They arrive in the throne room just as Dagoth begins to move. Jehnna has finally figured out that her aunt is a psycho bitch, but maybe too late, because they’ve stuck the horn on the forehead of Dagoth-at this point he looks like a statue of a spaced-out guy-and as soon as he begins to move, Jehnna will be toast at the hands of the high priest and his nasty knife.Ĭonan kills Bombaata, and his little band does the same to a bunch of other guys. Their number now reduced to four after they dig out, the band reaches Shadizar just as the “ceremony” begins. At least, not until the horn has been retrieved and, as they escape through a tunnel after killing half of the whackos, old #13 brings a ton of rocks down on him and the others and flees with Jehnna. Even when they’re ambushed by the queen’s men on the way, and Bombaata appears to take their side, Conan (the Gullible) doesn’t figure it out. The six next travel to a temple where the horn of Dagoth is guarded by a bunch of religious whackos. They succeed, though not before Conan, in a cool scene, does battle with a man-ape in a weird roomful of mirrors. First stop: an ice fortress in the middle of a lake, where Thoth-Amon, a wizard, possesses the gem that they seek.
( Oy!) On the journey they pick up a wizard named Akiro (Mako, reprising his role from the first film) and an amazon warrior named Zula (the wild, acting-challenged Grace Jones).
Sheltered from men and in the throes of raging hormones, teenager Jehnna (a terminally cute and minimally acting-challenged Olivia d’Abo) is kind of whiny and pushy, but she also has the hots for Conan. For that, she’ll bring Valeria back to life. She wants Conan to accompany her niece, Princess Jehnna, on a quest to retrieve first a gem, then a horn. The nasty Queen Taramis of Shadizar (Sarah Douglas, even nastier as über-villain Ursa in the old Superman films) approaches with her head guardsman, Bombaata (the acting-challenged Wilt Chamberlain, who should’ve stuck to basketball). Howard’s brooding Cimmerian, mooning after his lost love Valeria, who died in the first film, while fellow thief Malak (the always annoying Tracey Walter) sizes up their loot from a recent heist. The story opens with Conan, author Robert E. (Some even make Arnold look good.) But what the heck, it’s mildly entertaining, and it’s a sword & sorcery flick, and there has never been enough of those to go around.
There is much wrong with Conan the Destroyer-a good deal of which has to do with an acting-challenged cast. While Conan the Barbarian is a true guilty pleasure-I love the film-I had to stop myself short of referring to its sequel as a guilty displeasure. At the time I also hinted at a post about Arnold’s 1984 sequel, Conan the Destroyer. Must be a lot of Conan-or Arnold-fans out there. Since that time this particular post has received more views than any of the others I’ve done on my blog. Over two years ago I wrote a “Guilty Pleasures” post for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first screen romp as Conan the Barbarianin 1982.
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