“You’re Dead! Stay Down!”: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian Cost More Money Due to Unruly Stuntmen; Revealed in Total Recall

Arnold Schwarzenegger worked incredibly hard to earn the fame that he has today. After coming to America in 1968, Schwarzenegger competed at the highest level in bodybuilding, attended university, and also took acting classes. All his hard work paid off when Conan the Barbarian (1982), starring him in the lead role, became a massive hit. However, his first project ran into some problems during filming.

While the film had a production budget of $20 million, many scenes in Conan the Barbarian relied on visual effects, meaning the makers had to spend the cash wisely. Despite this, an unforeseen problem with “stunt guys,” cost the movie more money.

Making the most of their screentime

Renowned producer Dino De Laurentiis’s daughter Raffaella, who produced the film, chose to shoot it in Spain. While they had to build the sets from scratch, it was “still much cheaper than using real soundstages where labor can hold us up,” revealed Schwarzenegger.

Besides being one of the “nonunionized countries,” when it came to movie production, Schwarzenegger revealed they had no labor problems in Spain. According to the bodybuilding legend, everyone worked together to make filming more efficient. However, a peculiar problem cropped up while shooting the action scenes in the movie.

“The stunt guys took too long to die,” revealed the Austrian Oak. Director John Milius would instruct the stunt persons to “just drop,” but they would not listen. “Instead, they would fall theatrically, get partway back up, fall down again, gasp…” revealed the Terminator actor. In Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, Schwarzenegger recounted how he would hear Milius shout, “You’re dead! Stay down! He cut you, don’t move!” while filming a scene.

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Finally, they complied after the filmmaker promised them extra money if they “died immediately and stayed dead.” This resulted in the production costing more money, as well. However, the incident with the stunt people wasn’t the only memorable incident for the former bodybuilding champion while filming Conan the Barbarian.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and the stunt involving dogs

In his autobiography, Schwarzenegger wrote about another unpleasant memory while filming Conan. While filming the scene where wolves chase Conan, pieces of meat were strewn into the actor’s costume. The plan was to hold back the dogs long enough, so they would chase, but wouldn’t catch up to Arnie. However, things didn’t go as planned.

The trainer released the dogs early, and they chased down the former champion bodybuilder. Arnie recalled in his autobiography, that the dogs bit his pants and dragged him down, resulting in a 10 ft fall. The former Mr. Universe ended up injured and had to get 12 stitches.

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Schwarzenegger revealed that no matter how hard one works in acting school, no one can prepare an actor for incidents like the stunt persons refusing to follow directions, or the dog attack. A lot rides on experience; something, Schwarzenegger now has plenty of.