and acquisition of a sword within were based on de Camp and Carter's "The Thing in the Crypt". According to Derek Elley, Variety's resident film critic, Milius's script, with its original ideas and references to the pulp stories, was faithful to Howard's ideals of Conan. Milius felt, "all the basic emotions [in the script] are always accessible to audiences. All of the things that Conan does we all feel ourselves. He just acts on them with more intensity than we do. He is a character who relies on the animal. And I always believe that the animal instincts are often the worst part of them. All you do when you evolve is corrupt yourself sooner or later." Filming Filming started at England's Shepperton Studios in October 1980, with Schwarzenegger, made up to look like Conan as a king in his old age, reading an excerpt from "The Nemedian Chronicles", which Howard had penned to introduce his Conan stories. This footage was initially intended to be a trailer, but Milius decided to use it as the opening sequence of the film, instead. According to Cobb, Laurentiis and Universal Pictures were concerned about Schwarzenegger's accent, so Milius compromised by moving the sequence to the end. Schwarzenegger trained with voice coach Robert Easton and with Milius in order to eliminate his accent, but their efforts proved to be unsuccessful, so the planned narration which was intended to begin with this scene was not included in the final film. The initial location for principal photography was former Yugoslavia, but because of concerns over the country's stability after the death of its head of state, Josip Broz Tito, and the fact that the Yugoslavian film industry proved ill-equipped for large-scale film production, the producers elected to move the project to Spain, which was cheaper and where resources were more easily available. It took several months to relocate; the crew and equipment arrived in September, and filming started on January 7, 1981. The producers allocated $11 million for production in Spain, of which about $3 million were spent on building 49 sets. The construction workforce numbered from 50 to 200; artists from England, Italy, and Spain were also recruited. A large warehouse outside Madrid served as the production's headquarters, and it also housed most of the interior sets for the Tower of Serpents and Doom's temple; a smaller warehouse was leased for other interior sets. The