CONQUEST (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Lucio Fulci's attempt to ride the barbarian wave created by the 1982 CONAN THE BARBARIAN might not be among the most entertaining sword-and-sorcery flicks, but one must admit that it doesn't strongly resemble anything in the genre before or since.

Roughly ninety percent of the film looks for all the world like it's going to be a bildungsroman, the story of a young man's maturation and ascension to full adulthood. Handsome young Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti) is first seen in his own native land as the hero's father bids him farewell. For unclear reasons, everyone believes that Ilias is supposed to go forth and defeat some unspecified evil in the world beyond, and to that end Ilias's father presents the youth with a magical bow, as well as presenting a legend about how the bow once called down supernatural powers. A little after Ilias departs, Fulci's camera segues to another barren land, where a small tribe (never seen again) is suffering the tyrannies of Ocron, a sorceress garbed only in a golden metallic mask. and of her army of werewolves. Ocron has a premonitory dream about being slain by an energy-arrow wielded by a poorly seen assailant, so she has every reason to hunt down this new threat.

Almost as soon as Ilias arrives in the neighboring land, he's set upon by several savages. Some of them he kills with his arrows, but as he's not mastered the bow's energy powers yet (wouldn't it have been better to do that BEFORE leaving?), he has to flee when he's out of regular arrows. The savages capture him, but Ilias is saved when a powerful, somewhat older warrior named Mace (Jorge Rivero) shows up, driving off the savages with a magic bull-roarer. The two hang out, and the more experienced Mace takes him on a visit to a friendly tribe, largely for the purpose of wenching. Ilias welcomes this chance to celebrate his youth.

But if the hero's temporarily forgotten his noble mission, Ocron hasn't forgotten her deadly vision. She sends soldiers to the tribe's caves and almost succeeds in kidnapping Ilias. However, Mace comes to the youth's defense and routs the soldiers. Ilias wants to journey to Ocron's land and attack her, but Mace, being a practical type, declines to join him. 

Just as the point when the two are about to part on their separate courses, Ocron's soldiers attack again, pinning the duo down with a hail of arrows. When the two men run, Ilias is wounded by an arrow whose poison makes him deathly ill. Mace leaves his friend in a hiding place and goes looking for healing herbs. Meanwhile Ocron summons a chameleon-demon who shows up at the hiding-spot disguised as Mace. But by sheer luck the real Mace returns in time to defeat his doppelganger and to apply the herbs that help Ilias recover.

Ilias, perhaps discouraged by his brush with death, plans to use his boat to go back home. After he leaves, Mace is attacked by some of Ocron's monsters. Ilias has some intuition about his friend's peril and returns, but when he takes arms against this sea of new enemies, Ilias suddenly has full mastery of the bow's power, which include his being able to send forth an energy-arrow that splits into multiples to kill multiple foes (easily the neatest part of the movie). Ilias isn't able to prevent the creatures from hurling Mace, bound to a cross, into the sea. However, a friendly dolphin gnaws away the older hero's bonds, so that he's able to return to shore. Mace agrees to fight Ocron.

At this point, any pretense to bildungsroman goes out the window. Ilias is captured and hauled to Ocron's lair. Mace pursues, but finds that, unlike thousands of other villains, Ocron didn't wait for her captive to be rescued; she has Ilias killed and beheaded right away. Nevertheless, Mace gets hold of the magic bow and ensures that the evil sorceress still meets her predestined end.

While there are any number of adventure-stories wherein an older hero takes a young guy under his wing, only to see him slain, CONQUEST is the only one I know that really sets up the young hero as the likely focus of the adventure and then undercuts expectations by killing him. All that said, though, all of the characters are static even according to the dynamics of this genre, and Mace's sardonic remarks don't serve to make him a compelling hero. Once it was all over, I found myself a little curious as to why someone named the film CONQUEST, since the word doesn't really connote anything in the plot as such. Maybe killing the young hero was for Fulci a "conquest" of viewer expectations-- though it's a shame, because Occhipinti is the only actor who projects any strong emotion.