review for Conan the Destroyer on AllMovie

While Conan the Destroyer is not quite the sequel fans expected to John Milius's ultimate sword-and-sorcery adventure, Conan the Barbarian, it still manages to win over an audience with its bizarre B-movie charm. Where Milius gave his adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan saga a dark, gritty, and deadly serious tone, this sequel, directed by Richard Fleischer, has a bright comic-book feel. Obviously intended for a younger audience weaned on He-Man cartoons, the film moves along at a rapid pace that would not be out of place in the world of Saturday-morning television. The fact that this film's audience is the young, and that this one doesn't have quite the budget of the first one, becomes apparent during a scene in which Conan fights a man in one of the worst monster masks ever seen onscreen. Also missing in this sequel is Milius's powerful dialogue, co-written by Oliver Stone, that gave Conan the Barbarian such an epic sense of scale. Despite these painfully obvious faults, the film, with co-stars like exotic '80s singer Grace Jones and basketball star Wilt Chamberlain as members of Conan's gang, is so gleefully goofy it's hard not to love. Made at a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting skills had still not caught up with his level of worldwide stardom, Conan the Destroyer makes for a fascinating reminder of when his still-new film career was as powerful as Conan himself.