Customer Reviews

Conquest

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Ever wonder what a sword and sorcery flick by Lucio Fulci would be like? Look no further than Blue Underground's recent release of Conquest. Ya know, I'd been looking for this movie since I was 12 years old for crying out loud! Thanks again to Blue Underground.
CONQUEST: We got our first hero who I'll call "Idiot", mainly because he is. Idiot is given a magical bow by some old mystic guy. He's not given any particular quest or anything, some claptrap about reaching his manhood. I guess he's just supposed to be an all around do-gooder. The bow is magical because once it runs out of arrows it's able to pull the sun from the sky and shoot really cool blue sun-power arrows. To me this is kind of a lame contraption coz personally, I'd just throw away all the regular arrows and just use the sun powered ones. Our hero doesn't do this coz he's not too bright. Our villian is a topless, masked sorceress who's job is basically to send out her army of men in cheap werewolf costumes to make life miserable for everyone in the land. After a successful raid and a shot of a fantasyland equivalent of LSD/cocaine(administered in the same fashion as launching a spitball), she sees a vision of Idiot coming to kill her, so she sends out her silly Chewbacca/werewolf things to kill him. Around this time we meet our second hero who I call Manowar-basically coz he looks like he may have tried out for the band once, but got the boot. Manowar's job for the rest of the film is to save Idiot's butt when ever he gets captured or in trouble. Manowar is the true hero of the film. This is the basis of our movie. Idiot and Manowar meet lots of perils and dangers while on the run and in pursuit of the masked naked woman until the final showdown. Who wins? You'll have to watch. This film is 100% heckle material. It's very entertaining if you like this kind of thing. Fulci brings his trademark gore to the film(which you kind of wish Peter Jackson would have done when he made a fantasy film), and a funky soundtrack! He also must have attached a fog machine to the camera coz this film looks like it was shot in a cloud. Highly recommended.

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

True, sword-and-sorcery is a particularly stupid genre. It was only done once well, and of course I'm talking about Robert E Howard, and then a few writers like Moorcock, Leiber, and Karl Edgar Wagner came along and created characters that transcended the genre. We had one truly good movie--the original Conan--and lots of imitations. And we also had sword-and-sorcery exploitaion flicks, movies that actually ADDED to the amount of gore and sex already in Conan. This, of course, is a good thing, and Conquest is the whackiest of the whole bunch. Hell, Fulci even throws in zombies. The evil wizard chick wears nothing but a gold mask--that's right, she's NEKKID the entire movie. And for Fulci fans, the main character has an inverted mark of Eibon on his forehead, from Fulci's horror flick The Beyond. This movie rocks.

Oh Fulci! What a confusing movie you made. The acting is bad! the characters are terrible! the plot.......what plot? Nothing made sense! If you're a long time Fulci fan you gotta see this one. If you're new to Fulci's film...wait for awhile and watch these titles:

The black cat
Zombie
The Beyond
4 for the apocalypse
Contraband
New York Ripper
Don't Torture a Duckling
City of the Living Dead

Just to name a few of the classics. Conquest may not be a consider a Fulci Classic, but it sure become a cult classic.

Made at the height of the Sword and Sorcery craze in the early eighties thanks to John Milius's 'CONAN THE BARBARIAN',this is one of my favorite guilty pleasures because so many people that have seen this film with me think I'm absolutely crazy at giving it repeated viewings . Sorry, Blue Underground has restored all of the soft focus and gritty feel into a wonderful viewing experience. This is the closest I've ever seen the paintings of Frank Frazetta come to life right up to the beautiful SABRINA SIANI as the stark naked femme fatale wearing nothing but a bronze mask. Yeah, the makeup is shoddy and it has a unique electronic music score that 'FORBIDDEN PLANET' fans may shudder at but these elements give the film its charm. Fulci's vision is fabulous and I love every minute of this film. It's great to be crazy.

If you can recall when "Video Tapes" first arrived (VHS), then you probably remember that there were roughly a dozen of these type films on the shelf in just about every store. Lets face it, there weren't many to choose from in the beginning.
I like this film and I really can't add anything that hasn't been said in previous reviews. I would add that, if you like Sabrina Siani, you might look for a copy of "Throne of Fire" (Also early 1980's). I think it is probably her best film.
This film, "Conquest," can really leave you with a vague sense of loss.
It's nice to look at but, the plot (?) is rather thin.
You've really got to use your imagination here.

I'm a big Fulci fan, but some of his movies are really bad, so I expected this movie to suck (it got a lot of bad reviews), but I l loved it! It's not a good movie (I mean, most critics would hate it because the acting sucks and etc...) and it doesn't make a lot of sense (I don't think it's supposed to though), but it's so *beep* entertaining and unintentionally hilarious! It has an unique surreal atmosphere, it has a lot of action and it has some nice gore scenes! Oh and it has zombies! Oh wait, it doesn't only have zombies, it also has werewolves that looks like Chewbacca, weird looking monsters and a naked evil witch! Sounds awesome, right? Well, it is.

See it! But don't take it seriously or else you'll hate it.

5 stars is a bit too much, I know.

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. [...].

Conquest is just one of many Sword and Sorcery "epics" that were released in the wake of the success of Conan the Barbarian. Directed by Lucio Fulci, a man more known for his horror films than for his fantasy/adventure forays, crafts a delightfully crappy film with delightfully crappy dialogue, acting, and a meager see-hair of a story.

The film "stars" Andrea Occhipinti who resembles a younger, effeminate version of Hugh Jackman...with a perm. Jorge Rivero who starred in the classic supernatural thriller Werewolf (or Wherewilf depending on which actor in the movie you asked to say it) that was riffed on by the boys at Mystery Science Theater 3000. And finally, the villain of the movie is played by Sabrina Siani who remains nude for the entire film with a metal mask hiding her true face. The perfect woman (I'm kidding, don't send me hate mail or hate comments)!

So explaining Conquest is certainly not an easy thing to do. Seeing as how there isn't really a story or cohesive plot or likable characters, this is going to be a rough ride.

Apparently this young warrior named Idiot (that's what it sounded like his name was) is given a magical bow that can shoot light out of it and stuff and this older guy wants him to use it. On a quest or something. That part's kind of vague. I was getting the impression the old guy was tired of Idiot hanging around waiting for his perm to set and mooching all the Nair. Other people want to be hairless as well ya jerk!

Idiot has no idea how to use the magical bow and I don't think the old guy did either so that's why he gave it away. I can relate. I had a Transformer when I was kid that I couldn't figure out so I gave it away. I think that relates to this. Maybe. So until Idiot learns how to shoot light from the bow, he just has to settle on regular arrows.

In his travels, Idiot meets up with Mace; an obvious schizophrenic older companion who carries around stone nunchucks and kills people indiscriminately. But he loves the animals so we can forgive him the occasional murder.

Idiot and Mace bond; a lot. Mace is a loner and Idiot needs a man around to do some of the fighting I guess. Anyway, the evil villain Destro...I mean Oprah (okay, her name is Ocrah or Ocran but the audio is horrible so I could never hear the name clearly) learns of this weird contraption called a "bow and arrow" and she must possess it immediately. Obviously there are no other bow and arrows in the ancient world. You know. The ancient world where bow and arrows first came into existence?? She also starts to have visions of this guy killing her with an arrow so it makes sense to track down the only jerk in the world who has one. So she sends her unholy horde of mutated Care Bears, human mercenaries, shape-shifting wizards, killer grass, swamp zombies, cave monsters, and the awesome cobweb monsters who speak in broken English after Idiot.

By now, I'm so used to bad movies that I've become quite numb to them. What would make others squirm and walk out on, I can proudly sit through. Conquest is a bad movie all around with barely any redeeming factors other than the high percentage of gore and nudity.

The film itself seems to be shot with a light sheen of Vasoline smeared on the camera lens so everything has this hazy, As The World Turns daytime drama effect. Another aspect of Fulci's annoying direction was the absurd choice to film a lot of scenes with the camera facing the sun. All we see are fuzzy outlines of the actors. Another particularly fun time was when our hapless heroes are in a cave and it's completely dark. Combined with the horrible haze of the film in the first place and a lack of even subtle lighting, all you see are vague shapes and outlines of people mixed with growls and voices.

If you like fog in your films, you're going to love this one though. Fog is everywhere. The filmmakers must have bought out every fog machine they could find or had a friend who knew a friend that had a guy who could get them cheap fog. We all have one of those guys, so I'm sure that's what happened.

All in all, Conquest isn't a movie for people with no time on their hands, lives, or girlfriends. Which is why I watched it several times. It's entertaining in a Mystery Science Theater way if you can get together with a bunch of friends to riff on it. Two dramatic scenes did impress me however so I will leave you with their epic awesomeness.

One, the dolphin rescue scene. And two, the first thing the credits reveal at the end. You just have to watch it to believe it.

I have to jump right into this with both feet and state here and now, that CONQUEST is a sword & sorcery triumph. To those who would measure this film on its music or 'special effects' to the yardstick of today's Hollywood industry, I say 'Foul!' To appreciate this film, and I do mean this, one must allow for me to put my case.

Fulci was a master of creating worlds where the viewer accepted all that was seen solely because Fulci placed it before them. His artistic eye for delivering bizarre horizons, multi-cloured skies, and all manner of life forms while backed up by the pop synthesizer that made the 80s music what it was, had audiences believing what they saw on screen was the norm, and never looked back.

Now, the general consensus of CONQUEST by 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.

Yes, the plot is rudimentary hodgepodge 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 amazing here, so much so that the limitations of the story become pretty much moot as you take in the fog covered lands and the weird denizens that live there. They make the other-wordly mythic fantasy environment that Fulci attempting to create with what appears to be a shoe string budget and a deserted piece of island property. BUT - 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 bandwagon to slam Fulci without a second thought.