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A few months back, on the suggestion of a friend, I decided to watch a documentary that’s currently floating around on Netflix. The documentary, Milius for those potentially interested in seeing it for themselves, details the life and career of writer & director John Milius, from the beginning of his career in the 70s to the present. Although Milius is not what you might call a ‘household name’, his body of work speaks for itself. Dirty Harry, Dillinger, Red Dawn, Jaws, The Hunt for Red October and most famously Apocalypse Now, all films that John Milius had a hand in, whether it was through writing, directing or both. Unfortunately, his controversial attitude and unwillingness to compromise, unlike his friends Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, eventually lead to his ostracization from Hollywood and the burying of his legacy. At least we can still watch the movies he did get to make, and in doing so honor the man’s work. It’s the ultimate honor for a director I suppose.
You can tell a lot about a man from the movies he makes, and John Milius is no exception. He’s an American classicist to coin a phrase, a devotee of the idealized man popularized by figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway in the early 20th century. A old-school type of conservative, who envisions an absolutist world not judged in terms of good vs evil, but ‘me vs the world’. Often this took the form of gun-toting vigilantes, such as Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry or the Wolverines in Red Dawn, but there was an occasion when Milius went beyond gangsters or soldiers and settled firmly into the realms of fantasy. It was a blockbuster, and the first film to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star. It’s the days of high adventure, and the film is Conan the Barbarian.
Based on the pulp novels of Robert E. Howard (a pen pal of H.P. Lovecraft, by the way), Conan the Barbarian tells the tale of Conan of Cimmeria, a frozen land on the ancient continent of Hyperborea. When he is but a child, young Conan sees his parents and his village killed before his eyes by black-cloaked raiders, whose leader had piercing eyes and a pendent of intertwining serpents. Growing up as a slave, Conan is forged by back-breaking labor and mortal kombat into a warrior unmatched in the martial arts. After escaping from his captors, the now adult Conan forges his own path, searching for the raider who killed his people and his parents. The raider, as it turns out, is the mystical Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), leader of the nihilistic snake cult that is infesting the land like a plague. The legend of Conan the Barbarian shall be written in blood, and his inevitable clash with Thulsa Doom shall be its first chapter. So it is said, so shall it be.
Much like the world of his friend George Lucas’ Star Wars, the world of Milius’ Conan is enormous and teeming with life. It’s a world from out of time, a world of kings and wizards, where evil spirits stalk the night and the only thing you can rely on are your wits and your blade. It’s Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Siegfried, the updated model of the old heroic myth. Well maybe it isn’t as big as all that, but it is a pretty good movie, and if you like bloody tales of revenge in an ancient mystical land, try putting on Conan the Barbarian this Halloween. You just might like it.
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