The influences behind Conan the Barbarian

1982

Conan the Barbarian

Film by John Milius

New Hollywood. United States. In English.

John Milius's 1982 sword-and-sorcery epic, co-written with Oliver Stone, follows a Cimmerian enslaved as a boy who grows into a warrior and takes revenge on the serpent-cult leader Thulsa Doom. It builds its episodes from Robert E. Howard's Weird Tales stories, opens with an epigraph from Nietzsche, and stages its battles with the Kurosawa films Milius admired in mind.

Where it came from

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1934

Queen of the Black Coast

Robert E. Howard

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

Conan becomes the lover and fellow raider of the pirate queen Bêlit, who dies in a ruined jungle city and returns from death to save him.

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Direct source, well documented.

Valeria is modeled on the pirate queen Bêlit: a fighting woman who becomes Conan's lover, dies, and returns from beyond death to save him in battle, as Bêlit had vowed she would. Conan's speech about Crom, a god who gives men courage and nothing else, is drawn from his talk with Bêlit, and Valeria's funeral pyre answers Bêlit's burning ship.

Where it came from

The Tower of the Elephant, Robert E. Howard 1933

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1933

The Tower of the Elephant

Robert E. Howard

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

A young Conan, working as a thief, breaks into a sorcerer's tower to steal a jewel and finds an enslaved alien being from another star.

What it handed down

To Queen of the Black Coast (1934)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Tower fixed the young Conan as a wandering barbarian thief moving through corrupt cities, the outlaw Howard carried into Queen of the Black Coast when Conan turns pirate. The film's own middle section, a theft from a serpent tower with a giant snake guarding it, draws on Tower and reaches the film through this phase of Howard's cycle.

Where it came from

Find “The Tower of the Elephant” on Amazon

1928

The Call of Cthulhu

H. P. Lovecraft

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

A story about a cult worshipping a vast alien being asleep beneath the Pacific.

What it handed down

To The Tower of the Elephant (1933)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Howard corresponded with Lovecraft from 1930. Yag-kosha, the elephant-headed being from the far star Yag who came to earth in prehistoric times, is a Lovecraftian cosmic alien, and critics read the story as Howard's tribute to Lovecraft's mythos.

Where it came from

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The KrakenAlfred Tennyson

1830

The Kraken

Alfred Tennyson

Romantic. England. Written in English.

An irregular sonnet about a sea monster sleeping in the abyss until the last days.

What it handed down

To The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Tennyson's monster sleeping in the deep until the end of the world is often cited as a forerunner of Cthulhu, who lies dead but dreaming in sunken R'lyeh. The image of an ancient being asleep under the sea is the shared core.

Where it came from

The line stops here: tennyson's sources lie in Scandinavian sea-monster lore and natural history, not followed here.

Find “The Kraken” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Queen of the Black Coast (1934)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Tower of the Elephant (1933)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

Where it came from

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