Let's get one thing straight from the start, I'm no fan of Italian Giallo cinema, but I felt I owed it to myself to sample "godfather of gore" Lucio Fulci's one stab at the sword & sorcery genre - Conquest.
Sadly, it's as dreadful, rambling and poorly constructed as any Italian horror movie I've seen with a nonsensical story, cheap and cheesy effects, awful cinematography (if the picture doesn't look like it was shot through a fine net curtain, or is obscured by near-constant mist, it's probably too dark to see anything clearly) and a disappointing lack of notable casual nudity (even if the central, mask-wearing villainess Ocron is topless every time she appears on screen).
What passes for a story in Conquest is the narrative equivalent of a sandbox Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Our two "heroes" - whiny, Luke Skywalker-esque (circa A New Hope) Ilias (Andrea Occjipinti), armed with his magic bow, and surly rogue Mace (George Rivero) - wander around a mist-enshrouded land having random, often inexplicable, encounters and fighting monsters.
They are supposedly fighting evil, but are also seen simply killing a random person to steal his food!
Evil, brain-eating witch Ocron (Sabrina Sellers) has a vision that Ilias is going to kill her and so dispatches her legions of wolf-men/dog-soldiers and other masked minions to capture him.
Of course, he doesn't know who she is and only decides to go after her once her soldiers have slaughtered the tribe of very accommodating cave people that Ilias and Mace have been staying with.
I'll admit there was a surprising twist in the plot towards the end, but even that took its own bizarre turn that was never explained or returned to - much like Mace's sudden ability to teleport (unless that was the magic bow!)
Ridiculous, stupid, illogical and, at times, tedious, Conquest is a hard slog to get through and thankfully only lasts about 88 minutes.
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