Conquest

Sword and Sorcery flicks had their heyday in the early 80s, with "Conan The Barbarian" as the absolute highlight of the sub-genre, and tons of mostly immensely crappy low-budget flicks to follow. These films were so popular then, that even the godfather of gore himself, Lucio Fulci, decided to dabble in Fantasy's trashiest, and most entertaining sub-genre. Fulci's take on the Sword And Sorcery genre, namely this "Conquest" of 1983 is definitely not one of Fulci's masterpieces (more precisely, it is probably his dumbest movie), but it nonetheless outshines most other contemporary low-budget films of the kind. The storyline is extremely silly, and in spite of its flatness it is often confusing and makes little sense. People shouldn't watch Sword'n'Sorcery flicks and expect logic, however, and "Conquest" certainly has its qualities too. The film is atmospheric, and often quite bizarre, even more so than most other films of the genre, which is a quality in my book. I also liked the (quite strange) characters. The main villain is a nearly naked woman wearing a bizarre golden mask, who commands an army of beasts who are something in-between bears, wolves and men. While one of the heroes, Ilias (played by Andrea Occhipinti) looks like a total wuss, the other main character, Mace (played by Jorge Rivero) is basically a trashier version of Conan the Barbarian. Director Fulci also implicates the trade-mark gore, among other things heads are being crushed and people are torn into pieces.

What especially makes this film watch-worthy, however, is the ingenious score by Claudio Simonetti, known to Horror buffs and Progressive Rock fans as the creative head of "Goblin", the ingenious band responsible for some of the greatest Horror film scores ever, most prominently those to Dario Argento's masterpieces. Simonetti always stands for brilliant film scores, and the progressive Rock score fits in with Sword and Sorcery better than one might expect. I would even go further, and say that the score to "Conquest" may very well be the single coolest soundtrack to any film of the genre. All things considered, "Conquest" is well worth watching. Fans of trashy 80s flicks, especially lovers of Sword And Sorcery should definitely give it a try!

Sword and sorcery tale of two powerful hunters from a future World trapped in prehistoric times , confronting a nasty witch : Sabrina Siani bent on taking the fantastic bow for evil . In a place beyond time, comes a terrifying challenge beyond imagination .At the beginning a young hunk , Andrea Occhipinti, with a magic bow sets out into searching for a villain sorceress . On his trip he meets another mighty warrior : George Rivero , and both of whom join forces to battle horrible creatures , creepy zombies , weird apes and anything else. He is the only hope for a dying race , he is the beginning which will destroy all but the boldest warrior !.

A nice sword and sorcery tale about a terrifying odyssey into the unreal , featuring brutality , strange production design , ethereal ambience by means of a foggy photography and attractive musical score. A camp fun with fights , violent confrontation , lots of blood and gore , beheading and somewhat silly finale . Being a Spain/Italy/Mexico coproduction , here appears Italian actors : Andrea Occhipinti , Gioia Sscola , Sabrina Siani , Spanish : Conrado San Martín, Violeta Cela, Jose Gras and Mexican player : Jorge Rivero . Special mention for the dark but colorful and foggy cinematography by cameraman Alejandro Ulloa who used peculiar filters , soft focus as well as a fog machine . This splendid cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa had a long international career including films as House of Garibaldi Street , Manaos , The Amazons , California , Pancho Villa and Horror Express . A rare but very atmospheric musical score composed by Claudio Simonetti by means of synthesizer , he is the composer of the soundtrack of several Dario Argento's pics , besides being a music composer and keyboard player of the Italian rock bands Goblin and Daemonia.

The motion picture was uneven but professionally directed by Lucio Fulci in his usual style , including some regular tics and ordinary marks. Fulci was deemed to be the godfather of the gore , making decent films as Zombie Flesh Eaters or Zombie 2 , City of the Living Dead , The Beyond , The House by the cemetery , The Black Cat, New York Ripper and many others .

In an unnamed pre-historic land, a gold-masked sorceress named Ocron (Sabrina Siani) rules all evil. A young archer (Andrea Occhipinti), equipped with a magic bow-and-arrow, sets out to kill her, teaming up with a hardened, animal-loving muscleman (George Rivero) along the way...

This was the first movie Fulci made after breaking his assocation with Fabrizio De Angelis, and is recognised as the one that would stop his career in its tracks. Fulci's quarrels with producer Giovanni De Clemente really show through on screen, with some particularly cheap special-effects and mangy-looking monsters.

To his credit, Fulci tries hard to work up an atmosphere (orange skies, fog, green mossy plains), but gives up towards the end. Some scenes are just plain stupid, such as the wolfmen attacks (they look like Dulux hounds!) and Rivero rescued from drowning by dolphins. As with his earlier CHALLENGE TO WHITE FANG, the sheer nastiness of what goes on weighs against the fantastical, magical backdrop Fulci was trying to create. But FANG had lovely locations, good acting, a pacey storyline and excellent photography to fall back on.

Gore fans do get their money's worth, however. An old man's brain is exposed after receiving a cranial axe-blow, Ocron whacking open a severed head to feast on its brains, various gore-spewing arrow hits, zombies being staked, several graphic burnings, and Ocron's heart blown out after receiving a laser-bolt to her chest. Not forgetting the notorious 'wishbone' sequence, where a naked girl is spread-eagled until she splits right up the middle.

Of course, many video-releases are cut, including the UK and Dutch tapes. Go for the Belgian or Greek release, they're both uncut and LBXed. That is, of course, if you care!

It's not surprising that the Italian spate of CONAN rip-offs only lasted about a year. This unimaginative effort, which is adequate at best, is actually one of the BETTER rip-offs. You don't even want to know what Lenzi's IRON MASTER and Tonino Ricci's THOR THE CONQUEROR are like!

An old man in a dollar store Santa wig and beard bestows a magic bow on wimpy young adventurer Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti), who ventures into the smoke-shrouded wilderness to fulfil his destiny, which involves befriending barbarian Mace (Jorge Rivero), and fighting evil, topless sun-ruler Ocron (Sabrina Siani) and her beastly minions.

Lucio Fulci, the Italian 'godfather of gore', tackles the then-very-popular fantasy genre in his own distinctive style, keeping splatter fans happy with a wonderfully gory scene early on as Ocron's pig-faced henchmen attack a peaceful tribe, tearing a woman in half by pulling her legs apart and cracking open her skull so that their leader can feast on the brains. A later revolting scene sees Ilias struck by a poisoned dart, his body erupting with oozing sores (cured by a handy dandy magical flower that grows in a nearby valley!). Fulci also throws in not one, but two totally unexpected and gory demises for two of the characters, which makes up somewhat for the remainder of the film, which comprises of a series of not-very-thrilling altercations in which the bad guys launch themselves off trampolines in the direction of the heroes.

In addition to the gore and the tiresome fights, we also get a hilarious moment when a school of friendly dolphins rescue Mace from a watery grave - a silly underwater scene to rival that of the shark vs. Zombie in Zombie Flesheaters.

5/10. Not one of Fulci's better films, but worth a go for fans of the director and for those who enjoy dumb trashy movies.

If there's any movie Lucio Fulci made that inspires equal love and hatred, it must be this, the director's lone fore into the Sword and Sorcery subgenre. The general opinion of its detractors seems to be that "Conquest" marked the beginning of Fulci's descent into both commercial and artistic mediocrity, and while the former may be true, I'm not understanding the latter. In light of what Fulci's work aspires to be, "Conquest" can in many ways be seen as a culmination of his style, and if your best criticisms of the movie are that it's "plotless and cheap," I wonder why you're watching a Fulci movie in the first place.

Sure, the plot is a rudimentary blob that in the end amounts mostly to characters wandering back and forth as an excuse to get them into perilous situations involving traps and monsters, but Fulci's visual sensibilities are positively ON FIRE here, so much so that the limitations of the story become pretty much inconsequential. They take a back seat to the otherwordly mythic fantasy environment that Fulci is able to create with the most frugal materials. It is the foreboding fog-shrouded swamps, ancient stone temples, grotesque creatures and lurid-colored alien skies that will linger in the mind as the work of an artist who clearly has an eye for distinctive visuals. You could only accuse this of being a movie derivative of "Conan the Barbarian" if you completely ignored this aspect of it, because I can't think of another film that looks anything like this.

Other aspects of "Conquest" work to its advantage in subtle ways. The spare, monosyllabic dialogue helps to create the sense of a primitive and brutish world and the minimalist pulses of Claudio Simonetti's electronic score mesh well with the stunning visuals. Bizarre details - the villainess' gold mask and fascination with snakes, the enchanted bow that glows blue, the dolphin rescue - border on the surrealistic. The effect achieved, at least to this viewer, is hypnotic. I find myself wondering how so many filmmakers today, when they are given all the resources in the world and can't give us one interesting thing to look at, can be treated so leniently by critics who would jump on the bahnwagon to slam Fulci without a second thought.