I fucking HATE The Breakfast Club. It is the most overrated piece of dogshit put on film since Pink Flamingos, PERIOD. If you have not seen it, let me tell you about it.
It is about five kids who have detention together on a Saturday and throughout the course of the day they form some sort of self help group. They each take turns telling each other about their problems, cry to each other, act emo, and become friends, THE END!
Sounds boring and stupid, right? But for some reason, people LOVE this movie, it may be the part where Emilio Estevez is crying like a little girl, or when Molly Ringwald is dancing… I don’t know. I was going to review this film, but instead I will review CONAN THE BARBARIAN!
BRILLIANT! That is all I have to say, really, but my editor would have my ass in a sling if I did not say more.
This film is based on the fictional barbarian Conan of Cimmeria, created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930's. This film follows Conan’s origins from small slave boy to skilled thief in the fictional Hypoborian Age. Captured in a raid led by the leader of a Snake Cult, Conan was forced to become a slave up until young adult hood, where his master chose him to become a gladiator. It did not take long for Conan to prove himself and get sent east to learn true fighting forms from the Asians. His master soon released him, feeling that Conan was an animal that had been caged for too long. It is shortly after this that Conan travels back to his old stomping grounds to seek vengeance upon the ones who destroyed his village.
Fun fact: This is a departure, with quite some artistic liberty, from his actual origins in the Howard stories, which had him born on a battlefield. In those original stories his father was a blacksmith, and Cimmerian women were singing ballads of his exploits on the battlefront since he was 15. But still… this film makes due.
The villain of this film, Thusala Doom, was actually a Kull the Conqueror villain, also created by Howard. The film does an OK job projecting Conan’s sense of humor, which is black but lighthearted all at once – even though Arnold is not exactly a top actor. The next film, Conan the Destroyer, is considered the worse of the two, but is more true to the source material. It starts out in a setting a few years after the first film ended, and follows his quest for a particular horn to summon a god. Lots of severed heads and high adventure, and how this second film got a PG rating, I will never know. But then again… this was back when we didn’t pussify our kids either.
Robert Howard had stated that he did not want to tell Conan stories in a linear way, because he felt a true story teller does not start at the beginning of a character’s life, but will tell of exploits from all over their life in no particular chronological order. Shit, the first ever Conan story was about him as a King, and the second was about him as a thief.
In the end, I would suggest reading the old Howard stories over watching the films, but the films still beat anything on TV – especially golf and basketball.
Maybe my assertion of this film being brilliant was wrong. I would say that it is decent, but then again, I am an elitist bastard, so brilliant it is.
I fucking hate the Breakfast Club
By
Carman
