Flickering Myth’s writing team discuss their favourite movie soundtracks; next up is Tom Jolliffe with Conan the Barbarian…
Picking my favourite movie soundtrack was not an easy choice. First there’s the choice between song-based soundtrack, or score. Then there’s the tough decision of picking an absolute favourite. Much as I love very obvious choices like John Williams or Hans Zimmer, they were never in contention to me. As an aside, I’ve always loved the old synth scores of the 80s. Guys like Tangerine Dream, Mark Isham, Vince DiCola and more. However my absolute favourite orchestral score has to be Conan the Barbarian by Basil Poledouris. It’s a master piece.
What I love about Basil’s work in the film, is that it essentially elevates the entire piece. Conan the Barbarian is a film not without some problems certainly, and even in the grand scheme of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s CV, it’s often overlooked for his more popular work in the Terminator movies, as well as Predator and Total Recall. As a piece of work, the film to me is an underrated work of art. It’s beautifully shot, it’s very visual. The music plays over it giving it an almost operatic feel, just minus the singing. There’s hardly any dialogue in this film. The score really tells the story in this film, in combination with some good performances. Arnie is pretty raw in this film. It’s early in his career, he’s rough around the edges but in certain moments in this film I don’t think he’s ever been as genuine since. Again the artistic elements in the film, most notably the score, help him here.
For me, some scores kind of run throughout a film and it all feels like one continuous track almost. There’s no journey in the music. Sometimes this works. Classic Bond for example – the music stays very much in the background until the classic theme bursts in when Bond is doing something fantastically cool. The arc of the music in Conan is fantastic. Listening to the album (one of the few movie soundtracks I’ve ever purchased) is great. Tracks vary in style. There’s a beautiful array of fantastically constructed pieces. There are very grandiose tracks. There are more mellow tracks and a few more playful or bombastic tracks. Yet despite a divergence between tracks, there is always cohesion here. This evokes old 50’s B movies at times. At others times it feels like classical music, and baroque.
Basil Poledouris would later produce his most iconic and recognised soundtrack in RoboCop, but his work here is one of the most criminally overlooked scores ever, both in terms of award recognition at the time and appreciation as years have gone by. It’s a fantastic work and a key reason why my appreciation of the film itself increases with every viewing. It’s a film that is a feast on both the eyes and ears and all too often gets dismissed as just another goofy Sword and Sorcery flick of the era, which is a crying shame. You only need to check out the remake, with its mundane approach to everything, including the music, the realise just how special the original film, and Basil’s work is.
Tom Jolliffe
Originally published June 25, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
