Conan The Barbarian Blu-ray Review

• 5th Jul 2011

Heralding the imminent arrival of an all new rebooted Conan movie this year, here we have John Milius’s, now classic, 1982 movie being dusted off, polished up and presented in restored high definition format with a few new bells and whistles to boot.

This movie and it’s rather inferior 1984 sequel (Conan: The Destroyer) were covered in detail as part of Filmwerk’s Comic Book Movies 101 series of retrospectives earlier this year. Click here if you want to just nip off and check out that review. We’ll wait for you right here.

Already read it? Then let’s move on with reviewing the Blu…

The first thing you’ll notice is the spanking new menu screen. It’s not mind blowing, but it’s nice to see. The movie is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio with no other audio output options (with the exception of the usual crop of dubbed languages of course.)

OK, so watching the movie I immediately notice what appear to be either fresh title graphics or the illusion of fresh graphics due to the increased clarity of the hi-def medium. Without a direct comparison with the old DVD edition it’s hard to say, but to my eyes (and I’ve watched Conan many many times), they look new. Good start!

A little way into the movie and it’s clear that anyone expecting modern levels of hi-def colour vibrancy or picture density will be slightly disappointed. There’s some picture noise from time to time and blacks, obviously, suffer the most. Having made that observation, the movie always had a dark and foreboding colour palette for the most part, so it would surely be ridiculous to expect it to look like Avatar or something. Interestingly, although I always knew that the ‘scout on the rock’ at the top of the movie was played by two time Mr Olympia (and Arnold’s bezzy chum) Franco Columbu, this was the first time the picture has ever been clear and defined enough to clearly confirm it’s really him. Brownie points there then too!

I think my benchmark for older films performing on Blu-ray is Blade Runner. This was also released originally in 1982, like Conan. I’m no expert of course, so I don’t know if film stock, camera and lens differences (not to mention a big budget differential between the two), would impact how good an older movie can potentially look in hi-def, but it’s fair to say that while Conan looks better than ever, it doesn’t match the clarity, deep density and noiselessness of Blade Runner, which is almost tear jerkingly exemplary.

As usual with older movies, some of the SFX don’t survive unscathed in the transfer to Blu, but luckily Conan only suffers in a few matte and blue screen shots here and there, as it’s a very ‘in camera’ movie for the most part.

This edition restores a lost scene between Conan and Subotai in the calm before the battle of the mounds. I’ve never seen this scene before, and while I understand perhaps why director John Milius originally removed it (it’s reminiscent of their first conversation and unusually dialogue heavy for the strong silent, brooding Conan), I have to admit I really enjoyed its addition. But before you ‘horse fall’ nuts out there get all excited; no, this edition still cuts all the horse fall shots out, as per every other UK edition of Conan. Horse falls are deemed unacceptable to the BBFC and it’s unlikely you’ll ever see them restored to a UK release of the movie. If you really must see the movie with these scenes intact, buy the French version. It has all the horse falls, and an English 5.1 soundtrack.

So what else is there on the disc?

The one disc special edition on standard DVD (which is what I’ve had for years), boasted a decent ‘making of’ documentary (Conan Unchained: The Making Of Conan), as well as a very good commentary with Schwarzenegger and Milius. The two disc edition has even more bells and whistles and, also, a great 5.1 sound mix.

It would seem that the Blu edition mirrors the two disc special edition DVD and in addition to the making of doc, commentary and deleted scenes, also includes the following:

• Art of Steel: The Sword Makers – a pretty good doc featuring some of the guys from Albion Swords showing how Conan’s ‘Atlantean’ sword was/is made. Incidentally, being a bit of a sword and blade nut myself, I’d already heard of Albion in the USA, and know that they now have a European presence (they can be found at www.albion-europe.com). If you absolutely must have a proper Conan sword, these guys can make it
• Conan: From the Vault – lost period interviews – I’d never seen these interview clips before and although not extensive, were definitely worth a watch
• Conan: The Rise of a Legend – as per the title this is a more in depth look at the Conan character in Howard’s literature as well within the Marvel universe
• there are also some other bits and pieces including the Conan Archives, an SFX breakdown sequence, cast and crew info, etc.

As seems to be the case with many Blu-ray releases of pre-hi-def era movies, the results vary from film to film. I’m not sure if this is as a result of technical decisions made at the time, or the differences in the studio’s investment in restorative measures when creating the Blu all these years later. More often than not, the Blu adds enough of a spit and polish to make it worth the outlay (although I hate it when they omit extras available on the old DVD releases for no apparent reason). For my money, this Blu-ray release of Conan should become the default choice: it looks great, particularly those wide shots of that breathtaking landscape; it sounds great (Basil Poledouris’ score is one of the best); and it’s got a very decent clutch of worthwhile extras to boot.

It’s not the most perfectly hi-def movie you’ll see this year, but it’s certainly never looked better, and is well worth checking out particularly before the reboot hits our cinema screens.

As I said at the top of this review, if you’d like to read Filmwerk’s retrospective on Conan: The Barbarian then please do so and enjoy.

Crom!

Ben Pegley