Conquest (1983)

• Release Date: June 2, 1983
• Directed by: Lucio Fulci
• Written by: Gino Capone, Jose Antonio de la Loma and Carlos Vasallo
• Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

Following the botched production of Manhattan Baby, Lucio Fulci decided to team up with new producer Giovanni Di Clemente and deliver a type of movie that he had never attempted before. Conquest was Fulci's one and only venture into the sword and sorcery genre, and was a pretty big change of pace after making so many notorious mid-to-low budget horror and thriller films up to that point. It was made as part of a small wave of Italian fantasy films that came in the wake of John Milius' epic Conan the Barbarian adaptation. Some of these movies followed the same basic structure of a tough, ripped-as-hell warrior fighting hordes of unusual creatures and shacking up with numerous women along the way, such as Joe D'Amato's Ator: The Fighting Eagle. Other oddballs like Luigi Cozzi's Hercules took these fantasy traits and added in a few sci-fi touches for extra weirdness. In another universe, this movie could have marked an interesting new turn for Fulci that saw him leaning further into the realm of weird fantasy. But sadly, Conquest was yet another disastrous production that not only spelled doom for the movie itself, but for Fulci's health as well. From what I understand, he contracted hepatitis during principal photography, and this initial bout of illness is sadly what would eventually lead to his ever-worsening health issues later in life. He actually left the production once filming was completed, ending his partnership with Di Clemente after just one movie and leaving it to be completed by his editor. The movie was a total bomb upon release, and to this day it has the reputation of being one of the most out-there and bizarre movies that Fulci ever made.

It's honestly hard to describe Conquest to anyone who hasn't seen it, but I'll try to give it my best shot. It follows Illias, a bow-wielding warrior who ventures into the untamed wilderness as a rite of passage. On his travels, he finds himself hunted down by various hordes of creatures and vicious warriors sent by the sorceress Ocron, who is determined to kill him after having a vision of herself being killed by a man with a bow. He eventually meets another wanderer named Mace, and the two travel together on a quest to take down Ocron. Conquest can be a hard movie to understand on a blind viewing, and there are several things that contribute to that - the biggest and most infamous of which are the movie's visuals. Right from its first minutes, it looks and feels entirely different from any other movie in Fulci's filmography. The opening scene of Illias leaving his homeland consists entirely of two blurry composite shots layered over each other. It looks extremely hazy, almost like it's meant to be a dream sequence or was simply an error as a result of a bad print job. But surprisingly, this look continues for the entire run time of the film! Nearly every single shot in the movie looks like it's out of focus - that, or the cameraman was working with consistently dirty and smudged lenses. To make matters worse, all of the locations are drenched in thick layers of fog and smoke that make it even harder to tell what's going on. It gives the landscapes some great atmosphere, but you'll probably find yourself squinting at several points trying to make out who or what you're looking at. This isn't helped by the fact that the movie also suffers from some pretty dark lighting, so when you combine that with the persistent fog and blurry camera, many scenes just look like indecipherable shapes fighting each other while the sounds of battle rage on in the background.

Despite all of that, there are still some beautiful shots to be enjoyed here. Sometimes the sun is prominently featured in the background of a few scenes, and even though this largely renders the characters and creatures as silhouettes, it lets the action play out in front of vibrant red, blue and purple skies. I really like some of the shots inside of Ocron's lair that make use of soft yellow lighting. When it's combined with the perpetually soft focus and ever-present smoke, it gives the set a dreamlike glow that casts this otherworldly feeling over all the strange creatures and costumes onscreen. On the rare occasion that the camera is actually in focus, you can even get the occasional glimpse of the nice-looking rocks and landscapes of the island that the crew was filming on. It feels like Fulci was trying deliver a mystical fantasy land similar in scope to Conan's, only with a fraction of the budget. Even though it's extremely flawed, I have to give him credit for swinging for the fences with what he had.

Aside from the odd camerawork, what also makes Conquest a confusing watch is the way in which it handles its story and world. The movie simply drops you right into the middle of the action without doing any work to establish its setting or characters. Who exactly Illias and Mace are, what their motivations are for traveling the world, and why Ocron is such a feared villain are all given the most barebones of explanations, if any at all. The same goes for every type of creature that is encountered by our heroes. Unnamed hordes of wolf-beasts terrorize the countryside and tear random women in half, cobweb-covered mummy creatures hide in rocks to ambush travelers with poisoned darts, and everyone seems to exist in these vague factions that are constantly at conflict with each other for no explained reason. On my first viewing, I thought the movie was a little hard to get into for many of these reasons, but a video essay on the Blu-Ray from Cauldron Films sheds a little light on why the movie plays out in the way it does. Its world is one of pure brutality and survival of the fittest, and in that way, it's pretty stylistically similar to the original Conan short stories. Those also dropped you into a similarly harsh world full of warring factions and unexplained weird beasts that Conan simply took as another part of life to be conquered. The movie really works best when you stop trying to think through the "how" and "why" of it all. Just embrace it as a bit of pulpy insanity that is trying desperately hard to be as weird as the stories it's ripping off.

Conquest is far from Fulci's best movie, but it's nowhere near his worst. It may be confusing, difficult to see and pretty bonkers at times, but it's an incredibly entertaining ride despite its numerous flaws. If his goal really was to deliver something that felt like it could have come out of the pages of a Weird Tales story, I think he made a pretty solid attempt at doing so. I certainly can't recommend it to casual viewers, but if you're a die-hard Fulci fan or a lover of sword and sorcery stories, I think you'll find enough oddities here to have a great time with. Track down a copy, shut off your brain and enjoy the ride!