Conquest (1983)

Winner of the Academy of Cheese

Conquest gets a five star rating from me for reasons unknown.... wait a minute yes this movie was fun to watch. Sort of reminds me of something i myself would have thought of when i was in the 4th grade. There isn,t really much of a plot here. The dialouge seems to be made up as the storyline moves through the movie(Must move foward and fight,oh no look out!). Yes it,s Fulci taking a stab at cashing in on Conans success but who cares. I really liked it. Prolly the best cheesy grindhouse fantasy sword and sorcery b movie made or epitamy of. If you like topless girls,sword and bow fighting and villans in halloween costumes then i say pick this one up. Just don,t pay more then 10 bucks. July 19, 2008

GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE

Get this movie before its out of print! Eye promise ewe will not be disappoint! if you dig snapping loads,this film is for you! Eye watch it at every session that a new "head" partakes in the sacred green. Everyone loves it! November 29, 2007

Pretty awful for a bad movie

Ator is way cooler. This was just dumb. But it did have a topless chick in it. And laser arrows. April 9, 2007

Oh dear god!

No figure in the horror film genre is as divisive as Lucio Fulci. After watching one or two of his films, viewers tend to move into one of two camps. One side hails Fulci as a master of terror, a man who upped the gore quotient in his films while creating wonderfully atmospheric pictures. For these people, Fulci is right up there with the likes of Dario Argento as one of the best filmmakers ever to emerge from Italy. The other camp sneers at these claims, pointing to the plodding pace of his films, the use of extreme gore to camouflage plot holes, and the director's inability to draw good performances out of his cast as evidence of mediocrity. Initially, I enjoyed Fulci's films, specifically "Zombie," "City of the Living Dead," and "The New York Ripper" because I did not know any better. When I came on the scene, you went to Fulci to feed your craving for gore. What a difference a few years exploring the genre makes! While I will not go so far as to remove Uncle Lucio from my play list altogether, I have seen enough of his films to realize he is not a cinematic genius. He is at best a good director, at worst an abysmal one, and there are plenty of examples of bad filmmaking in this director's filmography.

In "Conquest," Fulci moves beyond the horror medium into the world of sword and sorcery, with decidedly mixed results. The movie begins with Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti) receiving a magical bow that shoots arrows made of sunlight from some guy that looks like a haggard Santa Claus. His mission, if he chooses to accept it, is to go forth into the world and defeat the evil Ocron (Sabrina Siani) and her violent minions. Ocron is a rather nutty gal; a woman who wears a mask, struts around in the nude, and spends most of her time either on top of a mountain uttering cryptic spells or rolling around in a bed full of snakes. Yeah. Ilias, whose resemblance to Keanu Reeves greatly frightened me, soon runs into trouble with Ocron's goons. Just when we think our boy is down for the count, a wanderer named Mace (Jorge Rivero) enters the picture. He rescues our hero and thereafter joins him for a series of boisterous adventures culminating in the final showdown between Ocron and the sunlight bow. Oh yeah, in order to stop her inevitable confrontation with the thickheaded Ilias, Ocron hires some wizard named Zora (Conrado San Martin) to bring the guy down. That's about it as far as the plot goes.

Fulci packed "Conquest" to the rafters with truly mind-deadening dialogue, bad acting, ridiculous situations, poorly choreographed fight scenes, gore, zombies, pustules, nudity, fog, and cheesy special effects. The cinematography--a truly bizarre blend of smoke and shadow that tends to obscure most of the action unfolding onscreen--either evokes the atmosphere of a lost age or cheap film stock bought on clearance. I'm going with the latter. As for the scenarios the two face on their journey across this forbidding land, just think endless hand-to-hand combat scenes interspersed with minimal do-or-die dialogue written by a kindergartner. Mace kills an innocent wayfarer for food. Ilias and Mace battle Ocron's foot soldiers, guys dressed up to look like Chewbacca and who perform these ridiculous acrobatic leaps and flips. Arrows shot at our heroes during one scene look like the editor marked them in on the celluloid with a pencil. Ilias falls ill and Mace nurses him back to health. Zombies rise out of a swamp for no other reason than to have zombies rise out of a swamp. I think what I'm writing here is rather disorganized, but that's what the movie looks and feels like. Things just happen for no reason, and then we move on to the next nonsensical event.

I will say the gore is good. In fact, it's safe to say that the only thing "Conquest" has going for it is the blood and guts. It's nice to see the trademark Fulci grue transferred into another film genre--I'm still waiting to see an equivalent amount of gore in a Meg Ryan romantic comedy--so fans of his cavalcade of horrors will likely find something to admire here. We get heads bashed open in sickening close-up on two separate occasions. We get Ilias covered in pustules that seem to ooze for minutes at a time. We get a poor wretch torn in half. We even see Ocron dining on a most unusual delicacy. Yes sir, at least "Conquest" contains enough sauce to somewhat obviate the more painful aspects of this clunker. And as much as it pains me to say, "Conquest" is a clunker in the same league with the director's dreadful mob picture "Contraband" which, if memory serves correctly, came out a year or so before this film. An attempt to cash in on the highly popular sword and sorcery phenomena of the early 1980s, "Conquest" succeeds only in embarrassing anyone associated with it. Even Claudio Simonetti's score couldn't save this train wreck.

I'm not going to give the film one star, though. I just can't bring myself to do it, mainly because I do like many Fulci films and also because the DVD isn't half bad. You can tell Blue Underground tried to clean the print up, and they threw in a couple of trailers, a Fulci biography, and artwork stills to boot. If you're preparing to embark on an odyssey through the Fulci filmography, I don't suggest starting here. Begin with "Don't Torture a Duckling," "Zombie," "City of the Living Dead," or "House by the Cemetery" and work your way down from there. I'm afraid if a novice started here, he or she might never watch another Fulci film again!
April 20, 2005

My 'Temple of Secrets' still aches after this one...

Lucio Fulci...while many may not be familiar with the name or his work, he has developed a dedicated and even hardcore audience, mostly due to the extremely graphic nature of the horror films he made from the late 70's into the 80's. What some may not know are those films only made up part of his repertoire, as he also was involved in thrillers, musicals, comedies, westerns, and even a sword and sorcery picture, titled Conquest (1983). This Italian/Spanish/Mexican production (it states this in the beginning during the credits, and, for some reason, it didn't inspire a sense confidence in this viewer), directed by Fulci, stars individuals I've never heard of, including a fairly well muscled Jorge Rivero (Rio Lobo), the very effeminate Andrea Occhipinti (Bolero), and the very naked Sabrina Siani (sounds like a western...The Muscled, the Effeminate, and the Naked).

So what is the film about? I really wish I could say with a degree of certainty, but the plot, what there was, was pretty convoluted. There's a young warrior named Ilias (Occhipinti) who, prior to leaving his village (I guess to go off to become more manly), is presented with a magical bow, one that shoots arrows made of pure light, that is once the user figure out how to activate that feature. Until that happens, it can be used to shoot regular arrows. Anyway, Ilias goes off, and meets up with a nomadic wanderer named Mace (Rivero), whose main choice of weapon is a very poorly made pair of nunchucks, or, two harden pieces of wood attached by a length of rope. While they're running around bonding and stuff (ew), a local evil sorceress named Ocron (Siani), I thought it was Okra, as that what it kept sounding like throughout the film, learns of a man with a strange and powerful weapon (the bow...I find it difficult to believe few people in this world had not heard of a bow and arrow, probably one of the earliest forms of ranged weapons) and knows she must possess it for her own. Also, she's been having dreams regarding her own demise at the hands of a faceless warrior, one who shoots her with an arrow. In an effort to prevent these premonitions from becoming a reality, she sends her various minions to retrieve Ilias and his weapon, which leads up to a some what climatic final battle between good and evil...a common theme in the genre, a hero, or a group of heroes, suffers adversity to rid the land of a powerful enemy blah, blah, blah...

I've seen a lot of films, and I've seen a number of films within the sword and sorcery genre, and I have to say Conquest falls a bit short in comparison. It does meet a number of requirements within the genre (heroes, magic, good, evil), but lacks in the execution. First thing you'll notice is nearly the entire film is shot with a sense that someone smeared Vaseline on the camera lens, giving everything a hazy quality sure to induce headaches early on (the film runs 92 minutes). Also, Fulci must own stock in a company that sells fog producing machines, as nearly every scene also was inundated with a heaping helping of smoke, further obscuring the viewer's ability to see what's going on...the acting isn't horrible, but the dialog is...an example...Ilias and Mace are trapped in a cave and Ilias spots a snake, to which Mace responds, "He's harmless if he doesn't bite you." Well duh...if a ten-ton boulder was suspended over my head with a piece of twine, it would harmless unless the string broke...the characters themselves are goofy and lacking any sense of likeability. An example of this is Mace and Ilias (our two heroes) are traveling together, and Mace is learning how to use the bow. They come across a lowly, completely non-threatening hunter, carrying a dead animal, and Mace shoots and kills him and they take the dead animal so that they may eat it...how very heroic...oh yeah, Mace seems to have a psychic link with animals, and doesn't kill them, but has no problems killing others who've killed animals and taking their food to eat for himself. Ocron (the evil sorceress) sports a metal, horned bikini bottom and no top, and spends a lot of time having intimate relations with snakes (ew) and eating the brains of her recently killed victims (you see, the head is the `temple of secrets' and it's also quite tasty, or so I've heard). She commands odd group of henchmen, including wolfmen, regular men, and various animated zombie-like characters, all enabling her to lord over a relatively small group of savages. Most all the women in the film are topless, which helps, but is entirely gratuitous, serving no real purpose other than to take your mind off the fact the film is so weak in general. The directing ranges from passable to poor, including pointless POV shots, stupid slow motion that only serves to drag the run time out much further than needed, and ineptly choreographed fight scenes. I found the mostly electronic musical score to be highly annoying, monotonous, and inappropriate. Fans of Fulci's stylistic approach to visceral gore will enjoy the inclusion of a smattering of graphic scenes here (brains, puss leaking sores, gore spurting wounds), but it's nowhere near the levels in his horror films, so they may be ultimately dissatisfied. People not familiar with his penchant for splattery will probably be put off and find it hard to watch.

Blue Underground presents an exceptional widescreen print transfer on this DVD, despite all the funky cinematography. Special features include two theatrical trailers (U.S. and international), poster and still galleries with lots of good-looking pictures, and a fairly comprehensive and informative biography on Lucio Fulci. All in all, unless you're a Fulci completist, you might want to skip Conquest, as its' appeal is extremely limited, in my opinion.

Cookieman108
October 21, 2004

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