There is a saying that the soundtrack to 1982's "Conan the Barbarian" movie was the unofficial soundtrack to the tabletop role-playing game, "Dungeons & Dragons."

They weren't wrong.

Tabletop RPGs have received a renaissance in popularity as of late. However, it may never obtain the degree of mainstream popularity that it once held in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. To give just one example, during that time period, you could buy Dungeons & Dragons merchandise at your local Sears store (and that's saying something, considering that Sears was hardly any teenager's first choice for such products).

Did "Conan the Barbarian" benefit more from the ppularity of the "Dungeons & Dragons" game or did "Dungeons & Dragons" benefit more from the big-budget movie production of "Conan the Barbarian"? It will always be difficult to say definitively. Each camp has their own passionate proponents and, like any discussion that is bereft of hard factual data, the debate is destined to devolve into the usual "my favorite deity is better than your favorite deity" subjectivity. Cooler heads, when they are forced to visit the topic, just chalk it up as a draw.

"Conan the Barbarian" was not a slam-dunk in terms of money-making potential, though. While the pre-production of any major motion picture may be described charitably as "chaotic" (I'll refrain from deciding whether it is chaotic good, neutral or evil), Conan's path from elevator pitch to first day of shooting wasn't smooth, even by that era's standards. At one point, the movie was destined to be a post-apocalyptic film. Such is always the winding nature of Hollywood productions.

The eventual star of the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a relatively unknown personality unless you followed the then-obscure world of male bodybuilding. His female co-star, Sandahl Bergmann, was supposedly cast because she was one of the few women available who was tall enough, large enough and athletic enough to not look tiny in comparison to the male lead.

Viewed from the era of Marvel superhero blockbusters, it is understandable that the movie is perceived as slow and plodding. There is no mid-credits scene and no "easter eggs" for eagle-eyed viewers to catch. It earns its R-rating through intensive violence and some female nudity. There isn't a CGI effect shot in sight. For anyone interested in understanding the state of CGI effects in Hollywood, one can only turn to the movie "TRON" that debuted in the same year.

Yet it is also undeniably a good picture and one of the few films in the "sword and sandal" genre of that period with reasonably competent production values. From its inspired casting and impressive sets to its soundtrack, "Conan the Barbarian" delivered on the goods. Indeed, you could fill more than a few seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes with "sword and sandal" films that feel as though they were made solely to fulfill an obscure tax write-off scheme.

Basil Poledouris pulled his weight on this production, with tracks so memorable that they don't just emphasize the scene that they play in but overshadow them. From the bombastic main title to Conan eternally pushing the Wheel of Woe to the raid on the decadent orgy to the final climactic battle and more, the tracks and the scenes fit themselves together like gloves into hands.

It's a pity that the sequel, "Conan the Destroyer," went for a more child-friendlier approach that, predictably, didn't pay off. A possible third film got derailed by Schwarzenegger's detour into politics. A reboot failed to arouse fans or bring new ones into the fold. And the unofficial 'side-quel' known as "Red Sonja" may be much maligned but it's actually more enjoyable a yarn than the official sequel; A low bar to hop over, admittedly, but you can't fault it for accomplishing that goal.

In the end, great soundtracks elevate good movies into great movies and great soundtracks elevate great movies into instant classics. Regardless of what you may think of the movie, the soundtrack is still worthy of listening to even if you have no desire to see the movie itself. At forty-two years and counting as of this writing of this article, that's an endorsement that any soundtrack wouldn't mind obtaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoAXA_Rm25A