I recently mentioned a famous historical anecdote, attributed to the Assassins, that found its way into John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian:
Thulsa Doom: Yes! You know what it is, don’t you boy? Shall I tell you? It’s the least I can do. Steel isn’t strong, boy, flesh is stronger! Look around you. There, on the rocks; a beautiful girl. Come to me, my child…
Thulsa Doom: [coaxes the girl to jump to her death]
Thulsa Doom: That is strength, boy! That is power! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! Such a waste. Contemplate this on the tree of woe. Crucify him!
Another famous tidbit comes into the movie when the quasi-Mongol leader asks, “Conan, what is good in life?”
Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.
The original quote is, of course, attributable to Genghis Khan:
Conan’s response to the Mongol General is an abbreviation of a real quote attributed to Gengis Khan: “The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”Conan’s opinion of what is best in life is not all that links him to Genghis Khan. Subotai (or Subedei Baghadur) was also the name of Great Khan’s general. The fact that Conan is not only chased but to some extent orphaned by dogs also recalls Genghis Khan’s well-documented fear of that particular animal. Finally, the writers’ preoccupation with steel seems oddly coincidental, given that Genghis Khan’s birthname, Temujin, is frequently translated as “finest steel.”
The movie isn’t simply a hodgepodge of historical tidbits; it’s also a hodgepodge of Robert E. Howard stories, not all of them Conan stories:
The name “Valeria” comes from the heroine of the novella “Red Nails.” The theft of the tower in Zamora is from “The Tower of the Elephant.” The speech King Osric gives about the throne room becoming a prison echoes a similar passage in “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune,” a King Kull story. The scene where Conan is crucified and kills a vulture with his teeth is from “A Witch Shall Be Born.” Finally, the scene where Valeria vows to come back from the dead to save Conan and then does so is from “Queen of the Black Coast.”
In fact, the antagonist of the movie, Thulsa Doom, is King Kull’s arch nemesis, not Conan’s — and his film version has its own origin:
Thulsa Doom and his warriors are patterned after the Teutonic knights from Alexander Nevsky. The similarities between the two are very striking. From the helmets, body armor, weapons and mannerisms. Thulsa Doom’s even has the same pageboy haircut has the Teutonic Knight’s commander. Milius even went on to use the same Prokiev score for the work prints and pre-release trailers while Poledouris’s score was still being worked on.
The more you look, the more homages you find:
The scene in which Conan is covered with the cryptic writings of the wizard (Mako) to protect him from evil spirits is an adaptation of a chapter of Kwaidan titled “Hoichi the Earless”. In this chapter, a priest covers Hoichi with Japanese characters, writing out a holy Buddhist text on his body to protect him from the spirits of the dead come to claim Hoichi’s life.
As A Critical Appreciation of Conan the Barbarian points out, the film draws its themes from Nietzsche.