Weirdhouse Cinema: Conquest

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe continue their jaunt through 1980s fantasy with gore master Lucio Fulci’s 1983 film “Conquest.” It’s a strange, hazy dream full of werewolves, warriors, magic, snakes, dolphins, morlocks, bats and stoneage nunchucks.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. This week
on Weird House Cinema, we're going to continue our ongoing
Johnt through fantasy films. We didn't I don't think we

(00:25):
quite intended to do this, but but this is the
journey we're on. We kicked things off with Thrilling Bloody Sword,
then we returned to Oz, then we visited Krall, and
we're actually in the same cinematic year as Krall for
this episode. Uh, this time, we're going to be talking
about Italian gore master Luccio Folci's film Conquest. I'd say

(00:49):
this is a decidedly different vibe than Kral. If Karl
is kind of a lofty but dopey but beautiful but
highly disorganized, uh high fantasy attempt, this movie is a hallucinatory,
sort of disturbed child's imagination of a Conan rip off. Yeah,

(01:14):
it is a totally different film from Kral. That is,
that is for sure. It is it is like it
is like a dream. I feel like the movie needs
a disclaimer at the beginning that says the film you're
about to experience is a dream. Because once you embrace
the dream like qualities of a Fulschi film, I think
it kind of frees you up a little bit to

(01:35):
uh to to to uh just to speak or listen
to the language of the film. I think it is.
I mean, we've compared Fulchi to two Dreams a number
of times before, but it's oh, it's almost more like
it in this case than any of the other ones. Uh.
I had a weird point of comparison here. So, Rob,
do you remember a children's horror TV show Nickelodeon called

(02:01):
Are You Afraid of the Dark? So there was a
time when I was a kid when I went to
school and I had a memory of an Are You
Afraid of the Dark episode that I was trying to
describe to some friend of mine on the playground, I think,
And the memory of that episode was that it was
about a scarecrow who had a chainsaw and he ran

(02:23):
into a school and was like cutting up students at
the school with a chainsaw. Now, I don't think that's
a real episode of the show. I think I dreamed
it or something and then mistook that memory of the
dream for a real episode of this TV show, and
that would not be an episode of this children's horror
TV show. The most grizzly thing that ever happened on

(02:46):
it was probably like a vampire bite somebody. Uh. And
yet I would say Conquest is like that memory of
an Are You Afraid of the Dark? Episode? Yeah, I
think that's a valid comparison. It is like the deranged
dream memory of another film, or of or of all
Barbarian films um because like the the the influences are there,

(03:09):
and certainly when you're when you're dig digging around in
Italian b cinema of the eighties, it's easy to point like, oh,
well they got they got this little bit from Indiana Jones.
You know, here's a little bit of Conan sprinkled here, etcetera.
And and that's fair. But a lot of times it's
also more overt. I feel like maybe it's a little
less overt in the in this particular picture, but the

(03:31):
dreamlike quality very strong. The I mean, the picture is hazy,
as if viewed through a mist, an effect that I
was reading was generated via smoke machines and soft focused
Len's filter. The narrative is strange and despite the trappings
of genre and and obvious cinematic inspirations, it's it's difficult
to predict what's going to happen in this film. Uh

(03:53):
Like even this is like the third or fourth time
I watched it, well, I watched it twice over the weekend,
but but still, like, I'm I've seen it enough times
that I should know everything that's going to happen, and
yet I really didn't feel like I knew exactly where
we were going at any point. So this is definitely
not your first runaround with Conquests. When you suggested doing

(04:14):
this for the show, you were already a conquest veteran. Yes.
And I feel like it gets better every time I
see it, um and and that may that may be infinite,
Like every time I see this movie, it will get better.
It will get more coherent and uh and and and
more contemplated somehow. Uh it is. It's like it's like

(04:36):
a dream that keeps like a recurring dream, and the
gore is also dream like, you know, like as with
most folksy movies, it's surreal at times. It presents kind
of you get a weird sense of fixation on the
fragility of the flesh in it. It's full of magic
and monsters, their alien voices, their dreams within dreams. Um yeah,

(04:58):
and well, you know, I'll be the first that this
is not a film for everyone. Lucio Fulci is not
for everyone, but I feel like it does draw all
the viewer in with a certain hypnotic power. No viewer
be warned. This one is gross, like like all Fulchi movies.
But yeah, it is nasty. Yeah it's but it's like
it's like exposing yourself to a religious text from another dimension. Yes, yeah,

(05:23):
it's it's it's a weird one, and maybe that's just
part of it, is just me reading more and more
into it each time I see Yet No, it's like that, Um,
you know that trope in the movie where character has
a recurring dream and every time they have the dream,
they get a little bit farther into it. They're like
a little farther down the hall and they're going to
open the door and see what's on the other side.
I imagine that's you with watching Conquests. So eventually, one

(05:45):
of these days you're gonna put it on and you're
going to see the other side of the door. And
what's there. It's it's bats. It's bats flying around in
the cave and you've got to go to to knock
them down now to be sure. Yeah, this is this
is definitely an Italian B movie as well. It's well
technically it's a Mexican, Spanish Italian production, and so many

(06:09):
of the expected budgetary constraints are very much in place,
so it has all of those charms. Uh, you're it's
certainly a film that you can watch and and and
laugh at and enjoy yourself, though I don't want to
build it up like what like this is just a
pure you know, fantasy surrealist art film like no, no, no,
There's there's plenty of genre stuff and and B movie
fun to be had in the picture as well. Now,

(06:30):
this movie is also what's known as a peplum film,
which descended from Hercules. Author Robert A. Rushing points out,
is a term that generally generally it's going beyond dismissive
categorization such as sword and sandal or gladiator films or
what what's your favorite term for for this sort of picture, Joe, Oh,
what the leather diaper Barbarian movie? Yes, a leather diaper

(06:52):
barbarian movie, but generally, especially when talking about Italian cinema,
apparently peplum is often used to quote signal a more
serious stance, though Rushing also points out that these films
are are very often not taken seriously and many very
much invite mockery. But that doesn't mean there's not a
lot to read into them, given their their their palates

(07:13):
of history is real and imagined, the fetishization of masculine
and feminine bodies, violence, Smith, and more, and he does
discuss conquest in the book, noting ful chys quote loving
treatment for the body's disintegration, and he spends a fair
amount of time in the book talking about what this means. Um.
I won't attempt to summarize it, but I think it

(07:33):
kind of speaks volumes for the sort of mystery cult
that kind of rises up around fulshy films. You know,
like people people really get into fulshy films because they're again,
they have all these B movie qualities to them, their
gore movies, but there is this strange dream and like
intensity to it, and some of the fixations in these
films are also really odd. Yes, I agree that the

(07:57):
like the juicy nous is not just gross, it is
it is weird in a kind of fascinating way, like that,
there's a scene in Conquest where one of the heroes
is hit with the poison dart and we get to
just watch his wound like like gush juice for I
don't know, several minutes in close up and the full

(08:19):
cheese fascination with just the juice coming out of the
dart wound as like the poison gets into the guy's blood.
There's something so unappealing about it and the choice to
focus on that like gross image that makes you think
that there must be like some kind of transcendent truth
hidden there. You're like, why why are we still looking

(08:40):
at this? There's some mystery to it. Yeah, that's that's
actually the main thing that had Rushing focuses on talking about, like, well,
that and also the something else that happens later. We'll
get into that, we get into spoilers. But yeah, they're
they're the boils have like six minutes of screen time
just panning up and down the body and he actually
he does draw on this specifically and points out they

(09:02):
know a lot of these Peplin movies, you spend a
lot of time with the camera kind of dragging itself
over untarnished flesh, generally the untarnished flesh of your central
muscle man character. Uh, this film is instead going to
focus on pus covered and boil written flesh. That's just
the sort of film that Fulchi makes. But then again,

(09:25):
there is something kind of different and distinguished about full
cheese use of this nasty imagery. Like, I think it's
not a coincidence. There is some reason why there are
tons of academic books and papers and film criticism about
Fulchi that there is not nearly to the same extent
for lots of other just makers of gross gory films

(09:47):
where there's blood flying all over the place. Yeah, now
you might wonder, well where can I where can I
see this movie? Well, um, I'd rented it twice before
from Atlanta's own video Drome, and I believe this would
have been subsequent rentals anyway, where the Blue Underground DVD
that came out years back. However, for this viewing, I

(10:07):
picked up the special edition Blu ray of at A
two thousand nineteen code read special edition Blu ray with
special cover art by heavy metal artist west Bin's Carter,
who I think has done like a lot of like
really cool Grizzly images for various bands. You can look
him up online. But uh, yeah, this this is a
really awesome Blue Ray package. I'm usually don't get that

(10:30):
into the physical Blu Ray, like like the need to
own it and add it to my permanent collection, but
with this one, I got kind of obsessed and had
to hunt it down. Um It's a little hard to
find if you want to like the special edition art,
but the disc itself is widely available, um, and you
can you can rent or buy this most places. It
is a two thousand nineteen HD master of the film,

(10:53):
and um, I don't know how different the film quality
actually is compared to the DVD. I mean, this is
not a film where I feel like the difference is
necessarily night and day, but it's still it's still a
very nice special edition. Well with Conquest, a lot of
the grime is not something that happened to the film
over time. I think it is baked in from the beginning.
Like the joke when I was very first introduced to

(11:15):
this movie was that that they had shot at by
smearing vasoline on the ends of the camera. Yeah. Yeah,
and you definitely get that kind of vibe. I mean,
right from the get go, you're on this this shore
and it's just like in this world of dream and
stuff's fading in and out of existence and everything's hazy
and uh yeah, it's uh it has a distinct look
to it. So, yeah, this film is widely available. If

(11:37):
you want to see it, you can digitally rent or
buy it from Apple or Prime. You can stream it
on such services as shout TV to be plex free
v I'm not sure what that is, but it exists
as a place where you can get it. And yeah,
it's come out over the years on DVD and vhs, uh,
sometimes with some pretty awesome cover art. I included some
of these for you here, Joe, including that that that

(12:00):
recent image by m by Wes Ben Scotter here, But
even the like the some of the original art was
pretty incredible. Like there, I think people were familiar with
this film. You may have seen the poster that has
our barbarian character some sort of big gold um like
robot man in the background with laser shooting out of
his eyes, and then are evil sorceress queen here with

(12:22):
the golden head. That one's really cool. I also like
the one where the where the font that the title
is printed in definitely the lowercase e and the s
do not look different enough, so it looks like the
movie is called Concrete. Oh and that's something to point
out the title of the film. Um. I think it's

(12:44):
like a lot of these films, they just had different
titles depending on where it was released. A different title
in Mexico, different title in Spain. Uh, different title in Italy.
I think it was sometimes known as uh, his Mace
the Loner or something to that effect. Uh. And there
was there's an extra on the on the blue ray
edition that I watched where they talked to Jorge Rivero,
the star the Mexican film star in this picture, and

(13:08):
he points out it's like, yeah, I don't really I
don't really know what these films were released as, like
they were released as so many different things. He doesn't
necessarily know what to refer to them as you could
almost make up a name at random. Because Conquest, I
don't really like, there's not really a Conquest in the film,
per se. No, no, not at all. I I can't
think of one. I mean, I would say the closest

(13:30):
is that the evil, uh, the evil naked sorceress like
conquers the land and she's in charge of it, and
then they tried to depose her. I guess, but they're
not really the heroes are not really conquering the land. Yeah,
so it doesn't particularly make sense, but but fair enough. So.
The the elevator pitch for this one, uh, I was

(13:51):
the best I could come up with is a blood
drenched mushroom trip in Hyperborea. There go, Yeah, that's it.
So they have a pretty good one on the posters.
In the trailer, he says, we may hear this in
the trailer were about to listen to In a Place
Beyond Time Comes a Terrifying Challenge beyond imagination. What was
it again that was on the poster for Krawl. It
was like the lamest tagline ever. It was something like

(14:15):
in a place ruled by an evil beast, a hero
must save a princess or something. He has something to
that effect, like, yeah, we can tell that from the poster.
Are some word play in there? Well. The one thing
I like about in In a Place Beyond Time Comes
a Terrifying Challenge Beyond Imagination is that it doesn't really
say anything and you can change you can switch all

(14:36):
the nouns around and it still makes as much sense.
In a time beyond challenge comes a terrifying imagination beyond place,
there you go, makes just pretty good. Yeah, all right,
let's listen to that trailer audio from a place beyond
Time comes a terrifying challenge beyond imagination. Conquest. Two men

(15:04):
joined forces in a struggle for power in a realm
of fear. Conquest an act of courage to conquer the

(15:26):
Queen of darkness. They faced the armies of evil to
win the weapons of light. Feel the power, accept the

(15:50):
challenge of conquest. All right, Well, let's talk about some
of the folks involved here. We'll start at the top.

(16:11):
We're gonna talk a little bit about Luccio Fulci. But
again we we did talk about him previously when we
cover the one Haunted House slash monster movie The House
by the Cemetery that would have been last October, so
notable B movie director from Italy through UM Cinematic gore

(16:33):
master h Then again, there's very much kind of a
mystery cult surrounding a lot of his his his work
very much as a as a fan based these days
UM The House by the Cemeteries we discussed that was
a film that had a lot of the elements that
he's most famous for. Undead Things Um, absolutely over the top,

(16:53):
gore as phantasmagorical approach that feels less concerned with cohesion
of plot and more about chasing certain dreams and nine Mayors.
He's best remembered today for his horror films of the
nineteen eighties and yeah, it's without a doubt one of
the titans of Italian B cinema from this era. All
of this really kicked into high gear with nineteen seventy
nine Zombie Um. That was a very prolific period of

(17:16):
his career that produced some of his best remembered films.
But he'd been directing full length films for something like
twenty years at that point, including such um horror movies
is nineteen seventy ones A Lizard in a Woman's Skin,
seventy two is Don't Torture at Duckling. He did a
nineteen sixty nine Jallow film titled One on Top of
the Other. But he directed a number of different genre

(17:37):
films before the nineteen eighties, including Western spy thrillers, comedies
and more. He did a Jack London adaptation of White Fang,
which um I was reading a review of and someone
pointed out, well, how can you tell a Luccio Fulti
white fan from any other White Fang adaptation? Well, and
this one white thing is definitely going to rip somebody's
throat out and you get to see it all. Conquest

(18:00):
Or or Mace the Outcast, if you will, is his
only really fantasy film, and it does stand somewhat apart
from his his other movies. But it has a lot
of the elements you would expect. You know, there's the gore,
there's the gratuity. Um they are these dreamlike qualities and
it has that in spades. But it also, um, I

(18:21):
don't know it. Some of the some of the other
Folky films that I've seen do feel like less put together.
And I felt like like this is a pretty strong
entry in his filmography. I feel like it doesn't doesn't
have a lot of downtime. It feels like like everyone,
despite budgetary restraints, was trying really hard on this one.
Uh So, I think it kind of stands out. It

(18:43):
might be my favorite Folky film. I would say, actually,
in other Folky movies, the dream logic construction stands out
more because the other ones that are set in the
modern world and that have modern characters, you're just constantly
thinking like why who is this, Why are they here?
Why are they doing that? But you don't need this

(19:04):
just setting up a sequence that he just wants to
show you something. Uh. So there's this dream logic about
like how did I end up in this room? What
am I doing here? But that feels weirder when it's
supposedly the the uh, you know, the superficially rational setting
of like characters from modern day New York City living
in a house or something. Um. When it's in the

(19:26):
world of conquest, it's just you know, barbarians and sorcerers
and were wolves, and there is not as much superficial
expectation that people's behavior and uh and location should be comprehensible.
Right like with the House by the Cemetery. There are
plenty of times where you might say, well, is it
logical that a child would say this? Would an adult

(19:47):
ever say this to a child? And you don't really
ask those questions about a movie that's mostly about barbarians,
dream warriors, were wolves and evil queens. You know, yeah,
that shalt not question concrete alright, some of the writing
credits on this one, and a couple of these are

(20:07):
also involved in production. I'm going to mention them here.
There's Giovanni Dick Clemente, who has a story producer credit,
who he lived eighteen, Italian producer and writer. This is
one of his own, only like three story credits that
he has, so I think it seems fair to say
that he's largely a producer, and the same producer who

(20:30):
I believe, according to star Jorge Rivero, at one point,
tried to tell them that they had to go ahead,
just need to go ahead and stop filming, like, go
ahead and you know we're done. Just make the movie
out of what you've shot so far. And fol she
had to had to like rally the cast and crew
so they could keep going and keep filming, and uh,
and they did. But this is the guy who produced.

(20:52):
This guy produced a bunch of films, including the Italian
Top Gun rip off with Aliens, Blue Tornado. I gotta
see that. It looks it looks interesting. Has David Warner
in it now? The writer of Blue Tornado is also
also has a screenplay credit on this Uh. Dino capone
and then let's see who else do we have? We

(21:13):
have Jose Antonio dil Loma, who lived two thousand and four,
has a screenplay production manager credit. Spanish writer, director, and producer.
He wrote and directed nineteen eight two Is Target Eagle,
starring Jore Rivero, Max Voncito, George Boppard and Chuck Connors.
He also wrote the Rivero movie Counter Force, in which

(21:35):
also stared star George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Isaac Hayes, Louis Jordan,
and Robert Forrester. All Right, and then another screenplay credit
is Carlos Vassalo, Spanish producer, writer and director who produced
and co directed nineteen nine Day of the Assassin starring
Glenn Ford, Chuck Connors, Richard Rowntree, Jorge Rivero and Henry Silva.

(21:57):
He also produced dial Lomo's nine eight four film Goma
To starring Margot Hemingway, Lee Van Cleef, Jorge Rivero and
Frank Bronna. He also produced Pit Fight, starring you Guessed
It Jorge Rivero. So is you can imagine here this
whole team seems very much in the Jorge Rivero business.

(22:17):
It says a lot of writers for movies that apparently
need a lot of writing. Yeah, and you'd yeah, I
really would have. You expected it to be more of
a mess. Like generally that's kind of a sign, right,
The longer the list of writing credits, the more you know,
the more cooks in the kitchen. Uh So it's it's
kind of a minor miracle that this one makes as

(22:38):
much sense as it does, or doesn't try to make
more sense than it does. It strikes the right balance.
Now you've already said his name about forty seven times,
so I think we should talk about Jorge Rivero, who
fans of mystery science theater will definitely recognize as the
breakout star of the movie We're Wolf. Yes, film where

(22:59):
Wolf starring Richard Lynch and Joe Estevez. I guess that's
probably where I saw him for the first time. So
there's there's certainly a whole generation of film fans who
probably know him best from that. He has a lot
of great moments. But he plays a like an archaeologist
named Yuri who decides he's going to create a werewolf
by hitting a man with a werewolf skull. Yeah, so yeah,

(23:21):
he's fun in that, but um yeah, Jorio Rivero bord
a true Mexican film superstar who worked with some of
the biggest international film names of the sixties and seventies,
and that seems to have been like, really that was
his his heyday, um way before he ended up working
with Joe Esteves. Um So. I already mentioned some of

(23:42):
these pictures that had Rivero in and you would probably
recognize some of the names involved there. But Rivero also
worked with both John Wayne and El Santo. He worked
with Chuck Heston or Charles Heston. I don't know why
I always come Chuck James Coburn Um. Yeah, he was.
He was working with some of the the biggest names
of the time. That the John Wayne film in question

(24:03):
is Rio Lobo from nineteen seventy, which was the last
film directed by Howard Hawks of the Thing from Another
World Thing Wow. The El Santo movie is nineteen sixty
seven's Operation sixty seven and that's directed by Renee Cardona Jr.
And Renee Cardona Senior. And in that one he plays
santos sidekick. We should watch that. Uh. Jorge Rivero is

(24:26):
somebody who you know, I think you could kind of
compare him to Arnold Schwarzenegger in that somebody who clearly
like his original appeal is muscles. He was cast for
his muscles and his body, but actually does have a
a an appealing screen presence, even if you wouldn't say
he's a very subtle dramatic actor, Jorge Rivero is you know,

(24:48):
you don't tune him out when he's talking. You're you're
there for it. He reminds me a little bit of
John Saxon, you know, and they both have similarity directories.
Both both started off as kind of like muscle guy
mo old guy kind of actors and their careers long
outlasted like the the youthful appeal of their bodies. So
they both kept it. I mean they both kept it

(25:09):
really tight to be clear. And as if this recording
and Jorge still around, um, he looks pretty pretty good
for his age. He he has some extras on the
on the Blu ray that I watched, and he has
several fun stories. There's one about when he was filming
the Santo movie. Like first they sent him down them
to down to like Mexico City to train with the
luch doors and they like they beat the hell out

(25:30):
of him because it was like, you know, really tough training.
But then he was filming on location with Santo and
everybody else, and then he had like a day off
or a part of the day off, so he went
to the grocery store and he goes in there and
he sees this kind of muscular, barrel shaped man buying
some groceries, and he has like a nose that's clearly
been broken several times, and he has a tan line

(25:52):
that perfectly matches the one version of the Santo mask,
like Santo had a different mask for eating food or
for doing an of view, and he had the tan
line to match it. And so he goes up to
him and he's like, oh, Santo, and Santo is like,
don't you ever tell anybody something without my mask on
A's a a fun little story, wow, But in this

(26:13):
he is Mace, a barbarian, a friend of animals and
enemy of all men. He swings a stone bone set
of nun chucks, and he's he's kind of the destined
savior of the world. There's an interesting dynamic where when
we first meet him, he appears to be the sidekick character,
but then he seems to become the actual hero of

(26:33):
the movie. Because when it first gets going, it's really
seems like the hero of this story is is young Ilius. Yeah,
Ilius is. It seems to be our destined hero, our
destined savior. And Elius is played by Andrea o Chapinti
born nineteen fifty seven. This is an Italian actor who
worked with Fulci in New York Ripper, which I could

(26:56):
be wrong. I remember that as not being a good one. Uh,
maybe it has some appeal. But other roles include Lomberto
Baba three film ape Lad in the Dark, but he
seems to have made a bigger splash as a film
producer and distributor, involved in such films as two thousand elevens,
This must be the Place, two thousand elevens, The Kid

(27:17):
with the Bike, Anti Christ, Funny Games, Open Your Eyes,
and many others. In this movie, he's our He's our
wide eyed young hero. He's sort of the the Luke
Skywalker to Jorge Rivero's Han solo. Yes, yeah, and no
spoilers yet, but it goes. It goes in some unexpected places,
but also not completely unexpected. Uh, we'll get into it.

(27:40):
It's it's it's interesting to think about, alright, our central villain,
we've already alluded to them, the half nude sorceress with
the golden helmet for a head. Uh. This is the
character Okron, played by Sabrina Sanny, also credited as Sabrina Sellers.
I think she's credited as Sabrina Sellers in the film
um Sometimes the case again part of the international distribution.

(28:04):
Born nine, Italian actress who was mostly active from seventy
nine through eight nine and retired from acting around but
during this time she was in a bunch of Italian
B movies, many of which we were violent, gladiator or
barbarian movies. Some of the titles include um Gunan King
of the Barbarians, A Tour, The Fighting Eagle. Oh, that's

(28:26):
the one that ms T three k covered as Cave Dwellers, Yeah,
Texas Gladiators, The Throne of Fire, and Cobra Nero starring
Fred Williamson. Wow, I don't think I've seen any of
those except the tor movie. Yeah, I think A Tour
is the only one I've seen. But yeah. She worked
with such directors as Fulty, of course, and Berto Lindsay,
Antonio Margredi, Um, Joe Diamatto and Jeff Franco and yeah,

(28:51):
and then she plays the evil witch Queen Okron, whose
face is always obscured behind a golden mask. I'd say
it's still a good performance. Give and the limitations here,
there's um this is this is not a like a
real human kind of role. No, this is a villain
with super weird vibes, scary head covering, helmet with the
metal face mask, uh, pretty much naked otherwise, always has

(29:15):
a snake, wears like a sort of feathery cape, and
loves to do evil magic and order her werewolf soldiers
to kill right and eat brains. Also eats brains, Yes,
eats brains. It does a weird like drugs through sort
of like a cocaine blow dart gun. Yeah. Yeah. Engaged
to too, I guess some in dream visions so that

(29:36):
she can predict the future and then freak out about it.
But another role in this film is the character Zora,
which we'll get into, which is a character just covered
head to toe and some sort of strange black armor
from another dimension. Uh. It's a small part completely again,
completely obscured by a suit. So I'm uncertain if this
is a physical role or a voice roll or both,

(29:58):
but the character is credited to Conrados and Martin Prolific
Spanish actor with credit stretching from ninety one through fifteen.
He lived one through twenty nineteen. He worked with such
directors as Sergiolione, Jeff Franco and more. Oh and we
should mention the cinematographer Alejandro Uloa, who lived nineteen twenty

(30:20):
six through two thousand and four. This is the man
responsible for all the soft focus and fog machines in
the film, apparently. Other films of note include nineteen seventy
two Horror Express, The Exterminators of the Year three thousand,
Operation Kid Brother. That one was was actually was featured
on the MST three K. That's the one with Sean
Connery's brother in it playing a Bond knockoff. Oh yeah,

(30:40):
that one's terrible. Yeah. The Diabolical Doctor Z that's no
relation to Za. And also the Paul Nashy Werewolf movie
from One Night of the Werewolf. Is this the one
you were showing me clips from the other week? I
don't think so. There's a million of these and it
is not not one that I've looked. Lesli. Yeah, okay,

(31:01):
I'm gonna say uh true. Star of of Conquests. The
single best thing about the movie the music, The music
is a Gamma ray burst. I love it. I absolutely
agree this is a great score. This is by Claudio
Semonetti bord N two, a true synth legend. This is

(31:21):
our second film to feature a Claudio Semonetti score. The
first was Hands of Steel, which was a lot of fun,
but I remember as commenting that while I had some
nice moments, it maybe wasn't Claudio Semonetti at his finest.
This one is just absolutely terrific. It's a gentle and
ethereal in places, frightening and unsettling in other places. You know,

(31:42):
has a jarring synth quality um that you know goes
well with nightmare imagery. And there are notes here and
there that reminded me a lot of the I d
M the intelligent dance music genre to come. And indeed
you have albums like Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest is
really inspired by scores much like this. I'm to understand,

(32:03):
if not this film in particular, because again Claudio Semonetti
is a big name in when it comes to synth
scores of this era, certainly when you're looking at it
tag in cinema, I believe I've seen Claudio Semonetti in concert.
I've seen Goblin, Uh, so I think he was with them. Yeah, yeah,
he's he's the of course, the the long time keyboardist

(32:24):
for Italian Prague rock band Goblin. He's still active today
and yeah, he's had his hands in some of the
most iconic scores of Italian genre cinema. Uh, films like
what Suspiria deep Red, also some lesser known works that
that I really love, like Warriors of the Wasteland. That
one's from three as well. I think the score for Conquest,

(32:48):
I think it's actually made even more wonderful by how
it is sometimes very inappropriate for the sen you're watching,
Like it doesn't always match the movie. Sometimes it does,
sometimes it doesn't. But if the music is always great,
I don't know, if you see it enough times, I
think those that they come together perfectly, so I can't

(33:08):
imagine any of these scenes without uh the existing score. Now,
sometimes it's the case where a really great score on
one of these pictures has not been re released and
isn't available. Uh, this is not It's not the case
with a Conquest from Claudio Seminetti. You can stream it
through all the major places. I've had to go to
the grocery store earlier today, and I streamed it to

(33:29):
and from the grocery store. Absolutely loved it. But if
you're a vinyl collector, then you're also in luck because
Russ Blade Records the same the same company to put
out the Hands of Steel vinyl. Uh. They have it
out in a limited vinyl release with movie poster, and
it is fittingly printed on smoke transparent vinyl. It actually

(33:50):
even has tracks that are not featured in the digital release,
which is exciting. It almost makes me wish I had
a record player. What is the which Which is the
track that has that awesome like synth symbol beat that
plays when they are throwing the poop grenades at the
werewolves in the camp? Um, I'm not sure. Is it

(34:12):
the one that kind of goes done to Dunton don't
Dunton da da don da da da da da No?
I don't think so, it's more it's more just percussive. Okay, Well,
I'm not sure exactly which track that is, but but
I loved all the music I heard in the film.
Let's hear just a little bit, if we can hear seth,
if we can have the legal limit on the track

(34:33):
titled black Birds. Anyway, that one's definitely on the digital release. Uh,
well worth picking up or or checking out. This music

(34:54):
is your jam like it is mine. All right, let's
dive into the plot, Rob, I could feel your love
for the movie because I noticed that your notes about
the plot were copious. Um, and who can blame you.

(35:14):
But so the the opening of this movie, it's weird,
and I was trying to find the way to describe it.
I'd say it's like this. The opening shot is like
you are trying to pull up a Google street view
of a bay in Australia that's famous for shark attacks,
but the image won't finish loading, so it's just a

(35:35):
blurry inlet with a blurry beach and then this droning,
shimmering music of the spheres, Rob, is it kind of
a little bit music from the Hearts of Space? Yeah?
I think that's a very fair comparison. I mean that
they do feature a lot of different sorts of music,
a lot of different ambient varieties of music on Hearts
of Space. But yeah, a lot of the music that

(35:55):
Seminettie did for this film has a very ethereal quality
to it, and is their chill again. You have those
alarming tracks, those jarring tracks, but a lot of it,
a lot of it is just very relaxing, chill stuff.
Then while we're watching, we're waiting for the street view
to load, and it never does. Instead, we sort of
fade into a different, blurry view of the same scene. Uh.

(36:17):
And it's some kind of ritual. We see like wizards
and some priestesses dressed in white robes, and we see
an a tour kind of guy and this is our
this is our young hero Ilias. Yeah, this and there,
this is their character that is is faded, uh, to
journey into another land, right, he has a quest of

(36:38):
sacrifice and courage. Sacrifice has mentioned at least once, if
not a couple of times here, and he's going to
be sent into an evil land. That's right here, there's
like a Santa Zeus character, and Santa Zeus says, you've
chosen the path of courage and sacrifice, Elias, a journey
into the heart of a very dark and evil domain.

(36:59):
Many blessing on your son. You are an example of
bravery among men. Come back safely and govern us with
the wisdom of your experience. So it's almost like I
think he's being sent on a journey into an evil
land as tryouts to become king maybe or to become
their leader. I guess it's like an excursion. He's supposed
to learn and grow and then come back and and

(37:21):
rule them. But they're they're not sending him in there
with nothing there. They put some leather armor on him.
And then Santa SEUs reaches out and like with a
tractor beam, grabs this bow. And this bow is a
major plot device. It is the bow of Chronos. And
we find out that many sons ago, Chronos fought with
this magic bow and drove back the terrible creatures that

(37:44):
invaded the land. Uh. And we learned a legend. It's
that when Chronos ran out of arrows and the sun
dropped down from the sky and became arrows that shot
from his bow as flames and uh. And then Santa
Zeus explains that this story means that Chronos had become
a man, and you have chosen the path of courage

(38:05):
and sacrifice, you will not turn back. You are a man, etcetera. Uh,
there's some kind of repetitive talk in there about that.
But then Elias says, no matter what happens, I shall
not forget these words, and I think that's incredibly wrong.
He definitely will forget those words. Now, it's this whole sequence,
it's really unclear if these are supposed to be human

(38:26):
characters or these kind of like Elvin characters, or they gods,
they they it's it's we quickly learned that they seem
to have at the very least a level of technology
above that of the denizens of the Evil World that
he's about to take a boat too. Yeah, no, I
think they're supposed to be humans, but they come from

(38:47):
a better place. So they're from this bay in Australia,
whatever this is. And we learned through some dialogue later,
like he's explaining to Jorge Rivero. He's like, you know,
in our place, we don't have to hunt down food
every time we're hungry. We actually have farms. We grow
the food near where we live. And Mace is like, oh,
that's that's too complicated for me. So it's just like,

(39:10):
I think he comes from a place where they've got
more peace and more technology than in the Evil Land
where most of the movie takes place. I think that's fair.
But these people are still very much like fading in
and out of focusing, out of reality. Though we have
that dream layer of from fulg that kind of throws
everything potentially into question and keeps you wondering. Yeah, And

(39:31):
speaking of layers, I mean, I think the film in
this scene, we're we're seeing multiple layers of camera exposure
at the same time. And there are some shots in
this opening sequence where it seems literally like there was
gunk physically stuck to the camera lens, because there are
parts where there's like a blob in the frame, and

(39:52):
then the camera pans and the blob stays in the
same place. Yeah, And I don't know enough about like
the details of this sort of thing to know if
what I'm looking at is just an artifact of like
the quality of the remaining footage, or if this is
something that's an artifact from whatever kind of technique they
were doing, uh, in addition to like soft focus and

(40:12):
fog to make this look the way it does. Right.
But so Elias he's got to go on his journey
and then begin titles, and immediately I just typed like,
o MG, the theme music is absolutely sick, just awesome.
So some of these compositions I think also would have
been really cool in chip tunes form as like music
to an A E. S game. Can't you imagine like

(40:33):
the main conquest theme is like one of you know,
like a Batman for the NES style side scroller. Yeah, yeah,
I think this is the track you're talking about here,
kind of has a data vibe to it. Oh yeah,
So Elias jumps on the boat. Um, everyone fades out
of existence, and Elias is on his way to the
new and evil land, right, and so what goes on

(40:56):
in the evil Land while they're gonna show us? So
we see like tribes of people hanging out, sitting around campfires,
hanging out with goats, and then we see that all
of these people are under the spell of a scary, evil,
nude sorceress wearing a metal mask who like makes them worshiper.
And then she sends werewolf soldiers to attack them and

(41:17):
rip them literally rip them apart. That's right, okrun As
we we learned her name is, she causes the sun
to rise and the people of this land worshiper, and
she sends she sends forth her minions, which I thought
was very interesting that her minions consists of people in
beast masks. With kind of like wooden beast masks and furs.
And then there are people who have become half beast

(41:39):
that are like werewolves or dog men. So they come
rampaging down. They meet with the humans who live here
that are kind of like their goat herds and maybe
hunter gatherers. Uh. They demand tribute, but refuse the offer
of goat flesh, and they also refuse the Bible leader

(42:00):
who's like, take me, I'm old, and they're like, no, no,
you're too old. Oak prefer prefers young flesh. And Okra's
demands must be met, we're told otherwise she will plunge
them all into eternal night, because again she commands the sun.
And so then the dog men rip a woman from
the tribe limb from limb and carry her head back
to Okrahn. It's a really gross scene, but then it's

(42:22):
immediately funny after that, because so the werewolves bring the
severed head back and Ocron starts eating the brains of
the severed head, and she goes yum uh. There's the
feast of the brains, and then we have the gentle
Claudio Simonetti music playing, and the werewolf beings take these
like straws, and they take turns blowing some sort of

(42:45):
substance into each other's nostril, and then one of them
blows the substance through the nostrils of the mask of Okron,
and then she begins to writhe on a bed of
furs while snake crawls over. And then she has given
the dream prophecy, a dream prophecy of her own death,
in which a faceless warrior jumps out of the mist

(43:08):
and slays her with an arrow of light. Oh, I mean,
so we just heard about a prophecy of this guy.
Sounds like sounds like Ilius and Okron here are going
to clash. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like there's their destined
to run into each other. But okay, Ilius is uh,
he's arrived in the land now, so he's gonna be
wandering around and he starts meeting people. That's right. He

(43:28):
saves a human water gatherer from a snake, kills the
snake with his arrow. I think this might be important
later on. But then hey, the agents of Okron are
washing and they're like, hey, that guy's got a bow. Uh.
I think there was a dream about this. Were supposed
to be on the lookout for this guy, so they
jump out and they attack him. After the human water
gather has left, it looks like Elias might not be

(43:51):
long for this world, but then Mace jumps in and
makes the save. This is I think a pretty fun
fight because is this the first time we get to
see Mace use those fun like stone bone nunchucks that
he has, Well, this is the first time we see
Mace at all. But yeah, in the very first scene
he's he's swinging around his rock nunchucks and uh, just

(44:13):
whirling them and whack in the I don't know where
there werewolves here. I think there are, but they're they're
also just dudes and masks. He beats them all up
and they run away, and so, you know what, Mace
what a good guy he's he's helping Ilius out. But
then we find out that, uh, maybe he's not so
initially friendly because he explains he's like, oh, I'm not
your friend. Every man is my enemy. Yeah, but animals

(44:35):
are his friends because he almost immediately engages in some
bird rescue. There's like a bloody bird and he's like,
let's get this bird cleaned up, and so he rescues
the bird it's very sweet. He's actually got a tattoo
on his head though, like he has a face tattoo,
and he says, see this tattoo, it means every man
is my enemy. To let them know. Like, it doesn't
really help Mace out because he can't actually see it.

(44:57):
How's he going to get a job with that? Now,
there's a great scene that follows where we have we're
back in Okron's misty chambers and wounded I think a
human soldier here, one of her minions is. They're telling
her about this fabulous weapon, this new weapon technology that
this stranger had, and so she's instantly interested. Uh, and

(45:19):
of course this ties in with her her vision. So
she sends her Lieutenant Wolfman. I think this guy is
that he her main Wolfman is sometimes called Fargo or
Furgo or something. Uh. She's like, hey, go out and
get this bow, get this guy. So she sends him out.
He and the rest of the crew are out to
find this guy. So, I think, did you understand it

(45:40):
the same way that there are no bows in this land?
This is the first time any of them has seen
a bow and arrow, right, So even ignoring the idea
that this bow might one day shoot arrows of light.
The mere fact that it shoots arrows is instantly aweing
everybody in this land, like this is new weapon technology,
and and that alone is is of note. I. Meanwhile,

(46:02):
Elias is just kind of handing it around, like he
lets Mace use it. Yeah, he's like check it out.
And ma says like, oh, this is good. There's a
good weapon. And in fact, Nice uses it to kill
a man almost immediately. There's this there's like a guy
over here that's he's got some sort of dead animal,
you know, hunter gatherer. Mace murders him with the bow
and then goes and steals the animal flesh from him,

(46:24):
and and it's a deeply weird scene that's thankfully expanded upon. Uh,
there's this. There's this great scene at the campfire where
Elias and Mace are eating the meat and Mace explains,
when a man meets a man, you never know which
one will die, but when an animal meets a man,
it's always the animal that dies. I'm on the animal side.
And then Elias says, isn't that this an animal you're eating?

(46:47):
And Mace says, I didn't kill him, very good point. Yeah,
is road kill vegan. Possibly we Mace has a very
particular code of honor here, like he is a friend
of the animals, he is an enemy of all men.
He's not gonna go hunting animals and eating them, but
he has to eat. And so if he encounters a human,

(47:09):
well all men and all men are his enemy, so
he can certainly kill those men and get their food,
even if that food is an animal that had been
previously killed. But it's not long into this feast before
there's some sort of commotion outside. Um Elius is like,
it's probably animals, probably for for food, and May says,
now it's probably men looking for trouble. So they grab
their weapons, they go out there, or they start to

(47:31):
go out, and then here are the agents of Okron
are attacking again. They've lit some fires, and so our
heroes have to escape into the caverns. They seem trapped.
But then this is where we have that kind of
raiders at the lost dark moment where they're like, oh,
here's a snake. Uh. And this is one of the
many scenes in which Mace is guided by animals, and
so he follows the snake and they're able to escape

(47:52):
once more. Alias gets freaked out by the snake. But um,
but Mace explains a snake is harmless as long as
he doesn't bite you. This, of course, is in stark
contrast to Elias's slaying of a snake earlier. Yea, now
we get some of the more whimsical Claudio Semonetti music
and the scenes that follow followed by joyous music, because

(48:15):
first our heroes steal a dead sheep from from a
from a guy. They don't kill him that they make
off with the meat, and then they run off and
we have joyous music and they head to the this
population of cave people, and these are the folks are
going to hang out with, and they're gonna cook some
goat flesh with uh. Mace has basically got like a
sort of on and off girl friend here at the cave.

(48:37):
And so they're hanging out of the cave to eat
mutton and party. That's right, there's an intense meat eating
scene with another great Claudio Semonetti track going on. A
lot of scenes have you setting around the fire eating
the meat. There's an attempted seduction of Elias by one
of the cave women. But before this can go anywhere,
the agents of Okron attack once more. They kill the

(49:00):
human woman, they actually kill all the human denizens of
the cave, They knock a Mace out, and Elias is
taken prisoner. So there's a recurring thing in this movie
where the bad guys hit somebody over the top of
the head with the rock or over the nax or something,
and every single time it does the same thing, which
is it seems to just like completely remove the entire

(49:25):
top of their head in terms of skin and bone
and just like creates a perfect, perfectly exposed brain meat hemisphere. Yeah,
it's a It's one of these gory, perhaps not realistic
bits of of violence in the film, but it's very
It certainly makes an impression on you, and I think

(49:46):
it lines up with that idea of full cheese um
fascination with the fragility of flesh. Like one blow to
the head is just instant brain exposure in this film.
So there were a number of moments in this movie
that I found really funny. But one of the legitimate
laugh out loud ones is when Okay, everybody's been killed,

(50:08):
Elias is kidnapped, Mace's left alone. Things are horrible. Everything
is so grim. This this horrible kidnapping and murder has
taken place. Dark syntho music is playing, and then suddenly
Mace looks up at the sky and there's like happy
bird squawking, and it's so funny. The birds will guide him, Yeah,
the birds are his guide multiple times here and he's like, hey, birds,

(50:32):
well so the birds yeah, are gonna clearly take him
to Elias. Meanwhile, Elias is held captive by this whole
war band of of humans and dog men, and there's
this great scene or I thought it was great where
there there they stopped for the night and they're they're
tying Elias to the steak, and the head like the
lieutenant of the dog man comes forward and he says,

(50:54):
I take you to Okra and alive Okron make you die.
And then there's more Okron rule the sun and make
night and day and he and he says that's not true.
No one can rule the sun. And then the wear
of just growls. Clearly wasn't prepared for this level of
philosophical discussion. This is a fundamentalist, ochronist werewolf and he

(51:17):
Elias just tried to explain evolution to him, and he
did not take kindly to it. But I like how
this kind of this more than implies that Okron might act.
You know, even though she clearly is messing around with
some dark, deep magic, she may not actually control the sun.
This may also this may just be a hoax that
she's perpetrating in order to control the stone age peoples

(51:38):
of this land. Oh that is how I read it.
I read it as she does not actually have any
power whatsoever over the sun, and she has just convinced
people she does, right, But she clearly has some power
she's not to be messed with. And we find out
later from Mace. Like Mace is like, look, I leave
her alone. She leaves me alone. We have this whole
truce thing going on. But I mean Mace's interfering with

(52:00):
her business here because Mace rescues Ilius and uh rescues
him from the camp. But in this great scene where
there are dung grenades, I guess they're dung grenades. Yeah,
he's you see him grab these balls of possible dung,
wraps him in leaves and then later he's thrown him
into the dog men's campfire and causes this big explosion.
This scene has awesome music. Yeah, we get some more fighting,

(52:22):
so it's a successful rescue. And then but this means
that the head where Wolf, the head dog Man, has
failed and so the following scene is him being roasted
alive on a great glowing rock in Okron's layer, and
we get more terrific music on top of this. Yes,
and now there's a great part where Okron is like,
I'm gonna need some help. So what am I gonna do?

(52:45):
I'm going to appeal to a really evil god. Yeah,
So she goes back to the dreamtime you, back to
the furs and the snakes, and she summons the King
of Darkness, the Master of treachery, the Light of all evil.
She she reaches over and there's a dog. There's like
a wolf dog next to to where she's laying, and

(53:08):
she transforms, or this creature transforms into Zora, a towering
figure in black armor, who then agrees to help her,
but she must promise her soul in return. This doesn't
seem to be a big sticking point for her. She's
just like done, yeah, soul. Yeah. She's like, I've got
to get this guy taken care of, so, yes, whatever

(53:28):
whatever the cost. Time in so we we cut back
to to Mace and and Alias. They're discussing Okron and
and Okron is like, we we gotta, we gotta take
Okroon out. She's too powerful. She's she's she's no good.
And Mace's like, you don't want to go messing with Okron,
she's way too powerful. And I maintain this kind of
neutrality with her. Um And while they're having this discussion,

(53:50):
Zora attacks them. We get poison arrows ripping through the sky,
and and our heroes flee from this. They flee by raft,
but right as they're getting on the left, Elie takes
a dart in the leg and then the poison threatens
to overcome him. Wait, I'm sorry to back up just
a moment, but is this the scene where the form

(54:10):
that Zora takes in order to attack them is as bushes.
I didn't take it that he was the bush, but
there is some kind of like bush shaking going on. Yeah, okay,
you think he's something in the bush or I don't know.
I just thought he was the wind carrying darts of poison.
I'm not I guess I thought this was the Lord

(54:31):
of Darkness possessing some shrubbery and using that evil shrubbery
to shoot poison darts at our heroes, and it could
be a powerful divine or infernal entities have been known
to speak through vegetation. Well, anyway, Ilius is hit with

(54:56):
a poisoned dart here and then full cheese, like, let's
get a look at that. Yeah, let's spend some time
on these uh, these these pus oozing sores, blood oozing sores.
As Elias arrivees with fever and delirium. We just spend
a lot of time watching these these sores, uh swell

(55:19):
up and then erupt. And there's a whole sequence after this.
This that's pretty great. But Mace has to go retrieve
a medicinal herb that will cure the poison that's in
Ilius's blood now, but in order to do so, he
has to fight his way through a whole bunch of
bog zombies. And this part is great. Some of the
zombies are a little less human than others, or some

(55:43):
are just kind of like decaying human corpses. But there's
some rob I don't know if you noticed this that
like sort of don't have faces, Like their heads are
just sort of a big lobe. Yeah, yeah, these are
these are fultry zombies, and you know he's going to
deliver when it comes to the undead. This is also
scene that has just maximum smoke machine and and soft focus,

(56:04):
so at times it's it's it's all. It's almost difficult
to make out exactly what's happening. But still there's some
great zombie slang action. You definitely get to see some
zombie juice is splurting. But Mace does make it all
the way back with the medicinal herb uh, though there's
there's a little bit of a twist before before we
get the treatment here, right, that's right, because we see

(56:24):
Mace arrived back at Elias and uh and Macey's maze
is like, all right, I'm here, I'm gonna give it
to you, and then he lifts up a rock like
he's gonna smash Elias with it. But then no, we
realize this is an evil double of Mace. The real
Mace shows up and we have a mirror match. The
fake Mace is brandishing a wooden club and real Mace

(56:44):
is of course using the most stone bone nun chucks
and we get a fun fight scene here. Eventually, legit
Mace has his double pinned down, and the double reveals
itself as Zora, the black armored entity from another dimension
and or whatever, and then Zora vanishes and laughs, Yeah,
the Mace versus Mace fight scene is great. But Mace,

(57:06):
the real Mace, prevails and Ilius is nursed back to
health by Mace putting these little like leaves all over
his skin and uh. And then basically Ilius is like,
all right, piece out, I'm the sea. Later, I'm gonna
go get back on my boat and go across the
ocean and go back to our our nice, peaceful farming community.
And Mace is like, that's a great decision. You should

(57:29):
definitely do that. He tries to give him his boat, don't.
He's like, here, you love violence, you should use this. Yeah,
And he's like now this, he says, this weapon is
still too dangerous for this land. So Mace is very reasonable,
like he was. He turns down the one ring here.
That's right, so that the part ways. Yeah. Meanwhile, back
in Oakran's layers, Zora assures, Okrun, look, it's gonna be done.

(57:51):
I'm gonna take care of it. He's not gonna live
much longer, but she and she's she does he seems
to sort of doubt this a little bit, and she's
very insistent, like, look, he needs to die. The archer
needs to die because of my visions. So at this point, yeah,
Elias has seemingly set off to return to his his land.
Mace is marching on his own business. I'm not sure

(58:12):
where he's going, but he's headed that way. He's going
through a rocky coastal region and suddenly there are these moaning,
chirping creatures amidst the rocks. Um they are. They are strange.
They are kind of difficult to describe. I was gonna
describe them as a bunch of pit pats from Mr. Show,
but just covered in cobwebs. Yeah, they're kind of like

(58:34):
cobweb covered more locks with big glassy green eyes. But
there I think they're I mean, they're obviously not real.
You don't look at these creatures and say, like, oh,
real organisms, what are they? No, No, these are these
are obviously movie monsters. But there's there's a level of
detail to these guys that I thought was really impressive.

(58:54):
Like I I buy them as impressive movie monsters. They
have some sort of strange life going on here in
the rocks and now they're jumping out and they're coming
after Mace, grabbing at his ankles, saying take it from me,
I love you. They do have weird voices. They get
a net over him, and then the lead web morlock

(59:17):
creature here says, whereas your friend, And he's like, I
don't have any friends. I'm Mace, and he's like, do
you lie? I will make you tell me. Yeah. It's
kind of robot computer voice and it. Yeah. Meanwhile, Elias
is out on the boat headed home, but he's he's
having doubts. He's having some voiceover doubts that are reminding

(59:38):
him that his is a path of courage and sacrifice.
So what does he do. He turns the boat around,
he looks up, he sees birds and he's like, those
birds will take me to Mace. That's right. Yeah, remember
what Santa Zeus said, you will be courage and a man.
And so he's he's back into the action. Yeah, and
it really the movie just gets crazier and crazier from

(01:00:00):
here on out. Um. You know, obviously Mace doesn't snitch
to these cobweb morelock creatures. Um. He also may be
wrestling with the notion of human friends and what it
means to have a friend. But the creatures intend to
make him die in water. They've lashed him to some
cross beams. But then Elias shows up, and Elias has

(01:00:21):
now mastered the true power of the Bow of Chronos.
He is no longer afraid, so when he pulls back
the string, he's able to cause the bow to glow
with like laser energy and shoot laser arrows for everyone.
It's powerful now. I have to note that it is
also in the in the Conan the Barbarian movie that

(01:00:41):
Conan gets crucified, and that's Trvie Mace gets crucified. I
don't think that's a coincidence. But a big difference is
that Conan gets crucified in the desert, and here Mace's
crucified on the shoreline and his cross tumbles into the
water like he's cruizy. He he's attached to the beams
and he falls into the surf. That's right lucky for

(01:01:02):
for Mace, though, he's got friends underwater as well, because
then the dolphins show up and the dolphins start breaking
his bonds. They start freeing him from the cross. Literally,
the dolphins are chewing the ropes off of his wrists
to free him. I love this, Like if you could
just another level of like late seventies early eighties weirdness

(01:01:23):
to have the dolphins show up, uh to totally unexpected
in this film and save the day. Okay, So maceon
Elias are back together, um and uh, it's there's gotta
be a showdown, right right. They realize now Okron has
to go, like, we're both united on this front. Now
we're both brave about it. We both realized there's no
other way around it. So they set out that way

(01:01:44):
towards her mountain. But they realize, well, it's better to
travel by night because we don't want to go across
all this open ground during the daytime. So they set
up camp. But of course the freaks come out at night.
Elias is pulled into the ground by these claws that
come out of the earth. He's pulled into dark caverns
by Okron's minions. Mace goes after him, but then we

(01:02:05):
get this scene where it's just lots of claws and
red eyes in the dark. There's blue and black combat.
Mace eventually overcomes his attackers. This scene, you you cannot
see what is happening in this scene. It's just some
blurry dark shapes moving around, but there was there is
an extremely hilarious part where bats start attacking Mace. I

(01:02:29):
revealed this earlier. The bats started attacking him, and he
whips out his nun chucks and starts screaming at the
bats as he like whirls it around above his head.
But then he seems to realize, oh, they're bats. I'm
a friend of all animals, and then the bats kind
of guide him out. Yeah. Yeah, But then tragedy because
he's moving along through the cavern. It seems like the
surface is just ahead, there's light, but then there's a

(01:02:52):
dripping of blood on his shoulder. He looks up and
there is Elias, his headless body hanging from the ceiling,
dripping blood down on him. That's right, folks, our young
hero is dead, like really dead like heads shocking. Yeah,
so we get the same where Zora, the Black Armor

(01:03:12):
demon being from beyond, brings this this head to to
Okron and she says, while his flesh is still warm,
I shall open his temple of secrets and devour him. So,
in other words, it's it's time to eat it. Eat
the head's brains, but before she can strike, she like
gets the striker to bash open the skull like she
did earlier. But then the eyes of the head open,

(01:03:35):
and she says, Zora, you idiot. Shouldn't say you idiot,
but says, Zora, you have slain his body, but not
his soul. And she realized that she's still in danger
from the omen. I don't know what that means. How
was she how was he supposed to slay Ilius's soul?
I don't know. It's magic stuff. We're not we're not
meant to understand the ways of wizards. But she seems
pretty convinced that, like, you didn't really pull this off,

(01:03:55):
because look, the eyes on this head opened. There is
a scene where Mace burns the rest of Ilius's body,
and uh, full cheese, Like, let's get a look at that. Yeah,
let's watch all of this. Um, you know, I think
he realized that a lot of times when a body
is burned in emotion picture, you don't really get to

(01:04:16):
see everything that happens. So this movie make sure to
show you everything from the initial licking of the flames
across the body to the melting of the fat and finally,
the charring of the skeleton itself. At the risk of
reaching I'd say the cinematography here actually seems kind of interesting,
especially when compared to the convention within existing Peppler movies

(01:04:41):
of spending just lots of time lingering over the immensely
mountainously fleshed bodies of the of the heroes, where you're
just like panning over their gleaming muscles. Uh. Here, you're
panning over the bones as all the flesh has been removed. Yeah, yeah,
and this is this is something that Robert A. Rushing
spends a fair amount time in the in the book
talking about, Yeah, the rendering, the annihilation of the hero

(01:05:06):
body in this film. And then Mace has left, like
Mace has taken pretty hard. And then Mace decides that
he will avenge Jimmy, like swears to avenge Elius, and
he covers his body in the smeared ashes of his
dead friend. And so now we're on a collision course.
It's Mace versus Okron. Uh. These two are going to battle.

(01:05:27):
Um two may enter, only one can survive. I was
surprised how quickly this battle was over. Mace shows up
and now he's wielding Elias's bow, the bow of Kronos
and using the multi shot lasers, and he just he
just gets it done really quick. Yeah, so the way
it goes down Okron with Zora by her side, she
comes once more to those goat hurting people. She's got

(01:05:49):
to do the rising of the Sun ritual to keep
you know, this con going. But then yeah, Mace shows up.
He opposes her on an opposite peak. He calls for
the bow, it comes to him, and then Zora just
kind of like turns and looks at Okron and just vanishes.
He just like completely pieces out. It's like one of
those memes where like Homer is fading into the shrubbery

(01:06:12):
or or or the kid is just a slowly vanishing.
Zora is like, I just remember to have to go
return to videotapes. So Zora's gone. Okern sends her warriors
after after Mace, but he's got the laser arrows now,
so he just takes them out. She teleports back to
her layer, but then Mace shoots a laser arrow through

(01:06:32):
the side of the mountain which destroys her golden helm,
which reveals that she has this wretched, uh like monster face.
Like a hag's face underneath. Then Mace teleports into the
layer somehow, I guess, with the power of the bow
and vengeance uh and cinematography uh. And he's in the
layer now, and so he draws back the bow once more,

(01:06:54):
finishes her off with another laser arrow, completing the prophecy.
It seems more or less like her her own visions
of her own death earlier in the film. And then oh,
this is this is the perhaps the most amazing uh
demise of a villain ever an emotion picture, because yeah,
he appears. He finishes off with a laser arrow, she
falls to the misty floor, the music intensifies, and then

(01:07:19):
then she transforms into a wolf dog, very very much
like the wolf dog that she transformed into Zorah earlier
in the picture. That wolf dog runs off with another
wolf into the wilderness, and then Mace two strides off
into the wilds as the sun rises once more. Just

(01:07:39):
a weird, weird ending, but also feels like it's resonating
with some sort of hidden ful chy mystery. Beautiful, beautiful,
So did you interpret that as she's not actually killed,
she just becomes a wolf, don't. I Mean, there's a
lot going on in this movie with the relationship between
humans and animals. Uh. I mean we have Mace who

(01:08:01):
is the friend of animals, and Elias doesn't really understand
this and has to sort of learn how to trust
the animals. There's the fact that Okron uses like her
minions are all wearing like beast masks or have become
part beast. She uses a wolf for a dog to
transform and manifest Zora. Then she turns into a dog

(01:08:22):
or wolf when she dies. Uh. Yeah, there's it's it's strange,
UM's it's it's weird stuff. I love it. I feel
like there's some sort of there's some sort of hidden
meaning behind all of this. There's some sort of like
untranslated scripture beneath all of these strange images. Let us
turn now to the Book of Okron, chapter three, verse fourteen.

(01:08:46):
I don't know what happens next, Like, is Mace going
to go explain what happened to the people or are
they just really freaking out because they think the sun
isn't gonna complete it's rising now or if it sets again,
it's never gonna come up. But Mace probably doesn't care.
He's not a friend of all humans. He's all humans
are his enemies. He's more concerned with the animals. Do
you think Mace has become more friendly to humans in

(01:09:07):
general by the end? I think so. I think yeah.
I think his friendship with Elias changed him. I think
we see growth in his character. I think think we
see growth in both their characters. Yeah, it could have
been a sequel. Oh, you can't have a sequel to
film this perfect like. They nailed it. They absolutely nailed it. Uh.
There's a fun bit on the the the interview with
Rivera where they're talking he was talking about filming this

(01:09:30):
and how about how how much of a perfectionist fult
she was. How he'd have the entire crew with him
and there on this um, this this Italian island that's
normally a vacation island, but this was in the winter,
is the off season, and they'd march out into the
middle of nowhere and he'd go, no, no, this isn't right.
Let's keep going. And so they keep marching and they
get to some new location. Then he go, now they'll

(01:09:51):
go back to the other place. They march back and
filmed there. Um. So it seems like he put a
but a lot of a lot of energy into this one,
and I think maybe some of it from what I understand,
some of his later films were marred by by illness.
But and then of course there were with films of
this caliber, they're all always budget arey issues. But uh,

(01:10:13):
this one, it feels it feels very complete. I feel
like this again, there's some sort of hidden scripture behind
this film leaking in from another dimension. All right, we're
gonna go and close it out there, But obviously we'd
love to hear from everyone. Do you have memories of Conquest? Um? Certainly?
Have you ever saw this in the theater? Uh, you're

(01:10:33):
having to catch this one onto straight back in the
day or something. Let us know, Um, if you have
memories of seeing it on VHS or various DVD releases
over the years, or thoughts on other folkty films. Uh, yeah,
right in, we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime,
if you would like to follow all the movies we've
covered on Weird House Cinema, you can go to letterbox
dot com. It's L E T T E R B

(01:10:55):
O x D. We have a we have an account
on there just called weird House and you and find
a list of all the movies that we've covered so far,
and you can see like some wonderful visualizations of those
those those box arts. You can sort them by decade
and by order of release and so forth. And we
also have links to the individual episodes there, and I
also blog about these individual episodes at Samuta music dot com.

(01:11:18):
I'll be sure to embed the Claudio Semonetti music on
that post. Hues thanks as always to our excellent audio
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
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(01:11:46):
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