Conan the Barbarian

The good one that caused all the bad ones. John Milius takes Robert E. Howard seriously, gives Arnold Schwarzenegger almost no dialogue and a great deal to do, and hangs the whole thing on a Basil Poledouris score that is better than the genre ever needed.

It is grand, humourless and mythic, closer to a Viking saga than a sword-and-sorcery quickie. James Earl Jones makes an actual villain of Thulsa Doom. Then forty cheaper barbarian films followed, and none understood what made this work.

The riddle of steel, delivered straight.