While not a real weapon like the Honjo Masamune, the Atlantean Sword is an icon of Hollywood; a brutish, muscular piece of cutlery befitting its wielder—Conan the Cimmerian. I love this sword and I can draw it, or at least one of the version, the seond one, from memory as you can see above (not a great sketch by any means, but this is a doodle from a notebook I carry with me in to jails and prisons to kill the time while waiting for clients). It deserves a deep dive. The story behind the sword is almost as good as the movies it comes from—Conan the Barbarian (CTB) and Conan the Destroyer (CTD).

If you are a person of certain age, let’s say between 55 and 40 (in 2024) and you like edged weapons you probably know what I am talking about just by the phrase above. Few movie props are more crucial to a story than this sword, maybe Narsil/Anduril, but the Atlantean Sword is a bit different because it was made by one of the most talented custom makers ever to craft a sharpened blade, Jody Sampson. The sword was so critical to the movie that the opening credits start with it being forged. You see the sword before you see Arnold. That should tell you who the real star of the movie is. The story of this prop is just incredible and so I wanted to do a deep dive and share some cool facts.

This article was inspired by a story told on Mark of the Maker by Andrew Bawidiman and by the recent passing of the great James Earl Jones (great bit: James Earl Jones doing a Letterman Top 10, my favorite is number 2). Coincidentally, after listening to the episode I realized that Andrew went to my high school and was a year ahead of me. Small world. Before reading this post, go listen to that episode, which can be found here. And, if by some odd chance you have never seen Conan, may as well go do that too. There is a functional, highly authentic version of the sword (really the sword from CTD, more on that later) found here for a staggering $3,200. I can’t vouch for the quality but it is clearly not a United Cutlery POS. More on it below.

In the story, the sword plays a critical role in Conan’s development. Of course, Conan’s father instilled in him the value of self-reliance early on and there is a wonderful scene at the start of the movie where he tells young Conan about the “Riddle of Steel.” This riddle ends with a message to the young barbarian that steel is the only thing you can truly count on in life. Moments later, after putting up a good fight, Thulsa Doom’s men brutally kill (there is no other kind of death in Conan) Conan’s Dad via war dogs. They then take his sword and decapitate Conan’s scantily clad mother in front of Conan. Like the rest of the children in his village, Conan is enslaved. After growing up into the hulking brute that is peak Arnold Schwarzenegger, he is freed. On his own, he nearly dies being chased by wild dogs. Conan find refuge in a tomb and there is the star of the movie—the Atlantean Sword. After finding the sword and meeting a sexy witch (with lamentations and all), Conan vows revenge. You know how this turns out, of course.

Interestingly Sampson designed the sword to be a mid-sized sword, using Old English parlance, a bastard sword (which was between a short and long sword). He also wanted it to appear unusual and gave it a large unsharpened section above the guard. The script on the sword, found mainly on the hilt, according to Sampon, was from an entirely made up language and is gibberish. Sampson built two swords with others building replicas for use in various shots. The two Sampson-built swords were the version seen in Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. Of course, Conan fans know there was a planned third film, Conan the Conqueror, but it never made it out of development hell because of the terrible box officer return of the second movie, and as a result there is no evidence of a third iteration of the sword being made. The differences between the two are slight—the CTD version had a darker pommel and guard, a slighlty more oranate unsharpened portion, the langets were more hooked, and the grip had a dark leather wrap. Between the two I like the look of the CTB Atlantean Sword, but I would not turn either original down in a trade for a LNIB Chris Reeve Small Sebenza.

The only thing cooler than the Atlantean Sword was the man who made it. Jody Sampson is about as legendary as it gets in the cutlery world. He started out as blacksmith and knife maker under John Cooper Nelson, working in and around Burbank California. He then met up with Les De Asis of Benchmade and designed their first bali-song knives. Les once claimed, with almost certainly 100% accuracy, that Jody Sampson ground every custom bali produced by Les’s company from 1979 to 1994, regardless of the company’s name. Jody also helped develop a number of different Benchmade products. In 1979 he won a Blade Magazine award. In 1994, after years at the grinder, he left Benchmade and went to work making movie swords full time. In 2001 he left the prop maker and joined Albion Swords, a high end reproduction brand specializing in swords. While there, interestingly, Sampson worked on the replica of the Atlantean Sword that he himself had crafted nearly 20 years before. In 2008, two days after Christmas, Jody passed away. He was, like all true craftsmen hope for, found in his shop. Sampson’s passing was a sad moment for the cutlery world because of his skill, prolific nature, and the sheer badass quality that seems inherent in every sharpened edge he ever made. The legacy of the Atlantean Sword is fitting for Sampson.

The sword itself, according to film sources, cost $10,000 at the time (in 2024 money that would be $32,000). There were two made for various close ups and replicas for action scenes or far away shots. The film’s director, John Milius kept one of the hero props (the fanciest and most detailed version of the sword). It was estimated to be worth between $40,000-$60,000 in the late 80s. An auction house recently sold a “stunt” version of the sword made from resin for $45,500. Heritage Auctions sold one of the two original CTD hero props in 2013 for $118,750. They got it from the stunt coordinator on the movie and noted that it was a “Rob Cobb” design. For reasons inexplicable to the cutlery fan in me, Jody Sampson’s name is not on the page anywhere.

Conan the character, was first seen in a short story written by Robert E. Howard and published in Weird Tales in 1932 called “People of the Dark.” He was identified as having black hair and being a hero but he was not the Conan we now know, just the sketch of something great that Howard would develop later. This same story, which was the first of 8 or 9 tales, is part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Imagine the Great Old One himself being a final boss in a Conan movie. In all Howard wrote 21 stories that revolved around Conan, none of which were called Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, or Conan the Conqueror. The first true Conan story was the novelette “The Phoenix of the Sword,” which brings us back to the wonderful Jody Sampson sword. Though not mentioned by name, the scene where Conan finds the Atlantean Sword was taken from Howard’s “The Thing in the Crypt.”

The Atlantean Sword is by far and away my favorite movie weapon after the lightsaber (which has to be #1— it is both a knife AND a flashlight). Its striking appearance and unusual proportions along with the central role it played in the movie makes it something that has stuck in my brain since I first saw Conan on HBO at my friend Ryan Hoover’s house when I was probably 10 or 11. The films brutality grabbed my attention after watching the wretched rip off, Beastmaster. And while I delight in watching the movie now for nostalgia reasons, its the sword, of course, that still seems current, shocking, and evocative—all the hallmarks of great art.