This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

An action-packed slog

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Lucio Fulci is a divisive figure: either you worship every movie the man ever made or lent his name to — ignoring continuity errors, bad dubbing, dealing with multiple cuts and names of his films, all while explaining away ridiculous moments like a man patiently waiting for spiders to slowly eat his fake face — and mention how much his surrealist approach points to him as more auteur than simple director. Or you think he's a hack, making the same movie again and again — woman hating paeans to gore, decimated eyeballs, slow motion zombies, gore, glacial plots and oh yes, more gore. I'm not going to change your mind, but I will say that I tend to be more in the "Fulci lives!" t- shirt wearing army that owns multiple versions of his films and can (and will) talk your ear off about how awesome The Beyond is.This article isn't about any of that.Beyond mediations on the witches that really run the world and zombies treating humanity as a never-ending buffet, my love of Italian horror — nay, Italian exploitation film — rests on its ability to shamelessly rip off other films. According to the liner notes of the 2010 DVD reissue of Zombie 2, Italian copyright law allows any film to be marketed as a sequel to another work. Therefore, any major trend in horror or sci-fi will be answered by an insane amount of spaghetti remakes. Most of these films would be a splinter into the eye of a normal person (Olga Karlatos, eat your heart out). But these celluloid copycats are my bread and butter. I blame a childhood of waiting for more Star Wars and being "rewarded" with Star Crash (part of the greatest double drive-in bill I've ever seen with Battle Beyond the Stars), a movie that I endlessly daydreamed about when I really should have been paying attention in grade school.To wit: 1982's Conan the Barbarian was a huge hit worldwide to the tune of nearly $69 million dollars, leading to a horde of Italian imitators: Joe D'Amoto's Ator, the Fighting Eagle; Umberto Lenzi's Iron Master; Antonio Margheriti's Yor, the Hunter from the Future (you just knew I was going to bring up Yor and his fine meats, right?) and so many more, as well as American cousins such as Albert Pyun's The Sword and the Sorcerer (starring Lee Horsely of TV's Matt Houston) and Phantasm creator Don Coscarelli's The Beastmaster. That's but a sprinkle of the veritable ocean of barbarian rip-offs out there that you could dip your toe into. But we're here to talk Fulci's take on the whole sword and loincloth subgenre.Conquest comes at a crossroads in Fulci's life. After six years of working with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti — a collaboration that led to the golden (err, red is a better color to use here) era of his films, like Zombie 2, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, New York Ripper, Manhattan Baby and House by the Cemetery, a murder's row of, well, movies about murder — Fulci unexpectedly went off on his own to create this film. For some reason, it was believed that this would be a big budget production and Sacchetti felt betrayed (their relationship would worsen with lawsuits and recriminations forever dividing them). The failure of Conquest would hasten not only the decline of Fulci's career, which would see him lending his name to films that he hadn't even worked on (the jury is out, but it seems for all intents and purposes he was a bloody version of Dali, wily nily signing his name onto any project that'd float him some cash) and facing worsening health.Perhaps Fulci was battling the criticism that his films were becoming repetitive. Maybe he saw the film as his chance at the big time, as one of the reasons why this was funded was to push Mexican matinée idol Jorge Rivero to be a bigger star. Perhaps he wanted to try something different.Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/08/17/conquest-1983/

I must apologize all sword and sorcery fan's, but this films sucks! And i must say that is a pity. Im a fan of fantasy\sword and sorcery movies. But "Conquest" is on one of the most boredom sword and sorcery flicks i ever seen (when i say that, i don't even refer flicks like "Gunan il guerriero", "Wizards of the Demon Sword", "Ator 1 and 2" or even "Deathstalker" sequels, because after all, we must say that "Conquest" its much better movie!), the plot is horrible, the soundtrack is really, really annoying, the sound design (no comments), the narrative losses completely along the film. Yes, i known that the budget is really, really, really low, but sometimes is no excuse to do such bad plots and nonsensical narratives, that are so terrible in most of the "B" and "Z" sword and sorcery movies. One thing i must say, Lucio Fulci creates a great ambiance, he capt beautiful landscapes that emanate a strange mystic atmosphere, that sends us too a dreamlike fantastic world. But unfortunately is very few, and the rest of the movie fails completely. If you like this one i recommend: "The Sword and the Sorcerer"(Albert Pyun - 1982), in many ways have a similar aura.

Despite being released on DVD by Blue Underground some five years ago, I have never come across this Italian "sword and sorcery" item on late-night Italian TV and, now that I have seen it for myself, I know exactly why. Not because of its director's typical predilection for extreme gore (of which there is some examples to be sure) or the fact that the handful of women in it parade topless all the time (it is set in the Dark Ages after all)…it is, quite simply, very poor stuff indeed. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it may very well be the worst of its kind that I have yet seen and, believe me, I have seen plenty (especially in the last few years i.e. following my excursion to the 2004 Venice Film Festival)! Reading about how the film's failure at the time of initial release is believed to have led to its director's subsequent (and regrettable) career nosedive into mindless low-budget gore, I can see their point: I may prefer Fulci's earlier "giallo" period (1968-77) to his more popular stuff horror (1979-82) myself but, even on the latter, his commitment was arguably unquestionable. On the other hand, CONQUEST seems not to have inspired Fulci in the least – seeing how he decided to drape the proceedings with an annoyingly perpetual mist, sprinkle it with incongruent characters (cannibals vs. werewolves, anyone?), irrelevant gore (we are treated to a gratuitous, nasty cannibal dinner just before witnessing the flesh-eating revelers having their brains literally beaten out by their hairy antagonists!) and even some highly unappetizing intimacy between the masked, brain-slurping villainess (don't ask) and her slimy reptilian pet!! For what it is worth, we have two heroes for the price of one here: a young magic bow-carrying boy on some manhood-affirming odyssey (Andrea Occhipinti) and his rambling muscle-bound companion (Jorge Rivero i.e. Frenchy from Howard Hawks' RIO LOBO [1970]!) who, despite being called Mace (short for Maciste, perhaps?), seems to be there simply to drop in on his cavewoman from time to time and get his younger protégé out of trouble (particularly during an exceedingly unpleasant attack of the 'boils'). Unfortunately, even the usual saving grace of such lowbrow material comes up short here as ex-Goblin Claudio Simonetti's electronic score seems awfully inappropriate at times. Fulci even contrives to give the film a laughably hurried coda with the surviving beefy hero going aimlessly out into the wilderness (after defeating one and all with the aid of the all-important magic bow…so much for his own supposed physical strength!) onto his next – and thankfully unfilmed – adventure!

Lucio Fulci is and will always be best known for his work in the horror genre, but he's also a director who was happy to explore genres outside of horror (probably with money in mind) and this is his 'Sword and Sorcery' attempt. I have to say I'm not a fan of the whole Lord of the Rings style fantasy stuff in general, so obviously my only reason for sitting through this was due to the fact that it's Fulci in the director's chair. To my surprise, this is actually fairly decent stuff; it's got nothing on Fulci's best work and definitely won't encourage me to check out any more Sword and Sorcery flicks, but still. The plot is simple at its centre and follows a young man who goes on a journey complete with a magic bow and arrow but ends up having to fight off various monsters when his plight is discovered by some evil witch. The witch, of course, wants his bow to use for evil but the young lad has plenty up his sleeve as he joins forces with some outlaw and beats off the bad guys with his shiny bow and arrow.While the plot is quite simple, there's a hell of a lot of ideas in there - far too many for the runtime and so things do still manage to get more than just a little bit confusing. Some of the ideas are really stupid too, which harms the credibility of the film. It's clear that this was never meant to be taken seriously, however, so I guess it can be cut some slack. The film is very much a product of the eighties and it's very trashy indeed. Despite being a genre that he's not best known for, Fulci still manages to bring in his trademarks as the film features some fairly graphic scenes of gore - a scene that sees a woman ripped in half being among the best parts. We also get to see Fulci's other trademark zombies, in another highlight sequence. The music is also very good and in fitting with Fulci's other stuff and is composed by respected musician Claudio Simonetti. The acting is not great and the guy in the lead role looks a bit too camp, but nevermind. Overall, I can't highly recommend this film; but fans of silly Italian movies will probably get a kick out of it.