Conan the Barbarian (1982) on Netflix
R19822h 10mActionAdventureFantasy
Raiders under the cult leader Thulsa Doom fall on a Cimmerian village, kill Conan's parents and take its children to the Wheel of Pain. Conan survives and becomes a gladiator.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.9/10175,725 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
A Cimmerian blacksmith forges a sword and tells his young son Conan about the Riddle of Steel. Raiders commanded by the cult leader Thulsa Doom descend on the village, kill Conan's parents and haul the children off to the Wheel of Pain. Conan endures, grows into a muscled gladiator and wins his freedom. Wild dogs chase him into a tomb, where he finds an old sword. He wanders the world, befriends Subotai, a thief and archer, and sets out for Zamora to seek Doom.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming in Valsaín, Segovia, on 23 February was interrupted by the Civil Guard paramilitary police, other members of whom were at that very moment carrying out the 23-F coup d'etat with the Spanish Army; shooting continued once the situation in Madrid became clearer.
- Allder built a 36 ft, $20,000 mechanical snake for the Tower of Serpents fight, with a duralumin aircraft-frame alloy skeleton and vulcanized foam rubber skin; controlled by steel cables and hydraulics, it could exert between 3.5 and 9.0 tons of force.
- Conan the Barbarian was the last film released by a major studio with a mono soundtrack: its 24 tracks of sound effects, music and dialog were downmixed to single-channel after Raffaella De Laurentiis balked at the $30,000 cost of stereo and worried about the lack of theaters equipped for it.
- Oliver Stone's draft of Conan ran four hours and moved the hero out of the distant past into a post-apocalyptic future, where he leads an army in battle against a horde of 10,000 mutants; Stone drew on Howard's "Black Colossus" and "A Witch Shall be Born".
- The Tree of Woe was layers of plaster and Styrofoam over a skeleton of wood and steel, mounted on a turntable so its shadows stayed consistent across three days of filming; Schwarzenegger sat on a bicycle seat mounted in the tree while fake nails were fixed to his wrists and feet.
- Producers Pressman and Summer considered Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone and William Smith for the lead before watching a rough cut of the bodybuilding film Pumping Iron in 1976 and agreeing that Arnold Schwarzenegger was perfect for Conan because of his huge, muscular frame.
- The American Humane Association placed Conan the Barbarian on its "unacceptable list" over the use of live animals, listing the kicking of a dog, the striking of a camel and the tripping of horses among the transgressions.
- Conan the Barbarian earned Arnold Schwarzenegger worldwide recognition, became a cult film and spawned the sequel Conan the Destroyer (1984) and a 2011 reboot; frequent home video releases had pushed its gross past $300 million by 2007.
