Fans of fog should definitely be seeking out Fulci's Conquest. There is so much there, you have to just resign yourself to peering at it billowing across the frame, and wonder what kind of movie there is going on behind it.
Oh, I love me some
Conquest.
Look! There's even
fog on the poster! (From September)
When you know going in that any “plotting” that may occur will be exceedingly dubious at best if considered for even a moment so you just abandon any such notions from the start… because there’s gonna be magic laser-arrows, a villainess who's nude for the entire film, and, sure, why not wolf-men.
I saw this film when I was young. Based on the U.S. release date, I would have been 11 years old. I thought I was even younger than that when I saw it, but that appears to be the correct date. It made an impression on me. There were blue laser arrows. There were wolf-men. And the villain(ess) was nude for the entire film. It's a little fuzzy to me how I got to see this movie, like who the hell takes an 11 year-old boy to see this, but I never forgot it.
I also never saw it again.
It was lost to memory for years but every once in a while I'd have a flash of it in my mind and remember something magical and amazing. When the internet began to be genuinely helpful maybe 15 years or so ago, I tried to find it by just spitting out search terms into Metacrawler like "laser-arrow", but had no luck. Finally the internet caught up with me and I was able to discover what it was but still waited another decade - until last night - to re-watch it. Because I didn't realize it was Fulci.
So, this is a really strange narrative and I'd have to give a decent bit away to explain why it is, but it is an unconventional narrative. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense than most of Fulci's films. It just doesn't go down like you would expect.
A young man is given a magic bow by his father in a sort of mystical ceremony to see him off into the world to pursue his destiny of heroism. The bow will fire arrows until such time as he truly becomes a man when it will awaken and shoot laser-arrows. Which is ****ing awesome.
He very quickly comes across some evil, in the form of a bunch of bad guys who either have cool helmets or are actual wolf-men, so his quest of heroism seems to be off to a good start... until he promptly gets his ass kicked and before the nomadic fighter, Aragorn - er, Mace - saves his bacon. The two set out together, one determined to defeat evil, the other just happy to survive and not get involved against the evil Ocron, who is a sort of witch-queen with a gold mask she never takes off and, presumably, some clothes which she never puts on.
She drinks the fresh brains of attractive youthful people. Because Fulci.
From here, it seems pretty clear where this all has to go but the movie actually has some pretty strange detours as well as some fun little battles and such before it all climaxes in a way I really didn't see coming.
There's also occasionally some zombies.
Because Fulci.
So, is this movie good? I have no idea. I mean, in many ways it's bad, but as we all know, that doesn't really make a movie bad. It's a pretty low-budget Italian/Spanish/Mexican rip off of
Conan The Barbarian,
Clash Of The Titans, and
The Beastmaster (did I mention that Mace has some weird psychic bond with animals or something), and it is true that the wolf-men kinda look ridiculous if you actually care, but hey, they're wolf men that like leap through the air at people in service to the witch-queen, which is awesome. And the run-time is definitely padded so it drags in the second act, but it's also wonderfully gory. But it really kinda comes down to how awesome early 80s, Italian, low-budget genre cinema can be in the right hands, and those hands belong to Lucio Fulci. So this movie is dreamy and kooky in all the right ways. Laser arrows? Check. Nude witch-queen? Check. Wolf-men? Check. Crazy gore? Check. Some zombies just for the hell of it? Check.
So a 37 year-old itch is scratched and Wooley is a happy man.