Conquest (1983)

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.

Our Time (2018)

I took a chance on Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux mainly on the basis of the intriguing image of a red demon with horns moving through a living room. In the end, that was one surreal image included in a visually immersive arthouse drama about an upper class family and their workers in Mexico. I thought it was really great and several moments still linger in my memory (a child alone in a muddy paddock with animals, an English schoolboy rugby scrummage, an Eyes Wide Shut style orgy of adults). I was curious about Reygadas’ follow up, Our Time (2018; Nuestro tiempo), and it long beckoned intimidatingly with its three hour length. I felt that it literalised a lot of what Post Tenebras Lux left unsaid and abstract, and the story is more of a direct portrait of a marriage under duress between poet-rancher Juan (played by Reygadas himself) and his wife Esther (Natalia Lopez, Reygadas’s wife). The characters have an open marriage, but a serious schism occurs when Esther falls in love with an American hired hand, Phil (Phil Stevens). It’s hard not to read into everything once you know it is Reygadas and his wife playing these roles, their children also playing themselves. Reygadas in interviews has strongly denied there’s any autobiographical or therapeutic work going on here. Yet it all feels loaded particularly when Reygadas’ character, Juan, almost finds perverse pleasure and suffering in being the cuckold while Reygadas the director is filming his wife in very intimate scenes with other men. Hence, some critics have labelled it self-indulgent (you might too). I don’t know if I felt too much for either character, and sometimes wondered if professional actors in the lead three roles would have been better (Lopez is the strongest performance). But I appreciated that as the film kept going, moving on from Juan’s masculine perspective and finding complexity in the difficulties the characters are trying to work out openly with each other. Helping this are startling visuals and sequences filmed by Adrian Durazo and Diego Garcia – from the vistas of the ranch where Juan and Esther raise bulls, the changing weather patterns of Mexico, a sequence that explores how the motor of Esther’s car works, a lengthy shot of Mexico City from above while Esther reads a letter that examines their marriage eloquently, to the final poetic moment scored to King Crimson’s ‘Islands’. In the end, I was glad that I watched it, and how it took its time to reconcile the emotional and sexual actions of its characters, and also depicted small moments (receiving a text in an opera, ignoring texts while driving) as epic cinematic offerings. Available to stream on Stan and Kanopy. Recommended.

The Untamed (2016)

When we held VHS Tracking – Live for the Blue Room Winter Nights, one of my questions to the panellists was “What movie would you use to vet the people in your life?” One of artist Nathan Beard’s choices was The Untamed (2016; La región salvaje) which he described as a “horny movie” and one that would truly be a litmus test as a movie recommendation. Thanks to SBS OnDemand, I was able to finally see what Nathan was talking about, and the film was both what I expected but also completely different to what I anticipated, particularly since all I really knew about it was that there was an alien tentacle or something that people had sex with. Much like other auteurs who take a grounded approach to horror/sci-fi terrain (Cronenberg, Glazer, Von Trier), director-writer Amat Escalante establishes an eerie tone with mysterious images right from the start, but the film more or less focuses on the tensions across an unhappy marriage. Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is the stressed mother of two children who has a macho husband Angel (Jesús Meza) that cheats on her. Then there is the haunted Veronica (Simone Bucio) trying to get over her time with a mysterious entity in a cabin out in the countryside and starts getting to know Alejandra’s brother who is a nurse, Fabian (Eden Villavicencio). How all of this interconnects and touches on aspects of class, gender and sexuality in Mexican culture is doled out patiently and slowly with sensuous force and anxious anticipation. The Untamed is great, and even by the end, leaves much unsaid to ruminate over even as it produces images you can’t believe you’ve seen. Recommended.