Almost the flipside of Conan the Barbarian.
A genuinely pretty good film rather than a campy good time, a talkative slightly-built thief instead of a barely speaking muscle-bound warrior as the main protagonist and an absolutely shitty soundtrack 
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Flesh Gordon was better! 
Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad and Jason And The Argonauts are favorites of mine.
I forgot about this part. My buddies and I used to joke that the most efficient way to travel long distances was just to start sprinting immediately.
Ladyhawke was indeed pretty cool. Conan with Rutger Hauer would have been cool.
Well, yeah, them and Clash of the Titans are all classic Harryhausen. So, they still entertain my grandson.
Somehow I missed that one. Ladyhawke was fine, though.
From Wiki:
The film (Flesh Gordon) was nominated for the 1975 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (the only indie production nominated that year), but lost to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein .[7]
Oh, man. The music in Ladyhawke has not aged well.
Even at the time, we laughed at synthesizers portraying Ye Ancient Realms.
.
I guess I was never quite alienated enough.
The movies listed here completely turned me off epic fantasy, and it wasn’t until Lord of the Rings that I was willing to try again …
… glad I did!
Conan is one of Arnold’s better movies.
It’s supposed to be told as a grand myth. A epic struggle similiar to Jason and the Argonauts. (The Greek play)
I think of Conan as a collection of stories. The narrative linking the stories isn’t always entirely logical.
It may not be everyones cup of tea. I watch it at least once almost every year.
The making of feature is interesting. Arnold talks about doing the stunts and various injuries.
Lots of great replies. I especially like the suggestion of watching it like a music video. I watch Conan the Barbarian about yearly, as well, and enjoy it every time; I guess turning into an alienated preadolescent while watching.
With Conan, you don’t objectively evaluate what you are watching, you just let it get to you. You fill in the gaps in the plot as needed, you swim in the fantastic film score and revel in the iconic, campy scenes from times gone by (the early 80’s, I mean).
“Crom!” The Conan Musical:
Or, as Robert E. Howard wrote more than once, '‘Crom! Conan ejaculated’.
The character has a looong history before Arnie, chosen because he matched the fantastic Frank Frazetta edition covers of the 1960s re-issues. It was made for people who knew Conan from the covers as much as those who knew the stories.
The movie was fine. Not great but just track down its contemporary fantasy or sword and sandal peers and see how many you can watch for 10 mins before retching.
I didn’t know there were comic books, let alone that the movie was based on them. I thought it was just based on the Robert E. Howard stories.
I read Conan comics long before I saw the film.
I liked the movie then and I like it now. It feels like you are watching the books. Most of the audience would know the character from the Lancer paperbacks put together by L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter with the Frazetta covers. I know I had the complete set. Howard wrote mostly short stories and novellas. De Camp took all of the Conan stories and put them in order, finished some unfinished stories and added new works to the series to make a chronological narrative. It still read as individual vignettes. That’s how the movie felt. The movie was written by John Milius and Oliver Stone.
James Earl Jones is good as the villain. Of course the rest of the acting is not good. The fight choreography is very good. The action is good. It’s not afraid to have R-rates violence. Conan was an R-rated character.
Conan the Destroyer took everything that made the first one fun and threw it out. They made it PG. They ruined one of the best villains of all time, Thoth-Amon (couldn’t even spell the name right). The big bad was Andre the Giant in a rubber suit.
How dare you diss the work of Sven-Ole Thorsen as “Dude with the hammer!!!”
The best fantasy film from the 1980s is Excalibur.
Ladyhawk a distant second. Too bad about the soundtrack.
Sword of the Valiant has a soundtrack that makes Ladyhawk’s sound like a John Williams symphony.
If you are interested in the R.E. Howard books, you might try to locate the novelization of the movie script. It was done by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, and it is slightly more coherent than what ended up onscreen. Their version of the Riddle of Steel is more poetic than the movie’s.
I prefer Conan the Librarian.