exploitive ultra-violence with a more family-oriented, comic book inspired, horse-ridden road movie appeal, actually embodies Howard's original Gothic tales by simply involving a constant handing-off of adventurous tasks and battles that includes good old fashion pre-computerized monster suits and, shot in Mexico, while the landscapes look a bit too clean, the interior sets are both lavish and formidable...

Arnold Schwarzenegger in CONAN THE DESTROYER Wilt Chamberlain, Mako & Tracey Walter

As for the characters, Conan's cowardly sidekick Tracey Walter, an offbeat character-actor mostly used sparingly as quirky burnouts or bizarre thugs, seems more befitting a Saturday Morning cartoon, marring both suspense and urgency in action sequences, while 1980's fad Grace Jones's mere presence is now horribly dated, providing Wilt Chamberlain the most fleshed-out of Conan's overcrowded traveling troupe...

Since, as a loyal bodyguard, he's neither good or bad, despite working for evil queen Sarah Douglas, who wants ingenue princess Olivia D'Abo to be virgin-sacrificed by the end of Conan's chore to keep her protected...

Arnold Schwarzenegger in CONAN THE DESTROYER

And it's the random perilous attempts that make DESTROYER a decent enough ride, providing an-ever shirtless Arnold Schwarzenegger enough reason to flex his savagely savvy, muscular prowess...

Especially being that the deliberately basic plot's to simply get through dangerous situations alive — serious enough business to where the inserted PG-rated humor's simply not needed, and can do more harm than good: yet for a pulp-adapted sword-and-sandal Barbarian yarn, it shouldn't be joyless either.