Conquest (1983)

Conquest: Directed by Lucio Fulci. With Jorge Rivero, Andrea Occhipinti, Conrado San Martín, Violeta Cela. A young man, armed with a magical bow and arrows, embarks on a mystical journey through a mystical land to rid it of all evil and joins forces with an outlaw to take down an evil witch bent on claiming the magic bow for evil.

“If thereu0026#39;s any movie Lucio Fulci made that inspires equal love and hatred, it must be this, the directoru0026#39;s lone fore into the Sword and Sorcery subgenre. The general opinion of its detractors seems to be that u0026quot;Conquestu0026quot; marked the beginning of Fulciu0026#39;s descent into both commercial and artistic mediocrity, and while the former may be true, Iu0026#39;m not understanding the latter. In light of what Fulciu0026#39;s work aspires to be, u0026quot;Conquestu0026quot; can in many ways be seen as a culmination of his style, and if your best criticisms of the movie are that itu0026#39;s u0026quot;plotless and cheap,u0026quot; I wonder why youu0026#39;re watching a Fulci movie in the first place.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSure, the plot is a rudimentary blob that in the end amounts mostly to characters wandering back and forth as an excuse to get them into perilous situations involving traps and monsters, but Fulciu0026#39;s visual sensibilities are positively ON FIRE here, so much so that the limitations of the story become pretty much inconsequential. They take a back seat to the otherwordly mythic fantasy environment that Fulci is able to create with the most frugal materials. It is the foreboding fog-shrouded swamps, ancient stone temples, grotesque creatures and lurid-colored alien skies that will linger in the mind as the work of an artist who clearly has an eye for distinctive visuals. You could only accuse this of being a movie derivative of u0026quot;Conan the Barbarianu0026quot; if you completely ignored this aspect of it, because I canu0026#39;t think of another film that looks anything like this.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOther aspects of u0026quot;Conquestu0026quot; work to its advantage in subtle ways. The spare, monosyllabic dialogue helps to create the sense of a primitive and brutish world and the minimalist pulses of Claudio Simonettiu0026#39;s electronic score mesh well with the stunning visuals. Bizarre details – the villainessu0026#39; gold mask and fascination with snakes, the enchanted bow that glows blue, the dolphin rescue – border on the surrealistic. The effect achieved, at least to this viewer, is hypnotic. I find myself wondering how so many filmmakers today, when they are given all the resources in the world and canu0026#39;t give us one interesting thing to look at, can be treated so leniently by critics who would jump on the bahnwagon to slam Fulci without a second thought.”