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1983 - Italy / Spain / Mexico. Directed By: Lucio Fulci. Starring: Jorge Rivero, Andrea Occhipinti, Sabrina Siani, Conrado San Martin, Violeta Cela, Jose Gras and Gioia Scola.
Aka
La Conquista
Current Availability
Available in the United States on a superb R1 DVD from the always reliable Blue Underground. This fully uncut release boasts superb presentation quality and finally allows Fulci fans to appreciate this films astounding cinematography. There is also a cheap UK DVD available from grey market label 23rd Century, even though this release is generally sold for just £1 it is still to be avoided as it is the same cut of the film released on UK VHS in the mid eighties which was cut by over four minutes courtesy of our "friends" at the BBFC.
Recommended?
Only for die hard Fulci fans. Fulci's only contribution to the Conan inspired Italian sword and sorcery craze marks pretty much the end of the line for his reputation as anything even resembling a credible filmmaker. Despite boasting oceans of multi-coloured gore, enchanted bows, semi-naked goddesses, decapitations and even zombies Conquest is a garbled, incomprehensible and somehow rather dull film.
Review
The film that effectively bought about the end of Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci’s short-lived yet prolifically successful relationship with producer Fabrizio De Angelis. On the same note it could also be said that Conquest is arguably the film that marked th beginning of the end for Fulci, liquidising the production arrangement that had led to his best work, namely his classic Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) and his subsequent trio of City Of The Living Dead, The Beyond and The House By The Cemetery spanning across 1980 and 1981.
In 1982 Fulci was in the midst of shooting his rather muddled Manhattan Baby for De Angelis when he was approached by rival producer Giovanni Di Clemente. Rudely spurning De Angelis in favour of what he viewed as a more lucrative offer from Di Clemente, this marked the point at which Fulci due to a combination of lesser collaborators, failing health and above all his own waning talent, saw his work spiral rapidly into mediocrity. Ironically Fulci’s arrangement with Di Clemente would end acrimoniously after just one film, that being Conquest.
Conquest marks a fairly obvious attempt to jump upon the bandwagon for Italian “Sword and Sorcery” films, which had briefly become a cornerstone of Continental exploitation following the international success of the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Conan The Barbarian (1982). With typical opportunism the Italians were quick to move in on the market for the Schwarzenegger film, quickly notching up a rash of cheap and mostly rubbish imitations of which the woeful Ator series starring Miles O’Keeffe were perhaps the most noteworthy, or not so noteworthy as the case may be. In truth Conquest actually marks perhaps Fulci’s most eclectic directorial excursion outside of the horror genre and by far the most individually bizarre entry to the Italian sword and sorcery craze. A demented fusion of contrasting and violently clashing genre opposites all showered in blood, Conquestmight not be good cinema (far from it) but its deliberately crazed stylistic illogic and relentless visual assault ender it an oddly entrancing viewing experience.
Set in a fantastical, nameless ancient world, Conquest stars Andrea Occhipinti as brave youth Ilias who is gifted an enchanted bow by the elders of his people and then sent off into the treacherous wilderness on his quest “to become a man”. Ilias son finds himself journeying through a perilous land which is ruled over by an evil masked goddess by the name of Ocron (played by the nubile Sabrina Siani). This evil tyrant has enslaved the people of the surrounding lands by utilising her minions – a brutal army of murderous human/canine half-breeds – to inflict death, mutilation and misery.
Ocron experiences an hallucination foretelling her death at the hands of Ilias. Convinced that the vision will come to pass she sends her minions into the land to destroy Ilias but with the aid of an experienced wandering adventurer named Mace (Rivero), Ilias succeeds in staving off their attack. Now in desperation Ocron calls upon shape shifting master of darkness Zora (San Martin) who in return for Ocron’s body and soul consents to use his powers to destroy the young adventurer.
Conquest makes for a truly ponderous concoction of polar opposites, on one hand dishearteningly linear in terms of its narrative structure yet on the other hand seemingly random in terms of the events actually taking place onscreen. A barmy and ultra violent concoction of varying styles and motifs, Conquest sees Fulci take the expected Conan style yarn of sub-mythological adventuring and attempts to marry it off kicking and screaming to the most visceral elements of his horror work of the preceding years. Alas, the result doesn’t really work with all the wildly differing ingredients refusing to blend into a palatable Italian exploitation dish or even one half as interesting as it potentially sounds from the recipe.
It’s the usual phooey you might expect as Ilias and Mace trudge wearily across stylishly bleak terrain enshrouded in a permanent, almost stygian fog enshrouded gloom. The plot is of course obliged to come to a grinding and abrupt at least once every five minutes for our intrepid heroes to face whatever mechanical, random “horror” Fulci opts to throw at them next. These are in all fairness at least imaginative, ranging from Ocron’s titular dogmen, to a hail of magical arrows and as this is a Fulci film an obligatory but nonetheless impressive gaggle of mouldering zombies. If the presence of some rotting, reanimated cadavers doesn’t give the game away, Fulci makes it clear who’s occupying the directors chair by serving up a veritable buffet of decapitations, multi-coloured blood spurting from gaping wounds and a seemingly endless rogues gallery of puss-oozing sores.
The problem is that the cycle in which these blood soaked encounters are thrust upon the viewer eventually proves tiresome. This reviewer also found himself questioning just what the purpose of this whole yarn actually is as Ilias’ wandering in the vast and deadly wilderness seems to have little to no real discernable purpose to it whatsoever. If it does then the screenwriters might have at least done the viewer the courtesy of enlightening them as to what said purpose actually is. Meanwhile on top of the mountain (what is it with evil villains and mountain tops?) the titular Ocron writhes orgasmically on a rug of live snakes clad in nothing but a rather fetching gold mask and thong twin set. Occasionally she sends out her army of dogmen to enforce her rule by randomly slaughtering peasants and tearing naked women in half in a welcome yet gratuitous bid to add the already overwhelming sense of hollow, bloodcurdling spectacle. Of course it goes without saying that Conquest contains all the usual hocus pocus one expects from this particular subgenre as we are served up a more than generous dollop of interminable half-baked mumbo jumbo concerning enchanted bows and the powers of the dead being passed on to the living by smearing oneself with the ashes of the deceased.
Predictably for an Italian exploitation production the performances are typically marred by a blend of sub par dubbing and clunky, cliché-riddled dialog. Nonetheless Andrea Occhipinti registers as a totally unconvincing hero, looking so wide-eyed and wet behind the ears it’s a small wonder he doesn’t come down with a severe case of the cold. Therefore when the hero reigns are abruptly swiped from the feckless Occhipinti by George Rivero, who whilst little better from a thespian point of view at least looks the part, it is possibly the only logical or marginally astute move that Fulci and company make. Otherwise the films few real merits are almost entirely technical as Claudio Simonetti of the legendary Goblin provides a appropriately pounding score and the cinematography courtesy of Alejandro Alonso Garcia is nothing short of astounding. Utterly unique for a film of this or indeed any other ilk, Garcia shoots Conquest through a permanent soft, dreamlike haze and through expert use of colour filtering sets the ensuing insanity against a backdrop of vivid blue and otherworldly blood orange skies, effortlessly evoking the feel of a fantastical mystic world or sorcery and peril. It is not at all harsh to wish that Garcia’s remarkable efforts were not in service of far better material than Conquest. It should be noted however, that Garcia’s intricately beautiful yet hazy compositions suffer irrevocably when compromised for the VHS format, the beauty of the cinematography transforming into a blurry eye sore on video.
Ultimately it really does come to something when a film can throw at its audience a semi-naked witch goddess, homicidal canine half-breeds, zombies, multiple decapitations and bucketfuls of puss and gore running the full-length of the colour spectrum, yet the most interesting thing about said film is the colour of the sky. Pretty darn bad by any standard Conquest, whilst stylishly executed tries too hard to please and winds up a tedious, unintelligible mess that sadly proves indicative of a once great talent aiming simultaneously for possible target only to miss every single one of them. Yet rubbish as it is Conquest remains essential viewing for Fulci fans, qualifying easily as his most harebrained and insanely atypical effort. Inarguably wretched as it may be Fulci’s preposterously random approach lends it a totally backwards entrancing quality – you just have to keep watching if only to see what will be senselessly thrust onto the screen next. Yet overall in the greater scheme of Fulci’s career Conquest represents a sad milestone marking the point at which Fulci’s reputation became nothing more than a saleable commodity to ensure his continued employment in the Italian film industry whilst he sought vainly to rekindle former glories amidst a deadening sense of creative malaise.
Also Try… Ator, The Fighting Eagle / Ator The Invincible / Conan The Barbarian / Conan The Destroyer / Zombie Flesh Eaters / The Beyond / Rome 2033 – The Fighter Centurions.
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