Saturday, October 18, 2008

Conan the Ladykiller!

Along my searches for anything Conan, I came across an article about an interesting scene in the Conan the Barbarian movie that got cut from the final where Conan appears to kill a slave woman during the attack on Thulsa Doom’s orgy.

The story goes that the director, Milius, filmed Conan running into the orgy and slashing open the gut of one of the slave girls, but in editing the scene, Milius felt that killing a defensless slave girl is just not Conan’s style, which I agree with.

The slave girl can be seen in two different scenes, once in the "orgy pit’ and then later, running in front of Conan.

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However, some resurfaced photo stills from the original filming show Conan cutting her down with a slash of his sword...

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And then you can clearly see the dead slave girl lying face down in her own gore, while Conan moves on to continue the fight...

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Here’s a closer look at Conan post sword swing...

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In the final scene that actually made it into the movie, you see the girl approach Conan and then he simply pushes her out of his way, which implies that they either shot two different scenes or they edited the one scene to cut out the sword slash. This clears up something that always made me wonder when watching the movie, which is why the girl, as she is approaching Conan, is somewhat bent over holding her belly. I was like, "Is she sick or something? Did she have too much human head pea soup and now has a tummy ache?"

Here’s the scene as it was finally edited...

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An interview with the actress playing the part of the slave girl proved that they did indeed film the scene where she is slashed through the gut. Some people debated it, but this picture was dug up that proves it, showing the slave girl after shooting the scene with her gut opened like a zipper...

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So here’s to John Milius for seeing the light and opting to keep our favorite barbarian an honorable fellow!

Thanks for reading, and check back soon for more blogs about our favorite son of Cimmeria!

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