Ah, Lucio Fulci, rest in peace. This infamous Italian is most
famous for "Zombie," and the absolutely unwatchable "The
Psychic" and "Manhattan Baby." Well, add this to the unwatchable
list.
The plot, as it were, concerns a nekkid woman who wears a gold
mask and a G-string. She wants the power of a young dubbed
stud who has a set of magic arrows and a bow. They are magic
because they glow. Arrow boy teams up with a guy in a bad wig,
and they spend most of the movie rescuing each other from flat
action sequences. In the end, the nekkid chick is defeated, but not
before taking the mask off and reminding me why I broke up with
my high school girlfriend.
Fulci bathes every shot in an orange glow and fills the screen with
smoke. Nothing like a smoky orange action sequence to make you
crave Sunny Delight and a cigarette. The special effects are
laughable. In one sequence, our ambiguously gay duo are
attacked by dozens of arrows that are obviously pin scratches on
the film itself. The majority of the effects budget must have been
spent on the Fulci-licious gore, which consists entirely of spurting
wounds. Hey, we can all use a good spurting wound once in a
while, but when you get into spurting wound overkill, it gets boring.
I kept having to play with the brightness setting on my TV anyway
just to see what the heck was happening.
There is lots of talk of fulfilling omens and prophecies, so let me
do a little look into the future...if you find this movie and watch it,
you will regret it. The scene on the video box (by Media) does not
appear in the film in any context whatsoever. "Conquest" is a con
job. What MST3K could have done with this!
This is rated (R) for strong physical violence, strong gore, female
nudity, brief male nudity, and mild sexual content.