Conquest

source: Conquest

I have noticed that "Conquest" is one of those divisive films that the viewer will either love or hate. Before watching, it is important to remember that this film was not done on a big budget, nor is it meant to be seen as anything more than a fantasy film. It is not realistic, as so many of Fulci's other films are. Fulci achieved an ambiance of cosmic proportions with "Conquest." The fog and the monsters and the creatures are fantastic, I think. Is it cheesy? A little, maybe. But it's not unlike a dream you wake up from and think, 'what the hell was that?' He treats us to more than you'd expect amounts of gore in "Conquest," more than any fantasy film I've ever seen. People getting ripped apart, bludgeoned, etc. Another thing I really like about "Conquest" is the music and the setting. I think they work so well together. I wonder where he filmed it, and how he achieved the overall darkness. It's like he only filmed on hazy days. Anyway, I recommend this to Fulci fans. Other people won't get it or appreciate it. It's too ahead of it's time. 8 out of 10, kids.

As can be gathered from previous comments, this movie is weird beyond belief. I could not really detect a plot, but my guess is it has something to do with naked she-barbarians with masks and bearskin strings. The film seems to be shot through some kind of filter, giving the effect of a constant fog hanging in front of the camera. The splatter is not as abundant as in Fulci's better-known zombie-films, but there's still the occasional bloodletting. Worthwhile, but only of you're into cinematic curiosities.

This was a watershed event in my movie watching life. I went to see this in the theater when it came out. I was completely amazed at just how bad it was. Movies like this make you wonder who put the money up and who owed whom a favor - a very, very large favor. The special effects are absolutely first grade level, as in any first grader could have done them. Toy rubber bats on strings with no attempt to hide the strings, arrows that appear to be drawn on the film and look to be the shape of an arrow you'd find on a street sign, and a laughable story line. Ed Wood made masterpieces compared to "Conquest". Every film student should see this thing just so they'll know the very definition of a bad movie.

Fans of Fulci, you will love this! This film is no Zombi or Beyond but it has the feel and atmosphere of a Fulci masterpiece. He may be the Godfather of Gore, but if your just looking for that certain aspect in the film, then turn away. With the exception of one or two scenes(which are pretty decent), Conquest has little gore to offer. What Conquest does have to offer tho is a great atmosphere and music score. Around the time of Conquest's release, the sword and sorcery genre was very popular. This film is merely Fulci's take on the genre and he pulls it off brilliantly. The story may be simple and seem generic yet it is pulled off well enough to make the plot of the film enjoyable and entertaining through the use of great settings, creatures, cheesy special effects and a cool techno score of the early 80's. If you're a fan of Fulci or even a fan of cheesy 80's movies, then Conquest would probably be a great film for you. 8 out of 10!

I am a big Fulci fan, but I will be the first to say that some of his lesser films are endearingly lame (Aenigma, A Touch of Death, Demonia, etc). Luckily this sword and sorcery epic does not belong in that group. Instead, this film is just shy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the all time Fulci zombie classics (The Beyond, City o' the living Dead, Zombie, etc.). In other words, Fulci made some bold choices throughout his prolific career involving genre, as well as the actual content of the films (obviously). The fantasy/barbarian category may seem like an odd choice considering his other films, but this is a crossover type project that is very successful from an entertainment point of view. Although some may view this as a "genre" or "exploitation" movie, in my view Fulci was able to bring his stylistic flair to a different place. The result is a film that is very soulful for a Fulci film, in as much as this is about honorable warriors who are involved in a quasi-mystical quest involving magic weapons, animal rights and what not. Yet he still continues the gore and the general feeling of menace mixed with tension and chaos that permeates the aforementioned Zombie movies. There is a considerable amount of bludgeoning and rather disgusting body fluid squirting here. But the action sequences themselves have a somewhat frenetic choreography that Fulci does well with, all the battle scenes were much more enjoyable because I was invested in the characters and the spirit of the thing. The wolfpeople masks and costumes are also kind of clever, as are the swamp people. Special mention should be made of Claudio Simonetti's perfect synthesized score. The music adds a lot of depth to the characters and the great locations, adding a little sophistication to what is essentially a very simple and well told tale. During the briefly sluggish pace of the middle portion of the film, the music saves the picture from losing steam. The acting and dubbing were also better than average, and I don't want to give up the ending, but I will say that it had me engrossed and guessing. Actually the end was the best part for me, which is not usually the case with me. The Blue Underground DVD that I watched looks excellent, not to mention the Dolby 2.0 Surround Mix that is perfectly mixed. In summary, I really liked this a lot, I think most hardcore Fulci watchers should at least give it a look.

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.

Bored with watching Zombie Flesh Eaters? Fed up with trying to figure out the End of City of the Living Dead? Scared that you'll waste money on 500 late era Fulci horror flicks? Well, Conquest is the film for you....if you like drug-snorting wolfmen, people being split in two lengthwise, topless sun Goddesses, and a director who must have replaced his corn flakes with LSD, replaced his milk with LSD, then ate all that LSD with a special spoon, made of LSD. Fulci just goes beyond the call of duty in the 'creating another world' stakes, messing up just about every shot on purpose by pointing the camera in the direction of the sun. Otherworldly? How about 'throw out any notion of reality whatsoever'. Don't take this the wrong way though, the insane cinematography just helps this movie. And as for plot, well there's this guy, see, and he sort of appears on a beach with a whole bunch of transparent people, then gets sent on some sort of mission of some sort, with a magic bow. He ends up, erm, somewhere else, and ends up getting his arse kicked over and over again until an animal rights barbarian shows up and helps him, and the two of them travel the land, fighting folks, heading for the topless Godessess place. For some reason. Conquest is one of THE finest Italian insanity flicks I've sat down to watch - Here's a quick rundown of some of the madness: 1) Grenades made from leaves and rocks 2) Plenty of gore, including feeding from a severed head like it was a coconut. 3) Dolphin rescue teams 4) zombies, and bizarre cobweb monkey things. 5) The most awful special effects of flying arrows you'll ever see. 6) Great almost techno-like score. 7) Gore galore 8) Sudden plot twist that comes out of nowhere for no reason. 9) Concrete Nunchuks! Great stuff all the way through - As it's a Fulci film, it has that dream-like quality that's almost like a sedative, but this film is a must for fans - get the Blue Underground, cleaned up, uncut version.

Acclaimed Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci's stunningly bizarre contribution to the hugely popular 80's sword and sorcery genre has to be the single most strange, startling and shockingly crazy movie he ever made. In an unspecified time in a magical and mystical world the wicked sorceress Ocran (the breath-takingly beautiful and bountiful Sabrina Sellers, her face hidden behind a mask and naked except for a g-spring) and her lethal army of ferocious humanoid dog-men who resemble Chewbacca's evil brothers hold a savage reign of terror over the land. It's up to wise older warrior Mace and his naive, but eager younger protégé Illias to stop Ocran with a special bow which fires arrows made of pure bright blue light. During their colorful and eventful trek our heroic twosome encounter a tribe of friendly mud people, hostile swamp zombies, equally vicious cobweb-covered cave creeps, and a pair of helpful dolphins (!). Alejandro Alonso Garcia's dewy, hazy, gauzy cinematography with its dreamy soft-focus, vibrant, richly saturated colors and excessive use of fog, mist and smoke adds immensely to the overall surreal atmosphere and pervasive sense of totally tripped-out druggy peculiarity. Claudio Simonetti's spacey, ripping, hard-rocking incessant score injects an exciting element of rip-snorting vigor to the weird proceedings. Naturally, since this is a Fulci flick we also get plenty of in-your-face gory and nasty graphic violence: Skulls are cracked open, heads are bashed in, several folks get decapitated and one luckless lass winds up being torn in half by the dastardly dog-men. The deliberate pace, vague plotting, pithy dialogue and larger-than-life broad strokes of black and white archetype characters all blend together into one singularly screwy and spellbinding mix, thereby making this interesting and boldly imaginative one-of-a-kind oddity a remarkable experimental variant on your standard fantasy action/adventure romp.

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!