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> Dungeons & Hollywood, TSR and the motion picture industry
Zhan Shi
post Sep 25 2007, 10:05 PM
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Howard was indeed a part of the famous "Lovecraft circle". If you're interested, his Cthulhu type stories are collected in Nameless Cults, by Chaosium.
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imperialus
post Sep 28 2007, 05:12 AM
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Lovecraft and Howard were definatly friends and Howard, like many other pulp writers used the Cthulhu mythos in his stories. Lovecraft really enjoyed other authors using his mythos, and it's probably a big part of what gave him such legs.

Conan and Kull however belong to a seperate mythology. Set, Crom, and the other gods are not related to Cthulhu though one could say that aspects of them, praticularly the alien in "Tower of the Elephant" were inspired by Lovcraftian mythology. There are occasionally hints that the Lovcraftian dieties but it is never overt.
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Synner667
post Sep 28 2007, 06:36 AM
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Vaguely back on track..
..Looking at the whole run of Sword&Sorcery that appeared and deluged the film market, I've been surprised NOT to see a similar thing in recent years after the continued huge success of Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter.


re: Conan and HPL..
..You're correct, and I'd have been more accurate to say that Conan stories contain elements of HPL's writings, rather than implying Conan encountered Cthuloid creatures.
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Zhan Shi
post Sep 28 2007, 06:51 AM
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Call me crazy, but I would like to see a new Conan film. Provided it was not produced by De Laurentis. The lack of deluge has puzzled me as well. Usually, when a film(s) proves to be so successful, Hollywood pounces with a vengeance. But I'm not a film industry watcher; maybe stuff is in the works. As for REH and HPL, in a way it's a "chicken and the egg" argument. Members of the Circle frequently borrowed each other's ideas and characters. For the record, in Call of Cthulhu I've seen two different explanations for Set. One is that he's one of Nyarlathotep's "Masks". The other, derived from the Simon Magus stories of Tierney (The Great, IMO) is that Set was/is Hastur. Tierney imagined that the name "Hastur" is a linguistic corruption of the Stygian "Ha Set Ur", or "Set is great."
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imperialus
post Oct 2 2007, 10:18 PM
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That said though. Howard was definatly not a horror writer, praticularly not in the same vein as Lovecraft at all. In fact his attempts at true horror stories are pretty bad. Lovecraft characters don't tend to be praticularly heroic. Curious to a fault, but when the shit hits the fan they either die or end up commited to an asylum. Howard had a difficult time convaying the same sence of hopelessness in his characters. His character's reaction to something wierd and supernatural is usually something along the lines of "Damn, that's scary! Better reload." Solomon Kane is a really good example of this "heroic, horror".

If you want to read a really interesting study of Howards work check out "The Dark Barbarian" and "The Barbaric Triumph". Both are exellent critical works on Howards writing.
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Zhan Shi
post Oct 10 2007, 12:56 AM
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I found something you may be interested in. An essay called "Howardian vs. Lovecraftian". It's in the back of "Conan: Volume 4: Hall of the Dead and Other Stories", by Dark Horse.
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Zhan Shi
post Oct 11 2007, 01:05 AM
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BTW, the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie was terrible. That movie was to the game what the Conan films were to Robert E. Howard's stories.
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GrepZen
post Oct 11 2007, 01:35 AM
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Supposedly the 2nd movie, which was a straight to video releese, was much better and had good acting. Jeremy Irons was over the top in the 1st but, who could really blame him...I've seen better episodes of Power Rangers (the horror...the horror).
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Zhan Shi
post Oct 11 2007, 01:38 AM
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Truly? I was not even aware there was a second film. I may check that out.
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Angelone
post Oct 11 2007, 02:22 AM
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Second film wasn't bad at all it. Which is odd considering it was a sequel. It had a good range of characters including a NE halfling rogue. It also shows what happens when someone starts turng undead like from Liberus Mortis?
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Wounded Ronin
post Oct 11 2007, 03:15 AM
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Okay, I really don't understand why anybody would chose to of all things badmouth the first Conan film but not the second. The first Conan film practically inspired my life. The second one was just a very ordinary representation of a Steve Perry novel.

I realize that Milius' Conan is not exactly the same as Howard's Conan. That being said, Milius' Conan is a well developed literary figure in his own right.

QUOTE

This is not exactly Robert E. Howard’s Conan.  The character created by the young Texan writer is one tough mother, an animal in human form, with the instincts and reflexes of the wild, a shrewd, devious fighting man formed in equal measure by heredity and experience.  He is a superman, but one with a paternity reaching straight back to Beowulf and Enkidu, Siegfried and Attila, Alexander and Genseric.  John Milius’s Conan is a northland barbarian youth reborn with the soul of a samurai warrior.  This works well in the context of Milius’s revision, but it dramatically changes the focus of Conan’s warriorhood as it reshapes the essence of the character himself.  Howard’s Conan is a brawler and a brute, lucky to be alive, forged by his adventures into a quasiclassical warrior-king; but Milius’s Conan is of a new order altogether.  For the character in Howard’s stories, a sword is a tool; in Milius’s film, a sword is the warrior’s spirit and is richly symbolic of the warrior as a self-actualizing, self-overcoming new man -- the overman.  In most of Howard’s Conan stories, women are prizes or wenches; in Milius’s film, Valeria is the woman of women, special and elevated, the new man’s equal, the other half of his soul.  The schooling in the art of sword mastery and the rigorous self-discipline Conan attains in the movie are pure Musashi by way of John Milius, as is the reverance for the sword itself, for steel, their importance taking on a spiritual dimension--weapons "as an expression of the will directed towards a certain end," according to Jung (as quoted by Ania Teillard in Cirlot’s study of symbols).  Weapons as extensions of the self, mastery of the self, the overcoming of the self--the will to power.


http://www.barbariankeep.com/ctbds.html


As such, Milius' version of Conan influenced my philosophy and outlook on life. There was a time when I watched Conan the Barbarian every day for nearly a year.

It seems ludicrous to claim that Conan the Destroyer was a more worthy film than Conan the Barbarian.
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nezumi
post Oct 11 2007, 12:46 PM
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Alright, as much as I look forward to reading the original Conan books, I have to agree, Conan the Barbarian was an AWESOME movie, one of the best the 80's had to offer.

The ones that followed were pretty dorky though.
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Link
post Oct 12 2007, 03:34 AM
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I enjoyed the several REH novels I've happened upon and I'm also a fan of the first film, liking both is not mutually exclusive. As WR says, they offer much to those who listen ;)

Here's a quote someone uses as a sig in another forum. Gold.
QUOTE
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king!

The Phoenix on the Sword, REH
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