Weirdhouse Cinema: Conquest

this episode. Uh, this time, we're going to be talking about Italian gore master Luccio Folci's film Conquest. I'd say 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 joined forces in a struggle for power in a realm of fear. Conquest an act of courage to conquer the Queen of darkness. They faced the armies of evil to win the weapons of light. Feel the power, accept the

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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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

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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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

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

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 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 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. 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

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. 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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, 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? 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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,

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?

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact

at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.