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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Conan the Destroyer (Basil Poledouris)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're extremely devoted to Basil Poledouris' music
for Conan the Barbarian and are willing to overlook comparatively
poor performance execution and recording quality for a continuation of
the same sound.
Avoid it... in its original form and instead seek the 2011 re-recording of the complete score if you hold Conan the Barbarian with such high regard that you can't tolerate hearing inadequate players mangle parts of its lesser sequel.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Conan the Destroyer: (Basil Poledouris) With the
stunning success of John Milius' Conan the Barbarian two years
earlier, a sequel featuring Conan once again in Robert E. Howard's
Hyborean age was inevitable. Not returning for the successor, though,
was the same brutally classic vision of the fictional age that Milius
and Oliver Stone and had created in the first film, seeking to replace
an "R" rating with a "PG" alternative. Some will argue that follow-up
director Richard Fleischer, a veteran filmmaker in his own right, built
a spin-off of the Hyborean age in the sequel film, exploring a different
avenue that developed other aspects of Conan's character and his
surroundings. Others insist that Conan the Destroyer was a
monumental failure because it lost the classic realism, solitude, and
weight that made the first film so enticing. The majority of audiences
agreed with the latter opinion, tired of Conan and exhausted by the
1980's bombardment of fantasy adventure films set in ancient times.
Substantial difficulties finalizing a script for Conan the
Destroyer caused immense dissatisfaction across the board, including
with the ascendant Arnold Schwarzenegger, who consequently refused to
return to the franchise for a planned third entry. Other than the
executive production team, only three elements returned for the sequel:
actors Schwarzenegger and Mako and composer Basil Poledouris. Despite
early ideas of utilizing a pop/rock score for the first film, Poledouris
had beaten the odds and produced one of the finest pre-historic
orchestral scores in the history of cinema. Decades later, Conan the
Barbarian still stands as perhaps the most outstanding achievement
of Poledouris' career, and a concert of music from that score
represented the composer's final public appearance shortly before his
death in 2006. Thus, the return of his musical tone for Conan the
Destroyer was an immediate necessity. In the interim, he had written
less ballsy, more traditionally fantasy-oriented concept music for
Universal Studios' live action production, "The Adventures of Conan: A
Sword and Sorcery Spectacular," in 1983, a preview of the path away from
the gravity of Conan the Barbarian in its lesser cinematic
sibling.
Poledouris was put at a tremendous disadvantage with Conan the Destroyer, contending with not only the abandonment of the scope and attitude that made the first score a classic but also forced to write for a smaller, inferior orchestra with no chorus. His resulting score, relying at times upon synthetic sweeteners, suffers from some of the same exhaustion that hindered the film even though the composer once again attempted to recreate a sound for ancient times that did not follow any of the rhythmic or lyrical rules of modern music. His work reflects the director's lighter, more humorous take on the series and offers a sound that is far less weighty in its dramatic appeal. Because of this shifted emphasis, the score for Conan the Destroyer moves with greater agility on its feet while also utilizing a less domineering thematic presence. Most of the major themes from the first film do make cameo appearances in the sequel, though Poledouris usually alters their structures or only states them in fragments. Thus, listeners hoping for straight forward and lengthy recapitulations of the previously established themes will be disappointed. Likewise, Poledouris' three or four new motifs for the score are not as singularly memorable and are often manipulations of previous ideas in their foundations. Returning is the opening Crom theme from the first film, though its primary statement at the outset of the sequel was absent from the 1992 album release. Also representing the universe of Conan are portions of the underlying rhythms and secondary phrases of the "Riders of Doom" cue that often accompanies movement on horseback, as heard in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Dream Quest," among others. Conan's own theme, originally from "Riddle of Steel," is less utilized, unfortunately, though a mutation of its more lyrical progressions does give the character a somewhat fresh identity for the sequel. The "Valeria is Hot" and "Valeria Remembered" cues do offer hearty performances of the love theme from Conan the Barbarian, but much of this material was cut from the film. The slow, pounding theme for the religious mass at Thulsa Doom's mountain in the first film makes an oddly out of place, ill-advised appearance in "Approach to Shadizaar" (also known as just "Shadizaar"). The rollicking rhythms from "The Orgy" return awkwardly in "Dagoth Ceremony" while the "Wheel of Pain" cue is reworked rather nicely with new percussive layering in "Door Lift." Poledouris had originally intended to score Conan the Destroyer with a fair amount of material from the prior movie, and despite realizing that this approach was untenable due to the shifted personality of the second film, he still managed to fill time with these existing themes. Sorely missing from the sequel, however, is the vivacious civilization theme, which is odd given Conan's return to the same locations (and meeting the same camel of punching fame) in the sequel. The two most prominent new themes in Conan the Destroyer are adequately summarized in "Elite Guard Attacks" and "Crystal Palace." Especially of note is the Western-styled idea foreshadowing Cherry 2000 at 4:00 into the latter cue. The action-packed confrontation and battle music in these cues exists at nearly the same level as Poledouris' previous effort. He also transforms the overarching Crom theme for the franchise into an effective dueling motif that culminates into a major force in the massive "Conan & Bombaata Battle," a cue that also makes strong use of the sequel score's rhythmic fighting motif. A rhythmic, rising minor-third motif in "Crystal Palace" is responsible for reflecting the lumbering movements of the story's main, adversarial beast. The highly focused theme for the evil queen and her guards resides in "Elite Guard Attacks" and is a spin-off of the processional music from the prior score. While some listeners consider the primary theme of Conan the Destroyer to be the mutation of the titular character's more lyrical passages from the first score, there really isn't much unique identity to this idea in the sequel to qualify it as truly new outside of its seldom applied interlude sequence. More intriguing is the use of Poleoduris' uplifting theme for Conan from the 1983 "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" soundtrack in "Conan the Destroyer," a cue also showcasing this score's use of harpsichord tones. The composer assembled his major new ideas and sprinkled them into his "Main Title" and "End Credits" cues, but these moments were butchered in the film and not provided on the original soundtrack album. Because these cues and several other major sequences were rearranged, layered with source material, or simply left unscored in the final cut of the movie, the narrative of this score suffers significantly. If not for associations with themes from the prior work, in fact, this one would have no functioning narrative whatsoever. Its highlights thus serve mostly as a fragmented addendum to the preceding classic. The final insult to the Conan the Destroyer score is the incredibly poor quality of the Rome performance and the muffled recording that accompanied its execution, long a source of great disdain for the composer. The performances by the "Unione Musicisti di Roma" orchestra are truly hideous in parts, with the horns often missing key notes entirely during important sequences. The vital "Main Title" and "Chamber of Mirrors" cues contain several moments that will induce wincing. Much of the brutality inherent in the original score's recording is lost in this flimsy entry, despite valiant efforts by some of the bass woodwind players to create the same resonating depth. The increasingly prevalent light and festive percussion, despite being limited by budgetary reasons, offers tingling metallic sounds with equal effectiveness and is a highlight, but the remainder of the orchestra's sections seem incredibly unpolished and, perhaps more disturbing, passionless. The troublesome issues relating to the severe performance and recording problems with Conan the Destroyer were in part related to the fact that the composer wrote the sequel score in the same demanding fashion as Conan the Barbarian, with even more rowdy, abnormal meters abounding, so the flaws stand out very obviously. Also frustrating is an extremely dated sound due to poor recording technology, with an even more archival, muted ambience exhibited in several key cues. So dry is the soundscape that the cymbal crashes sound as though they've been reduced to children's size. Thus, you have a decently strong composition nearly ruined by limited orchestrations and unsavory post-production due to budget and unqualified performers. While there was an attempt to shift the personality further from the grandiose nature of its predecessor, the result is not truly effective in addressing any of the fantasy or adventure genre offshoots despite some promising ideas throughout. The original album for Conan the Destroyer went out of print just like the Varèse Sarabande companion for Conan the Barbarian, also released in 1992. In this case time, however, the album could be missed without much sense of loss for even an avid Poledouris collector. A good alternative for those unsatisfied with this score is the "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" recording from 1983, which foreshadows several ideas explored in Conan the Destroyer but with arguably superior performances; although that CD was targeted at film music collectors, it remained reasonably available for decades. In 2011, Prometheus Records released the continued efforts of producer James Fitzpatrick to breathe new life into Poledouris' music from the Hyborean age, resulting in re-recordings of both Conan the Destroyer and "The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular" together by the City of Prague Philharmonic in similar fashion to that team's successful presentation of Conan the Barbarian the prior year. While these sequel scores are not as essential for a casual collector, Conan the Destroyer has long suffered in its original form and the re-recording is surprisingly impressive. Hearing the complete score orchestrated as it was intended, with all live players instead of synthetic backing in places and in superior digital sound, is certainly a pleasure. On the downside, its mix is not as resounding as that of the Conan the Barbarian re-recording, with far less reverb for the fantasy element, and the fuller presentation does expose the fact that Conan the Destroyer is still a work heavily reliant upon passages from its predecessor. The re-recording of the 1983 live-action show's score is perhaps the best, hidden attraction on the product, though the absence of the immense narration present with the original recording is a detriment. It took until 2022 before a longer album of the original recording for Conan the Destroyer became available, treated about as well as possible by Intrada Records. The 2-CD set contains the score as written for the film, a handful of alternate versions, and the original album's rearrangements by Poledouris. The Intrada team manages to improve the sound quality of the recording, but there's not much they could do about the players' numerous flubs and the relative obscurity of the score's new themes against the established favorites. Some of the new compositional highlights, including the momentous "Chamber of Mirrors," will never escape the frustrating limitations of the recording. For this reason, the 2022 Intrada product can be recommended for avid concept enthusiasts, but the 2011 re-recording remains the most appealing option overall. The presentations on the two albums contain the same music, including the most important alternate takes, but the re-recording does combine shorter cues into longer suites. No matter the album, however, neither of these follow-up works can compete with the mastery of the music for the original Conan the Barbarian, a qualified classic in the genre. Poledouris did not follow the Conan-spinoff character into Red Sonja shortly thereafter, Ennio Morricone shifting the concept's music even further from the immensity of the 1982 triumph.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1992 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 33:10
(some listed track times on the album are slightly incorrect) 2011 Prometheus Album: Total Time: 92:30
2022 Intrada Album: Total Time: 149:40
NOTES & QUOTES:
The 1992 Varèse Sarabande album's insert, like the concurrent one for
Conan the Barbarian, features detailed notes about both the score and film.
The insert of the 2011 Prometheus set contains detailed analysis of the film, composer,
and score. That of the 2022 Intrada album also contains extensive notation.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Conan the Destroyer are Copyright © 1992, 2011, 2022, Varèse Sarabande, Prometheus Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/18/03 and last updated 3/15/23. |
