Conan The Barbarian - From Acheron To Zym!

I got a chance to see Conan the Barbarian while it was still in the theaters, since given the business it's doing, it probably won't be there much longer. I in fact went to an early matinee and had very nearly a private showing (there was one other guy way down front). After seeing the movie, I'm surprised it's doing so badly.

Visually the movie is pretty intense, especially in the early parts of the story. The young Conan is a pretty decent actor and has some really heavy stuff to pull off. Ron Perlman as Conan's dad is pretty dang good and offers up a really intriguing look in the role. In fact all the Cimmerians seemed pretty tough and distinctive. Young Conan takes on some Picts early in the movie and I have to say it's a pretty involving sequence.

When the villain Kalar Zym (played by Steven Lang) shows up with his army things really get to humming as an ancient Acheronian threat forms the spine of this story. There's a real depravity to Zym and his cohorts that sets up Conan as the hero despite his own very violent instincts.


I won't get into the plot so much due to spoilage, but I have to say I completely lost Rose Megowan in her role as a young witch Marique, and that's not a criticism. She looks completely different to me, and very compelling. Less so is the heroine Tamara played by Rachel Nichols, who sadly falls just a tad short of convincing me she belongs in the Hyborian Age. Somehow she comes off as too modern in her speech and manner.

The highlight though of the whole movie is Jason Momoa who looks absolutely stunning as Conan. I found his body type ideal for the role, presenting with plenty of strength, but not coming across as muscle bound by any means. His glowering face is ideal for many scenes and he's one of those actors who can command a scene without talking, a key for anyone playing Conan.


Aside from Momoa, the star of this story is the setting. We flit around the territories of Hyboria with great speed, so much so that frankly I got a bit lost by the end. A map would've served at the beginning to help anchor the action a bit. Lord knows the set up of the film has a sufficiently Lord of the Rings feel anyway, so a map would've fit right in.

The LotR feel though goes away pretty quickly though as we find limited magic in this world, true to Howard's original material, and lots of brawny types who are leaning into one another constantly.

Another area of weakness were two of Conan's friends, a pirate named Artus (Nonso Anozie) and a thief named Ela-Shan (Said Taughmaoui) who show up and disappear according to the whims of the plot, but to my mind never really connect with the others in the story in a really powerful way. Both are somewhat sources of humor, so maybe that plays against them.

There's plenty of battling in this one, so the movie can't be faulted for stiffing its audience looking for swordplay. The love story (such as it is) seems offbeat, and doesn't really connect for me.

I'd give this movie a "B" alas. It's diverting, offers up a great lead and a dandy villain, but doesn't really gel as it ought. Still and all it's still better than Conan the Destroyer and Kull the Conqueror overall. Only the first Conan the Barbarian movie by Milius is a more complete cinema experience. Like that original, this movie too takes its material seriously most of the time, and that's key to making Howard's stuff work, even a little bit.


One thing I did do for this movie that I haven't done in several years is to buy the novelization of the film. I'm curious to see how some of the detail I'm sure I missed is handled in another format. I'd like to learn a bit more about Zym's sidekicks who are visually interesting but don't really get any backstory. They are all warlords defeated by Zym and have sworn allegiance to him, but you get the sense it should be more complicated than that. These adaptations are often quite dry, but contrasting this material by Stackpole to Howard's original stuff makes it at least entertaining on that level.

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Eighth Wonder Of The Skies!

I never noticed how much like the classic King Kong pose (a giant figure appearing to be assaulted by antique airplanes) this debut cover drawn by Herb Trimpe for The Phantom Eagle is. Both this book and the Gold Key King Kong adaptation came out in the same month back in the summer of 1968. That's an oddity sure enough.


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Happy Shining Heroes!

Here's a bright moment in the history of the Avengers. They had just defeated the machinations of their uber-opponent Kang the Conqueror, and they had just added The Black Knight, the hero of the day, to their valiant ranks.

The smiles on the faces in that poster-shot by Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger that wraps up Avengers #71 are shiny and genuine. Curmudgeon Clint Barton is grinning, and you can even get a hint that Tony Stark has a smile behind that mask.


Heroes today alas are all too often grim and overcome by life's cruel ironies. But in this moment at least we see happy heroes (the Vision's implacable visage excepted of course).


Here's the original to that dandy bit of work by Buscema and Grainger, and below is the cover for the Marvelmania Catalog that seems to be another version that captures this moment.


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DC Heroes By Adams!

This is an attractive and compelling image by Neal Adams featuring the DC heroes he is most closely associated with. I remember seeing as a cover for Comic Book Marketplace and being most impressed by it. It's neat to see it in its raw form.

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John Carter's Weird Worlds!

I finally snagged a copy of the Dark Horse reprint of the John Carter of Mars adventures from the back pages of DC's Tarzan and later the Burroughs spin-off Weird Worlds.

I have never read the entire saga, and it was neat to finally get the chance. I let this one slip by me when it first appeared early last year, and I've been looking for another since.

Murphy Anderson
The story of ERB's John Carter as translated by a young Marv Wolfman is straightforward adventure, with Carter's soldier's spirit shining through. Death was commonplace on Barsoom and these stories capture that despite the four-color limits of the medium traditionally. While it's certainly not graphic under the deft lines of Murphy Anderson, there's no lack of lethal swordplay in these chapters.

Anderson supplies the artwork for the majority of this series, with Gray Morrow stepping in for the second chapter, and Sal Amendola taking over the series with the final few chapters. The reproduction of the Anderson work seemed a little grainy to me on certain pages, his feathery light lines not standing up well. I noticed no such deterioration in the other artwork, which was by and large less subtle.

Gray Morrow
John Carter's story is a mad dash once he is transported to Mars/Barsoom. He meets the Tharks and kills many of them and at some undefined point becomes allied with the surly Tars Tarkas. The romance between Carter and Dejah Thoris seems to rocket from nowhere as the series compresses the details of the first novel necessarily. Both Princess of Mars and Gods of Mars are adapted in this short run, and Carter never stops hardly once during the adventures. That has the feel of ERB for sure.

I've long wanted to read these and now I have. I'd love to see the Venus and Pellucidar stuff reprinted sometime too, but with no movie in the offing for either I'd reckon I'll be waiting a while longer for those.

Here's a cover gallery of the comics the John Carter stories appeared in which are in this reprint. He's not featured on many and not mentioned on a few. John Carter had a few more adventures in Tarzan Family, but those stories are not included in the Dark Horse reprint.











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The Unknown!

Now that's a movie! The Unknown, a 1927 silent movie starring Lon Chaney was thought for some time to have been lost. Thank goodness it was rediscovered. I've read that it is an outstanding early "horror" outing by the great man. I got a chance to see this last night and again this morning and I was simply blown away by the overwhelming power of Chaney's performance as "Alonzo the Armless". His intensity is utterly fascinating. I cannot frankly remember a more powerful performance on film. Chaney's face is able to communicate the finest of shifts in mood and thought, making him ideal for the silent form.


This is a tale of old Spain and a circus which fall on bad times after the murder of its owner. The central tale is about the obsessive love Alonzo has for Nanon, the daughter of the owner who doesn't realize that Alonzo is quite literally madly in love with her. She on the other hand seems quite the catch for an armless man since she has a dread of being groped. Another member of the circus, a strong man named Malabar loves her too and that's the rub.


I don't want to say too much about this absorbing and intense movie. Rather let me just show it. Here in six segments is the complete movie. If you've seen it before, I'm sure you'll know what the great surprises are, and if perchance you haven't, the less said the better.

Here is The Unknown directed by Tod Browning and starring Long Chaney and a very fetching Joan Crawford.








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The Unholy Three!

Turner Classic put on a gaggle of Lon Chaney flicks last week and I was able to capture most of them on DVR. I began plowing through them yesterday and picked the first Tod Browning and Lon Chaney match-up for MGM called The Unholy Three.

If you want a pretty good summation of this 1925 movie check out this link. For my purposes, I'll just assume most of you have seen it and plow ahead. Spoilers are in effect.


Lon Chaney as the ventriloquist Echo is pretty interesting at first. The scheme between him and Harry Earles and Victor McLaglen is daffy as can be. Their standing as outsiders seems to make them criminals, or that's the suggestion I take from it. Also their souls are pretty dark, and that's likely less a comment on their physical natures and the result of same than the universal nature of man. We're all pretty shabby critters according to this flick.

I was disappointed in how much of the action of the story was off screen. This is a heist movie in which we never see an actual heist. That's a problem, as it's the physical natures of the men which allow them to commit crime, but we never actually see them physically do it.

Some of the scenes in this movie also drag terribly. Long after the essence of a scene has been communicated we get minutes of rather pointless exchanges between less than compelling characters while apparently off screen very intriguing things are going on. Some strange storytelling choices are made in this one for sure.


Echo's transformation at the end is not very convincing actually. He overcome by guilt for what he and his cohorts have done, but he doesn't actually have to pay the price and that undermines his transformation. The narrative seems to demand he pay a greater price, but inexplicably he doesn't.

The less said about the "giant ape" the better. It's a clever attempt at a solution but the scale work doesn't succeed actually.

If the point of this movie was to present a cache of peculiar images, it does so, but when those images are required to assemble into a compelling tale, they alas fail to comply.

This silent version of The Unholy Three is interesting for Chaney enthusiasts, but it's not really a very grand movie at all.

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