The Mask of Fu Manchu and CONAN?

Seems Milius lifted this scene from this old Boris Karloff flick, the Genghis Khan crypt seen and yeah, the whole movie revolved around the possession of the sword of Genghis Khan and world domination,lol. Plus lots of elaborate torture devices and bondage. *Also Indiana Jones imitated this film too.

Isn't it more likely that he lifted it from "The thing in the crypt"? I don't know about the cinematography done... but I can't believe that he had to steal the idea when it was in the stories.

Well, steal ideas... that's not stealing, every filmaker feeds on what he has seen while growing up.

I do think Milius was visually influenced by the movies he has seen, from John Ford to Kurosawa, and also by painters. The descriptions of the "Think of the Crypt" aren't enough to visualize the way the scene is gonna be shot. In the story it's stated "Conan runs followed by wolves, finds a group of rocks with a cave, enters and finds an old tomb"... etc. But as a director, how am I gonna shot all that? That's when you as a director need to use your imagery background, and it's usually fed on paintings, photography and other movies.

This use can be more or less conscious. Milius was consciously using Kurosawa's imagery for Conan, but it's also possible he was using other movie's imagery in an unconscious level, from all the movies he had seen. If he did this on purpose or not, only he knows.

"The Thing In The Crypt" didnt appear until 1967. While "The Mask Of Fu Manchu" was made back in 1932.

Also note the placing of the sword, its the same as Cobb's concept art piece.

Even watching the filming style of how this seen plays out, its very much like from the CONAN movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XxQuVL_p2Y

Good points!

Interesting how things bounce back and forth in the industry of film, music, and literature. Kind of makes me wonder if anything is ever original....

Milius in that FilmSwords mag also wrote how Howard was heavily influenced from HG Wells(but also I clearly Burroughs and Conan Doyle among others plus films).

If memory serves me correct, Milius was also obsessed with anthropology and even fantasy anthropology right outve the early 20th century same as Howard was. Milius' THE THING IN THE CRYPT was to have also echoed Genghis Khan, the whole fear of wolves, wolf witch, wolf chase the "Crush your enemies" and all them mongols in the yurts. Maybe Milius after watching these movies and reading the old books, saw Khan was a "Nordic giant" and had Conan stumble unto his cave,lol.

The Nazi's were obsessed with Atlanteans and Lemurians and spent alotve time in Tibet trying to find Nordic Mongoloids,lol.

But yeah, Lucas, Spielberg and Milius surely were imitating the old movies and specially the serials(along with Leni riefenstahl ), but Lucas and Spielberg together made there career's by doing so while Milius largely faded away into the shadows and become a script doctor medicine man. The Temple of Doom was a near shot for shot ripoff of an old serial and was it ridiculed in the old Prevue magazine for it:

https://conancompletist.forumactif.com/conan-the-barbarian-f3/indiana-jones-and-the-temple-of-doom-article-t966.htm

Sad thing is though you see guys like Cameron making it big constantly plagiarizing/imitating "Starship Troopers" while the real movie based off it was a pastiche, by imitating ALIENS(instead of actually the book) which was a imitation of Robert Heinlan's "Starship Troppers" actual book. Go figure aye?!

During my undergrad work, my major was East Asian Studies, and so I spent at least one class a quarter with a Mongolian history course. It was impossible not to think of CTB and Howard's work during this, as everything echoed back at me as I read or wrote. I had a few conan conversations with my professors too. It was fun to find someone who shared my double takes.

Howard's many influences included Sax Rohmer, creator of the evil doctor Fu-Manchu, one of his favorite writers.
Skull Face ( http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Skull-Face ) is almost a Rohmer pastiche. REH wrote at least four parodies of Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories in his letters to Tevis Clyde Smith. And his detective fiction was also heavily influenced by Rohmer.

axerules wrote:

Howard's many influences included Sax Rohmer, creator of the evil doctor Fu-Manchu, one of his favorite writers.
Skull Face ( http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Skull-Face ) is almost a Rohmer pastiche. REH wrote at least four parodies of Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories in his letters to Tevis Clyde Smith. And his detective fiction was also heavily influenced by Rohmer.

That is another good point.