Good start, but then it gets ruined

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

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!

Once when I was 15 after watching Conan The Barbarian I drank a bottle of jager, took 5 hits of acid, and spent a weekend in the woods. My only company was Giorgio Moroder's Greatest Hits CD I had in my Sony Discman, a fog machine, and my thoughts. I think the cast and crew of Conquest had a similar pre-production. An ass naked female priestess in a gold mask whose powers supposedly cause the sun to rise and fall has enslaved the people of the land (who appear to be 14 nomadic herders) with her army of coke snorting Wolf Men. Now let me make this clear. These are not were-wolves as they never transform from wolf to man. They are Wolf-Men. Men with bulky fur bodies and wolf monster faces whose masks possess just enough articulation of the jaw to spout such classic lines as, "I'll kill you, I'll kill your people" before tearing a fine maiden apart like a wishbone after Thanksgiving dinner. Enter young Hugh Jackman who is sent on one of those missions where the old sage tells the hero all this stuff he must do to fulfill his destiny but leaves it vague enough that you get the feeling he has no idea what he's talking about. The mission involves thwarting the priestess' reign of terror with a laser bow. Let me just say right now any movie that involves a laser bow is alright with me. Along the way Hugh Jackman encounters Armand Assante. Armand Assante is the world weary warrior to Hugh Jackman's inexperienced hero to be. They become a team after Armand Assante uses some pro-wrestling maneuvers and nun-chuks made from femur bones to dispatch some wolf-men attacking Hugh Jackman. Armand Assante philosophizes to Hugh Jackman that he is a friend to all animals and will never harm one. Wolf-Men are not part of this philosophy. He then kills a hunter and takes his meal for his own justifying the eating of the animal and killing of the man by stating it was already dead and the hunter was a murderer of his friends the animals. I think you can be acquitted in some mid-western states with this same defense. Along their journey Hugh Jackman and Armand Assante battle dopplegangers of themselves sent by the priestess, survive festering poisoned wounds, encounter zombies, and are rescued from death by dolphins. Just when Hugh Jackman seems to have gotten the swing of things he's decapitated (I knew that old bastard had no idea what he was talking about) leaving Armand Assante to take up the laser bow in a finale that showcases FX the like I have not seen since. Blue laser arrows decimate the wolf-men horde and destroy the gold mask of the priestess revealing she has the face of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 4. I would still do her. She then turns into a wolf proving she really was a bitch. My earlier discourse on Wolf-Men and Were-Wolves still holds up as she was in fact a She-Wolf. She runs away defeated leaving the people of the land, all 14 of them, freed. Armand Assante walks off into the sunrise as it freeze frames which I take as being a message that no woman has the power to make the sun rise or fall. At this point when the Italian Synth score kicks in for one last time I am confronted with the only problem I had with the movie and why I gave it 9 instead of 10 stars. The first credit reads "any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental" which implies the makers of the film made the whole thing up. I felt a sense of betrayal after being presented with what I thought was a glimpse into our ancient history.

Signore Genius Fulci dips into the sword and sorcery genre for this bit of fun.Typical story of a young buck trying to save his people. He runs into your weathered, cynical veteran hero and gets him to help. Bring on the villains...we're ready.Lucio brings on zombies, ghosts, water creatures, and a lead witch with a golden face and no clothes. A lot of traveling is implied, but it looked as if it was filmed in a campground somewhere.The leads did OK. That's Anreas Occhipanti, the duck talking killer from "New York Ripper" playing the youngster.The sword play is done pretty well. And of course the make-up job was great. Worth a check for you Fulci-philes out there.

Adults deserve to have their fairy tales & fantasies too, and I'd say Lucio Fulci cooked up a pretty potent adult pulp fairy tale here. I'll leave it to others to describe the plot: My first indication that this wasn't going to be your average CONAN ripoff when the four guys dressed up like Smokey the Bear rip a cave girl babe into quarters, snort drugs with a nude sorceress witch babe with a body from hell who then copulates (R-Rated style) with her companion python while having a vision of someone shooting her with TRON's bow & arrow. Talk about weird!The film is an interesting combination of opposites that aims right at the atavistic, adventure-loving 14 year old with a desire to see bared breasts in all of us. While the narrative is somewhat confusing in your typical Fulcian kind of way the visuals are just as striking, with costume design by Mad Max and Larry Flynt, including oddball touches such as the Dog Men, the Gauze Men, Ape Guys and that far-out sorceress. She really is the focus of the film: The two guys out gallivanting around saving each other from imminent doom are more sort of there to give the film an excuse to have such an outrageously sexy harlot as it's force of evil, complete with a bestial contingent of half men half animals to do her evil bidding.But seriously, if you go into this expecting anything other than complete dreck the movie *WILL* annoy you. For fans of be-headings, clever escapes, back-flips, fights to the death, mystical snake babes, ferocious howler guys, Atari era computer graphics, ridiculous cornball dialog and equal amounts of beefcake and cheesecake, this movie should be your priority rental next time you're in the mood for something other than a Global Warming movie. CONQUEST may not change the world, win any elections or even be that good, but I'd rather be confused by something that knows it's garbage & has fun with the idea than snookered by ideology disguised as entertainment.7/10, even if it doesn't make much sense ...