If you take one thing away from Lucio Fulci's Conquest, let it be this lesson: never combine soft-focus cinematography, colored gels, and day-for-night shooting at the same time. Why? Because your movie will be unwatchable. The film follows a traditional "hero's quest" storyline where the protagonist, Ilius, leaves his people and homeland in order to travel the world and prove his worth (read: become a man). He decides that in order to complete his journey, he must vanquish the evil Ohkren, a nude sorceress who only wears a golden mask. Along the way, he befriends Mace, an outsider who has rejected mankind for the company of animals. Together they face many trials and tribulations: deadly flora and fauna, monsters, and evils forces controlled by Ohkren. There is an interesting twist at the end where Ilius is beheaded and the task of killing Ohkren falls upon Mace. This is a nice variation on the "hero's quest," suggesting that what makes a true hero isn't his heritage or birthright, but his willingness to stand and fight against evil. But again, the problem is that a good third of this film is impossible to watch. In his attempt to make the film more dreamlike, Fulci made his cinematographer use the techniques listed at the start of this review. Therefore, the entire film is blurry and hazy and the night scenes plunge the screen into opaque blackness. During these scenes it is impossible to follow what is going on. It's a real shame, too. Conquest could have easily been a decent sword and sorcery film...if you could actually see it.
5/10
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