I like to shine a light on the hardworking people that make our movies and world that much brighter.  Those people that are able to shine without the spotlight.  Last time I introduced legendary kung-fu mook Al Leong.  This time we’ll focus on this guy (thumbnail on the left).

So … who the hell is this guy?

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His name is Franco Columbu.  Let me restate that … his name is Dr. Franco Columbu.  Would you be surprised if I told you he was a two time Mr. Olympia (1976, 1981) known as the Sardinian Strongman?  Would you be surprised to find out that he is generously listed at 5′ 5″?

This guy is noteworthy for several reasons – a famous body building career in the 1970s, a strongman, for being a double doctor in chiropractic and nutrition, an amateur boxing champion, … and for being in a few noteworthy roles in movies (which we’ll get to in just a second).

Franco was born in Ollolai, Sardinia.  To me that sounds like a Hawaiian island, but we’ll just assume that he’s from where he says he is.  I can’t imagine that he’d have a reason to lie about being from Italy (allegedly).  He started bodybuilding as he grew up in Europe and met some Austrian guy named Arnold at a competition in Munich in 1965.  Yep, that Arnold.  They became good friends and spent the next decade competiting against each other in every conceivable bodybuilding tournament on the planet.  In fact, Franco was Arnold’s best man when he married Maria Schriver in 1986.

He first came to America in 1969 and was widely regarded as one of the strongest men on the planet.  His competing weight in body building competitions was around 185 .lbs, which can be assumed is probably around 3.5% body fat.  Here are some of his feats: bench press 525 .lbs, squat 655 .lbs, deadlift 750 .lbs.  At the time, all of these were world records.  Just to give you a comparison, he was as strong as Arnold (if not stronger) who carried another 50 pounds of mass.  During his life he won championships for power lifting in Italy, Germany, Europe, and the overall International title.

So you’ve got a strong, smart, body builder that’s friends with the soon to be mega-action star of Hollywood.  If you were to guess that he’d start appearing in Arnold’s films, I’d say Correctamundo!  That’s one thing that’s good about our Austrian buddy, he looks out for das homies.  He’s got a crew of about two or three guys that he looks out from his European body building days, such as Sven-Ole Thorsen who has acted in or worked on 15 different Arnie films.

By the way, I have to mention this.  I was researching for this article and with his stocks, investments, and acting dollars, did you know that Arnold’s net worth is estimated at just under a BILLION dollars?  Good lord, apparently he’s got a business empire that he started in 1968 with a brick-laying company in California.  His business partner?  Franco Columbu.

Before he got into movies with his pal, Columbu completed in the first World’s Strongest Man contest in 1977.  Though he placed fifth overall, he suffered a catastrophic injury.  During the refrigerator carry, he completely dislocated his knee and toppled to the ground with the fridge on top of him.  Considering that he couldn’t complete the rest of the events, his 5th place finish is quite impressive.  By the way, the cool video of this has been taken down repeatedly from YouTube for copyright infringement, else I’d post it.  Fascists.

It took doctors six hours to remove his leg muscle and fix his leg.  They told him that he’d probably never walk again.  Four years later, he won his second Mr. Olympia.  Just goes to show you that science and medicine can never account for the human heart.

So let’s talk about movies.  He had two roles, actually cameos, in two of the early Schwarzenegger movies, Conan the Barbarian and Terminator.  Of course, I’m not counting his appearance in Pumping Iron, which was a fictionalized documentary where he appeared as himself.  Since Conan came first (1982), we’ll start with his role as the Pictish Scout (first appearance at 2:23).  Here’s this little guy packed with muscles, leading the armies of Thulsa Doom.

When most gamers think of a ranger, they think of Aragorn.  Not me.  When this barbarian scout pauses at the top of the rock to survey the village (2:34), bare chested in the winter snows, with the look of a feral wolf, Franco exudes wild savagery and animal cunning.  I knew immediately as a kid that the ranger class was for me in any D&D campaign from that point forwards.

This is a movie that I’d love for the rest of my life.  I can quote you enough lines to recreate the entire screenplay.  By the way, if you think about it, little Franco was outrunning the horses to lead them to the village.  His movement had to be at least a 50′!  Am I geeking out on you yet?

If you keep watching the clip above til the end, you’ll get to see Sven-Ole Thorsen in his first appearance in the movie as Thorgrim as well as James Earl Jones hypnotize Conan’s momma with his freaky snake eyes and then whack her head off.  I still laugh to this day when her head casually falls by her son without his notice.  Am I strange?

There are a couple of characters I want to point out from the movie.  Did you know that Subotai was played by Gerry Lopez, a champion surfer?  Google him.  Or that the guy that played Conan’s dad, William Smith, later played the main Russian commando in Red Dawn (1984)?  He was a former power lifter as well. Here is Smith’s speech as Col. Strelnikov:

From this moment on…  There will be no further reprisals against civilians. This was stupid. Impotence. Comrades…  If a fox stole your chickens…  Would you slaughter your pig because he saw the fox?  No.  You would hunt the fox… You would find where it lives and destroy it!  And how do we do this?  Become a fox.

Coolness.  OK, back to Columbu.  His second cameo came in the other contribution on the best action movies of the 1980s list from Schwarzenegger.  They are chronologically – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Conan the Barbarian, Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), and Die Hard (1988).  There are a lot of great entries in 80s, but that’s my list.  Maybe that should have been a separate column …

As Reese comes to the past to save Sarah Conner, he keeps having flash backs of a dystopian future where robots exterminate all resistance while putting the rest in concentration camps.  No, this is not the giant robot Sentinels … that was yesterday.  In one of those dreams, he goes into a secret hideout of human refugees and survivors.  At some point, a terminator infiltrates (first appearance at 9:01) its way into their lair and starts blasting up the place.  Guess what?  That terminator is none other than our favorite midget Italian strongman!

I did some checking and he is a Cyberdyne Systems Series 800, but not a Model 101 which is the Arnie looking one. So there you have it – a brief movie career in which he played the wellspring of my ranger imagination as well as one of the most successful series 800 terminators to date (12 kills in one scene).

Thank you, Mr. Columbu.