Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A horde of rampaging warriors massacre the parents of young Conan and enslave the young child for years on The Wheel of Pain. As the sole survivor of the childhood massacre, Conan is released from slavery and taught the ancient arts of fighting. Transforming himself into a killing machine, Conan travels into the wilderness to seek vengeance on Thulsa Doom, the man responsible for killing his family. In the wilderness, Conan takes up with the thieves Valeria and Subotai. The group comes upon King Osric, who wants the trio of warriors to help rescue his daughter who has joined Doom in the hills.
Conan the Barbarian is a landmark sword-and-sorcery epic that elevated the genre with John Milius's grandiose direction and Basil Poledouris's thunderous score. Cinematography is genuinely exceptional — Ron Cobb's production design and Duke Callaghan's widescreen photography give the film an epic, mythic scale rarely matched in the genre, earning a strong 4. The plot is archetypal revenge-quest material, functional and satisfying but not particularly intricate — a solid 3. Acting is uneven: Schwarzenegger's limited range is offset by James Earl Jones's magnetic Thulsa Doom and Max von Sydow's regal Osric, landing at 3. Novelty scores 3 — while the film was enormously influential in defining sword-and-sorcery cinema and has a distinctive Milius voice, it draws heavily on Robert E. Howard's existing mythology and follows a fairly straightforward revenge template. The ending is dramatically earned and mythically resonant but somewhat abrupt after the climactic confrontation, settling at 3.