The Giant Snake.
Conan have to face a giant snake
at the interior of the Tower.
During preproduction time,
it was considered the used of stop motion animation, but John Millius preferred
shooting all in camera, with the players acting in front of the real creature
instead of make it as a postproduction.
The animatronic was built
in England at Bray Studios and sent to Spain for the shooting.
Sculptural work on the snake
was done by Peter Voysey.
Carlo de Marchis who had previously
worked with Nick Allder making the animatronis for the Alien head,
worked on the preliminary stages of the Giant snake construction. The big
animatronic was built by Nick Allder team. De Marchis took care of the
animatronic of the medium size snake, and the vulture.
Colin Arthur was in charge of
some make up effects, creating false bodies, and taking care of the giant
snake skin.
Nick Allder (left) y Colin Arthur(right)
with the giant snake head.
Some images of the filming
of the giant snake.
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Colin Arthur confronts the snake.
Arnold Schwarzenegger fights
with the snake.
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Arnold, with FX technicians
Nick Allder y George Gibbs.
From the original snake sent from
England, they made plaster molds to make some more bodies.
Italian, British and Spaniards
artisans working at the molds and latex skin.
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The human bodies at the background
(left of the picture) were made by Colin Arthur for the interior of Thulsa
Doom's cave.
When Conan and his partners go into
Doom's cave, they came across a huge torture room where Thulsa Doom's minions
were cutting and hanging his victims.
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Colin recalls the scene as a prety
gore one, it was all full of bloody false bodies, cut in pieces and
gruesome mutilated, mixed with real people with gore make-up.
Finally only a couple of shots
appeared at the final cut, although a lot of work from art department and
make up effects team was spent on that set, most of the material filmed
by Millius was later discarded.