Conan the Destroyer - the Worst Movie Sequel Ever Made

The worst movie sequel of all time has got to be Conan the Destroyer. It represents everything that can go wrong with a sequel and is such a far cry from the original movie that it deserves to be forgotten. This pile of garbage is why there never was a third Conan movie.

I thought the plot of this one was kind of generic compared to the first movie. Saving princesses is a pretty standard plot device in video games and in movies about guys that fight with swords. I have yet to figure out the total lack of proper security when it comes to princesses in medieval times, but thankfully there is always some guy with a sword and some friends to save her. There is also a plot involving some magic rock that can resurrect the dead, like a magic item quest.

First and foremost, this movie is rated PG. The original, and very much awesome, Conan the Barbarian was rated R. It features lots of blood and guts and nudity because it's a movie about a muscle-bound barbarian who chops off heads and enjoys the lamentations of the women. You just can't do all that and keep a PG rating unless you tone it down so much that it loses the air of the original, and that's what happens here. Where the first movie was epic, this sequel plays more like a made for TV movie.

Comic relief is a good thing for some movies, but this one went overboard. Couple that with a very awful performance from Grace Jones and a miscast princess played by Olivia D'Abo, and you get some unintended laughs that make this B-grade mess more like something you'd see on MST3K. Wilt Chamberlain (you know, the basketball player) was in it way more than he probably should have. The first movie had James Earl Jones as the main villain. We're talking the voice of Darth friggin' Vader here! This movie had the lady who was one of the three villains in Superman II.

This movie was made in 1984, so I will be fair and not comment on the horrible special effects too much. All bad 80's effects aside, the absolute worst thing about this movie was the rubber monster that Conan fights in the room full of mirrors. Remember that thing? It's some guy wearing a thick rubber mask that seems frozen in one expression. It looks like some kind of cheap thing you'd buy off the rack at K-Mart for a Halloween costume. The scene also includes some slapstick that was completely unnecessary, but the close-up shots of that horrible mask really exemplify the low production values that plagued this movie from beginning to end.

I know there are much worse sequels out there than Conan the Destroyer, but I think this is the worst simply because it's the sequel to such a great movie. Bad movies get sequels all the time, but it's a shame when a really good one is brought down with such a bad follow-up that it essentially kills the series.