Conquest (1983)

He is a hunter from a future world trapped in prehistoric times.

Conquest

This is Lucio Fulci's hazy, never ending, sword and sorcery piece of shit.  If there's one thing the Italian directors of the '70s and '80s were good at it was copying successful American films to make a buck.  This is Fulci's surreal imitation of films like Conan and The Beastmaster, and it is terrible.  I know this is a work by one of the great Italian exploitation directors so I'm supposed to say how misunderstood this film is and how the use of fog and color evokes a dreamlike quality and that the limited and stilted dialogue conveys the coarse, primitive nature of the characters, etc.  But no, this film is just a pile of festering poo.  After the first twenty minutes I just wanted the damn thing to end.  But it didn't end.  It went on forever like some sort of incoherent, low-budget hell.

An archer with a glowing blue bow and a guy with fur covered nunchuks battle a sorceress who is naked all the time but wears a golden mask.  That's the plot.

The one redeeming feature that I can think of is the gore.  This movie obviously isn't just a fantasy epic, it also contains more than a little psychedelia and Fulci's trademark gore.  There are decapitations, and exposed brains, and blood spattered bodies and best of all, a girl gets ripped in half by some furries.   But still, I cannot with a good conscience recommend this film.  Hell, the film was so blurry that most of the time I didn't know what was going on.  I had to assume that when the blurs were moving faster it was an action sequence.

Maybe somebody can explain why this is a masterpiece.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 2.5 out of 5

"If you tighten the string too much, it will snap. And if you leave it too slack, it won’t play."

 

Get the Unrated version of 

Conquest at TLACult

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971): Biting, Gnawing Terror Claws At Your Brain!

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, also known as the slightly edited Schizoid in the United States, is one of my favorite Lucio Fulci films.  In fact I have an original one-sheet of that poster art hanging on my wall. I'm not exactly sure what I like so much about this film but perhaps it's the ample amount of boobage, blood, psychedelia and sideburns. Everything just seems to come together for me.  It's a giallo so basically the story revolves around a murder investigation with some crazy Fulci elements thrown in.  It can be slow sometimes but never so slow that one loses interest in the mystery.

A somewhat repressed and sexually timid woman (Florinda Bolkan) dreams each night of explicit encounters with the sexually liberated woman who lives in the flat next door.  After lengthy psychoanalysis she is unsure what to make of these dreams.  One night she dreams that she stabs this drugged up hippie chick to death with a letter opener only to wake up to the fact that this woman really has been murdered and that she is the prime suspect.  Did she do it or was it a dream?  That's not the only thing going on in this film.  There's blackmail, a philandering husband, a rich politician/lawyer who smokes a pipe, LSD, bats and of course, the infamous "dog scene."

"Damn this astigmatism."

From IMDB:

The scene in which Carol encounters the disemboweled dogs in the clinic became quite controversial because of the startlingly realistic (and graphic) appearance of the fake prop dogs. Director Lucio Fulci was nearly sent to prison because it was believed that the dogs were real and Fulci had allowed animal cruelty on the film. However crew members were able to testify in court that the "dogs" were indeed fake and no animals had ever been harmed. Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi even presented the dog props in court to convince the jury. This was the first time that an effects artist had to testify in court that their work were fake.

A similar incident happened with the Italian gore-fest Cannibal Holocaust.  Also from IMDB:

The film caused some scandal in Italy at the time of its release. Ten days after premiering in Milan, the film was seized by the courts, and the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murder and faced life in prison on the belief that several of the actors were murdered for the camera. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. He presented the actors, alive and well, to the courts, and thus, the murder charges were dropped. The film remained banned in Italy for another three years.

So there you go.  All of you guys who like movies like Saw and Hostel owe more than a little to the Italian directors of the 1970s who pushed the envelope of gore and nudity, and even had to go to court to defend their films.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Get the Unrated Version
of Lizard in a Woman's Skin
at TLACult.com

A Little Bit Country

I just felt like sharing this short video of Florinda Bolkan getting her ass handed to her in Don't Torture a Duckling.  Have a pleasant evening!

Zombi 2: When the Earth Spits Out the Dead, They Will Rise to Suck the Blood of the Living!

Many people know of Zombi 2/Zombie/Island of the Flesh-Eaters because a zombie fights a shark in it and really, it's worth seeing just because of that.  I'm not the biggest fan of zombie movies even if they are from the grindhouse era, although I do think there are some excellent grindhouse zombie films.  Don't get me wrong, I like these movies... just not as much as some people.  I'm more a fan of giallo and Italian supernatural horror and Lucio Fulci, the guy who directed this, is one of my favorite giallo directors.  Therefore, this is one of my favorite zombie movies.  I think I still prefer the old school Romero films but the Italians made some pretty damn good zombie films as well, and this is one of them.  I recommend it.

Here's a video of the trailer and also the infamous shark vs. zombie fight scene.  Enjoy.