Was there animal cruelty in this movie? - Conan the Destroyer (1984) Discussion

[–] barodabulldog 10 years ago

I remember talk about the horses in the first movie being injured during the final battle. But, not during The Destroyer. Injuries to the camel were rumored. As I recall those stories were proved untrue.

reply

[–] bobbyh64 10 years ago

I just watched a documentary about the making of Conan the Barbarian and the director said there were no animals injured during the making of the movie, and that only people were actually harmed! The documentary brought up one scene where it appears that a horse falls through some spikes, but they said the spikes were made out of rubber and there was even a stunt guy that fell through them before the horse did, so if the horse was injured then so was the stunt guy, but neither was hurt.

reply

[–] dahoss65 8 years ago

Lol......of course the director is going to say that. That's like believing anything a lawyer or politician tells you. Very few honest people out there today that's going to admit to these kinds of animal abuse.

reply

[–] bobbyh64 8 years ago

So you're telling me the director was lying and they didn't use rubber spikes? They used real wooden ones and had a stunt man fall on them as well as the horse? Common sense tells me the director was probably telling the truth when he said that.

reply

[–] dahoss65 8 years ago

They are still abusing animals today in the circus, horse racing, etc. So your common sense is flawed if you don't think that back then and beyond animals didn't get abused, injured or killed in movies.

reply

[–] bobbyh64 8 years ago

I think you could only say my common sense is flawed if there wasn't a stunt man in the scene. If they really did use wooden spikes, why would they have a stunt man fall through them too?

reply

[–] sirlovealot 8 years ago

Look at the way the horses are brought down. Might not have resultated in them dying but like many horse stunts in old movies it can definitely be classified as animal cruelty.

reply

[–] lpt0127 8 years ago

there you go.. keep that wall of skepticism up, assume everyone is lying to you.. don't believe anything anyone says until proven otherwise.

Welcome to the El Flamingo, Jeffrey!
Don't piss in the pool, Jeffrey.

reply

[–] wesperkins 8 years ago

I have no knowledge of what animals were hurt, but just viewing the movie, it seems some had to have been injured.. Maybe none died or were life threatening, but some of them had to have gotten hurt at least. It seemed like a horse was eating dirt after their rider was killed every 5 minutes in the beginning. Just an opinion from someone who knows nothing about filming these kinds of scenes, so I could be wrong.

reply

[–] Loyalty1 (1) 3 years ago

4 years ago I got into signing petitions b a voice for abused/murdered animals. I also started volunteering and U R SO
right dahoss65. Especially back then, animals suffered a lot of sight in movies. Today, with social media, theres no way that can b argued, unless the person just dgf about animals

reply

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Conan-1982 8 years ago

No: the only creatures who suffered were the fans of Conan the Barbarian, especially me.

reply

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Animal welfare groups have been involved with film production for decades, at least with American movies. So you can be pretty sure that these animals were not actually harmed.

reply

[–] R_Kane (15828) 3 years ago

He clocked the camel in Conan the Barbarian, Brainiac. The camel was smarter than you are.

reply

[–] Roguemail (1565) 3 years ago

I have also seen a lot of people get upset at the scene in Blazing Saddles when Mongo punches the horse with the rider on it.

But you can clearly see that Mongo does not make contact with the horse, the guy sitting on the horse simply pulls the horse hard to the left so that it falls.

And I am sure they probably had a hidden mat or something soft buried in the ground for the horse to have a soft landing.

reply

[–] AP (5259) 3 years ago

Yeah, there’s no way a horse or a camel fall down from a human’s punch, regardless of how big they are. They were trained to fall down.

reply

[–] fab4242 (1) a year ago

em. One of the horses was forced to fall into, and over, pointed stakes. Horse abuse was also cited in the film’s sequel, the 1984 Richard Fleischer film, Conan, the Destroyer. In this film, a horse was tripped with a ‘toe tap.’ A wire device was attached to the horse’s front hooves and then held by the rider. The horse’s head was pulled to one side, using the reins, while its front legs were swept out from under it. Not only did the AHA give these movies an unacceptable rating, they also encouraged moviegoers to boycott the films. The boycott resulted in the horse scenes being removed from the movie for its showing in the United Kingdom (Conan, The Destroyer 1).

reply