After listening to the recent Pure Cinema Podcast episode on Fantasy movies, I was keen to submerge myself into some 1980s era sword-and-sorcery flicks. One title they talked highly of, and that I’d heard good word for some time, was Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s entry into the post-Conan genre, Conquest (1983), an Italian-Spanish-Mexican co-production, which is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Even in the recent remastered edition with it looking better than any VHS ex-rental, the first thing to notice about Conquest is its foggy, hazy aesthetic. Along with cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa, Fulci ensures that every scene is swimming with mist or smoke, and at times even the film lens feels like it was shot through gauze; the effect is definitely dream-like, like an impressionistic oil painting coming to life in slow motion. That, and Claudio Simonetti’s (from Goblin) ethereal, pulsating synth score, and the markers of 1980s special effects such as the key weapon wielded by the heroes – a mythical bow that fires laser arrows – cements Conquest as having a distinctive retro fantasy style. The plot? A young hunk named Illias (Andrea Occhipinti) from a mythical land journeys to a primordial landscape of cave dwellers and wolf warriors, which is ruled by a nude sorceress wearing a gold mask, Ocron (Sabrina Siani). Eventually Ilias teams up for with an older hunk, Mace (Jorge Rivero) who communes with animals (like a beastmaster) and survives on his own wits (that, and a pair of nunchucks made of bone). The story then alternates between one of the two – Illias or Mace, Mace or Illias – getting jumped by a group of strange creatures, and the other rescuing them, intercut with Ocron writhing around with a snake and tripping out over a vision of her own death, which she seeks to stop with all the creatures and warriors under her command. Also, because it is directed by Fulci, it’s quite violent in a splatter way with either someone getting brained or blood spurting out of someone every ten minutes or so (if not splatter violence, then something very weird will happen every ten minutes i.e. the Fulci touch). I thought this was very entertaining, and a true vibe experience, depending how much you’re into the misty and mythical fantasy aesthetic; the film definitely has a greater sense of style than other low budget European Conan knock-offs (even though it was a box office flop on release). Conquest is like if you were staring hard at a Frank Frazetta painting by a camp site fire and then tripped out on a smoke induced haze while listening to some synth prog pumping out of car stereo speakers. It’s also great that for a fantasy film that features a nude sorceress, a bow that shoots laser arrows, and lots of man-animal warriors, the first thing we see in the closing credits is: ‘Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.’ Recommended.
VHS Tracking 