 52 dead bodies.
Two breasts. (Both of
them on Conan.)
Nine gallons human blood.
One gallon green lizard
blood.
Three beasts.
Two heads roll.
One ear-to-ear throat
slitting.
Excellent Kung Fu.
Four stars. Check it out.
[fading] Sometimes flicks like this aren't logical, though. They
want us to think that Wilt Chamberlain is gonna kill Conan the Barbarian.
Everybody knows that Wilt couldn't even play defense on Bill Russell. And
if you're watching, Wilt, please don't beat me up. Don't make me get nasty
-- I'll get all your girlfriends in the same room at the same time, and
we'll get REALLY vicious on you. Wilt is the guy who claims he slept with
20,000 women. I was gonna try to break his record, but have you seen the
prices lately?
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #1
It's already better than the first one, isn't it?
It's faster, it's more interesting, it's got better characters. Arnold is
still going around slugging horses and camels, like in the first movie,
although, come to think of it, that's a direct steal from Blazing
Saddles. Wilt Chamberlain, wearing the world's worst wig and 9,000 pounds
of wet mastodon fur, is still pretty decent in his film daybut. And they
hired the veteran Richard Fleischer to direct. John Milius directed the
first one, and it was not his kinda thing -- as you probably noticed, it
was slow and plodding, even though it ended up making a hundred million
bucks and making the second one even possible. But Richard Fleischer, who
must be in his eighties by now, cause he was doing theater in New York
back in the thirties -- Richard was kinda known as the master of the
big-budget adventure film, like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and
Fantastic Voyage and "Tora Tora Tora" and one of our favorites around
here, "Soylent Green." Actually, he was originally one of those film NWAHR
guys back in the fifties, the guys who did the gritty black-and-white
realism. My two favorite Richard Fleischer flicks are "The New Centurions"
-- remember that one? -- and "Mandingo"! I won't even mention the immortal
Amityville 3-D. Anyway, Richard Fleischer knew exactly what to do with
the Conan story, which was to surround Conan with interesting characters
and limit his dialogue to three words per sequence -- basically turn him
into a fighting machine. And he also knew it wouldn't hurt to dress up the
14-year-old Olivia D'Abo in a nightie with a great bodice on it. Whoa!
How'd they get away with THAT? Put that picture on the Internet and the
FBI Child-Porno Squad comes knocking on your door. Go.
[fading]
Richard Fleischer and Arnold probably reminisced about their Austrian
heritage while making the film. Arnold had just become an American citizen
in 1983 after growing up in Graz, Austria. And Richard was born in
Brooklyn, but his dad was from Vienna. His dad was Max Fleischer, of the
Dave and Max Fleischer animation team, creators of . . . "Popeye"! And
"Betty Boop." So it's in his genes. Those wacky Austrians.
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #2
Isn't Grace Jones great? Grace Jones with a burr
haircut, jousting and head-butting with Wilt Chamberlain, whose hair is
nine feet long! How good is that? She kinda steals the movie with that
wild woman act. The way she got involved in this is that she knew the
producer, Dino De Laurentiis -- actually his daughter Raffaella de
Laurentiis is the producer -- from the seventies, when she was doing weird
low-budget movies in Europe. The last movie she made before "Conan the
Destroyer" was "Army of Lovers or Revolt of the Perverts," a German flick
made in 1978. Can we get that one for the show? I wanna see that. It's in
German -- maybe I don't. Okay, back to the movie.
[fading] I have
nothing against Germans, but they always have these black-and-white
flashback scenes where a mime dances on a clown's head with an umbrella in
his hand and then slits his throat. You know what I'm talking about? You
guys need to get out more. The Flashback Mime Sequence! They teach it in
German film school! Sometimes the flashback sequence has Santa Claus
dressed in drag, butchering a pig or something. They're all arTEESTS over
there.
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #3
[rushing into his chair] Okay, what was that? They're
doing it again. That was about a two-minute segment. Don't you guys have
any RESPECT for the hard-working students of "Joe Bob's Summer School"?
The wizard stole Olivia D'Abo, and she's gonna be the first to do
SOMETHING in a thousand years. We wanna find out what it is, okay? Good
grief. Okay, back to the movie.
[fading] I think I represent the
typical TNT viewer when I say that you should just CHARGE MORE for the
commercials, and have LESS of em. Right? See, there's gonna be a memo
Monday morning. "Dear Mr. Briggs." Signed "Vice President/ Sales and
Marketing." And I'm gonna be rattlin a paper cup in front of
Blooming-dale's. But that's okay, it felt good for about 20 seconds. No
regrets, right?
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #4
What happened to Grace Jones? There's VERY little
Grace Jones during this part. Okay, I think it might be helpful at this
point to sum up the entire plot thus far. It starts out with Arnold the
Barbarian hacking off nine or ten body parts with his thousand-pound
Wilkinson Sword machete. Then he decks a horse with a roundhouse right,
like Alex Karras in "Blazing Saddles." And then this British bi***-queen
comes up and tells Arnold to stop messing around with her guards and go
bring back the precious jewel from the sorcerer's palace cause otherwise
there's no movie. So Arnold says what's in it for him? The royal bi***
says if Arnold will take her virgin daughter to the jewel, then she'll
bring Sandahl Bergman back to life. Arnold says "Really!" Then a camel
vomits on Arnold and Arnold has to deck him. Then Conan gets the virgin
and starts off for the magic palace with his sidekick, a weenie named
Maalox or something who looks like Gene Hackman's midget brother. But at
the last minute the Bi*** Queen decides to send Wilt Chamberlain along for
the ride. So Wilt puts on a spiked helmet with horns and the queen tells
him, as soon as they get the jewel, to kill Conan. Then they go riding off
through the desert until they find these white-face zombies roasting a
Chinese guy on a spit. Arnold hacks off a few heads and cuts the Chinese
guy loose and tells the guy he needs him for his journey. The Chinese guy
wears a beanie and mutters a lot. Then they go to a town where Grace Jones
has her leg chained up and she's fighting off six guys with a spear, and
the virgin princess sees what's going on -- and, by the way, Olivia D'Abo
looks like she got lost on her way to the Celine Dion concert, don't you
think? Anyway, Olivia thinks it's not fair cause there's six guys against
one girl in chains. So Arnold goes over and cuts Grace Jones loose from
the chain, and Grace takes a big stick and starts poling people in their
privates. Then Grace decides to join the big party on the way to the
palace. Then there's a bunch of plot where they go to the palace and get
the jewel and kill the one-eyed magician with gold fingers and Arnold has
to wrestle a giant gorilla-man in a red cape who comes out of a
mirror-house and then the palace falls to pieces and they get away. Then
Wilt starts acting funny and they get ambushed by some Vikings and they
get all banged up, and Wilt tries to kill Conan but he has a GOOD
EXPLANATION, so Conan is too stupid to BELIEVE that Wilt is trying to kill
him. And that's about it. Right? Does that sum it up? Okay, back to the
movie.
[fading] Cause people go to the bathroom, they miss stuff.
I did that as a consumer service. They don't do that on TBS. You know what
they do over there? I don't even think they WATCH the movie. I can't prove
it. But it's not ABOUT the movie over there. It's about personal greed and
ambition. I'm sorry, but that's just my own personal opinion. . . . They
don't make more money than me, do they? We still beat them in the ratings,
right?
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #5
Wow! A short segment, and a LAME segment. Olivia
D'Abo learns how to fight, and then asks what sex is. Of course, since
1984 she's LEARNED what sex is, in movies like "Greedy," "The Last Good
Time," and "Live Nude Girls." This was her first movie ever, after
training with the London Royal Ballet Theatre, and then she went on to her
most famous role, as the hippie older sister Karen Arnold, on "The Wonder
Years." The year 1984 was also the year that Arnold Schwarzenegger became
a superstar. This movie came out, and then right after this came "The
Terminator." Because, up till then, he'd struggled a little bit. Not as
much as the NORMAL person, but he'd struggled as a movie actor. For those
of you who DON'T know by now, Arnold grew up in Graz, Austria, the son of
the police chief of Graz, who was a stern man and a former member of the
Nazi Party. So at the age of 15, he rebelled against his dad. His dad
wanted him to be a professional soccer player, but Arnold wanted to be a
pro bodybuilder. He moved to the United States in 1968, went to the
University of Wisconsin, majored in business and economics. And his
bodybuilding career took off. He was billed as "The Austrian Oak," and he
won Mr. World, Mr. Universe five times, and Mr. Olympia seven times.
Ironically, he's so rich today that he OWNS both the Mr. Universe and the
Mr. Olympia pageants. Anyway, he retired undefeated in 1980, and during
all those years he was trying to get into the movies. He made "Hercules in
New York" in 1970, under the name "Arnold Strong," but it was so bad it
was never released until 1983. He was in Bob Rafelson's "Stay Hungry," as
a bodybuilder. And he first came to prominence in "Pumping Iron" in 1977,
one of the greatest documentaries ever made -- love that movie! But he
really didn't need the money anyway, because he had invested all his
bodybuilding winnings, and the revenues he got from his mail-order
real-estate business, and he was already a millionaire by the time he
became an American citizen in 1983. Then he married Maria Shriver, and up
until 1993 he held the distinction of being the ONLY major movie star who
had never had a flop. Unfortunately, that's the year he released "The Last
Action Hero." Still a pretty remarkable story. Okay, let's get back to the
picture.
[fading] That's still his only flop, right? Well, there's
"Junior." Well, there's "Batman and Robin." Hey, the man's 52-years-old,
he's eventually gonna screw up, okay?
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #6
Too much plot getting in the way of the story. We got
jewels, we got magic horns, we got wizards, we got curses and prophecies.
You know, if you read the original "Conan" books, the stories are kinda
simple. It's too bad, but even in the best "Conan" movies, they don't
really achieve what the books did. Robert E. Howard wrote 12 "Conan"
novels back in the thirties. Robert was a Texas good ole boy, lived out in
Cross Plains, Texas, in the area of West Texas we call the Cross Timbers
-- middle of goldang NOWHERE. Land of the scrub oak and the mesquite. And
he never traveled farther than Fort Worth his whole life. He would go to
Fort Worth for boxing matches, but that was the only traveling he did. He
liked guns and he liked writing stories, and he hated snakes. Which, when
you live in West Texas, you deal with rattlesnakes all the time. You
notice how there's always a deadly snake scene in every Conan story?
Anyway, Robert E. Howard never made much money, never got married, just
lived with his mother in a little frame house and sent stories off to the
pulp magazines in New York. Wrote detective stories. Wrote poetry. Wrote
western stories. But the most original thing he created was these
barbarian stories. And then in 1936 his mother died, and he couldn't deal
with it, so he typed a few last lines on his typewriter, got out his
pistol, went out to the car and committed suicide. They buried him next to
his mother. He was 30 years old. And when the local newspaper reporter
went in the house, he found a sheet of paper still in the typewriter, and
he pulled it out because it was Robert E. Howard's last words. And it was
a poem: "All fled, all done,/ So left me on the pyre./ The feast is over/
The lamps expire." Okay, back to the movie.
[fading] What? They
love it when I tell gloomy stories. You can go to the main cemetery there
in Brownwood and see Robert E. Howard's grave. When he was alive, nobody
really even knew he was a writer. Now they have Robert E. Howard festivals
out there, in Brownwood and Cross Plains. Ever been to Cross Plains? Whoa!
You take the worst desert they show in this movie -- it's WORSE. NOT a
very pretty part of Texas. Looks like a giant fell on it and mashed all
the trees into mush.
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Commercial
Break #7
That wily Wilt Chamberlain -- you knew he was gonna
steal the girl, didn't you? Okay, time for the big special-effects
jamboree conclusion to "Conan the Destroyer," where Conan finally squares
off against Dagoth, the monster created by Carlo Rambaldi, creator of
"E.T." You know the only thing I DON'T like about this picture? Wilt is
great, Grace Jones is great, Mako is great as Akiro the Wizard. Olivia
D'Abo is okay as the 14-year-old virgin princess. But it's the
comic-relief sidekick. Tracey Walter is okay as an ACTOR, but I just don't
think we NEED that guy. One too many characters in the movie. But then,
that's just MY opinion. All right, roll it.
[fading] Wilt
Chamberlain, captain of the greatest team in NBA history, the 1966-67
Philadelphia 76ers. Am I right? Chet Walker, Hal Greer, Billy Cunningham,
Luke Jackson, Wali Jones -- Matt Guokas. You know why it was greater than
modern teams? Slam-dunking was illegal. And you know why slam-dunking was
illegal? Cause they actually made up rules to PENALIZE Wilt. They widened
the lane because of Wilt. They invented offensive goal-tending because of
Wilt. They changed the free-throw rules because of Wilt. You know Wilt had
one year where he AVERAGED 50.4 points a game? You know how many times he
scored 50 points or more? 118. You know how many times he scored SIXTY
points or more? Thirty-two. 30,000 points in his career. They said he was
a womanizer, you know, but I think he worked harder than he
womanized--cause he estimates there were only 20,000 women. So look at
your figures -- 30,000 points, only 20,000 women. Work was a priority with
the guy.
"CONAN THE DESTROYER" Outro
So Conan passes up the 14-year-old jailbait virgin queen, in
order to go his lonely barbarian way. Although, I guess in barbarian times
there was no such thing as jailbait. Let's just not go down that road,
okay? "Conan the Destroyer," the film deemed "Unsuitable" by the Dallas
Motion Picture Classification Board, even though it got a PG from the MP
double-A. Universal had to go to court to get it released as a PG in
Dallas.
Okay, I wanna thank our special guest-lecturer Karen
Voight for helping us out tonight. And I wanna remind you that next week's
Summer School class is on Applied Aeronautics from World War II to Five
Minutes Ago, and our guest will be former Air Force pilot Rusty the TNT
Mail Girl. I'd like to be HER co-pilot if you know what I mean and I think
you do. And we'll be watching the wacky Air Force comedy Hot Shots! and
the third in the Lou Gossett action-flick series, Aces: Iron Eagle III.
That's it for me, Professor Joe Bob, reminding you here on
Bodybuilding Night that inside every fat person is a thin person
struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces
of chocolate cake.
You guys hear the one about Hercules, Sleeping
Beauty and Quasimodo, who were talking one day? Hercules says, "I reckon
I'm the strongest person in the world!" Sleeping Beauty says, "I reckon
I'm the most beautiful person in the world." Quasimodo says, "I reckon I'm
the ugliest person in the world." So they go down to the Guinness Book of
Records to have their claims ratified. Hercules comes out first looking
very happy. "It's official, I AM the strongest person in the world."
Sleeping Beauty comes out next looking ecstatic and says, "And I AM
officially the most beautiful person in the world." Quasimodo comes out
looking crestfallen and says, "Who the hell is Linda Tripp?" Joe Bob
Briggs, reminding you that the drive-in will never die.
[fading] A
big movie producer is talking about his new project -- an action picture
about famous composers with several top stars. Sylvester Stallone,
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger are there. The studio
wants the box office power of all three of em, so the producer tell them
they can pick whichever composer they want to play. Stallone says, "Well,
I've always liked Mozart. I'd love to play him." Van Damme says, "Chopin
has always been my favorite. I'll play him." The producer is really happy,
and says, "Sounds great, but who do you want to be, Arnold?" And Arnold
says, "I'll be Bach."
"They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds." Wilt Chamberlain
Back to Monstervision
Arnold returned as Conan ... in Red Sonja
You best start believing in ghost stories...you're in one. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl 
Here, there be monsters
Host segment transcript ©1999 Turner Network Television. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved
|
"CONAN THE
DESTROYER" Intro (host segments continued from Conan the Barbarian)
