Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. This week
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema, we're going to continue our ongoing
Speaker 1: Johnt through fantasy films. We didn't I don't think we
Speaker 1: quite intended to do this, but but this is the
Speaker 1: journey we're on. We kicked things off with Thrilling Bloody Sword,
Speaker 1: then we returned to Oz, then we visited Krall, and
Speaker 1: we're actually in the same cinematic year as Krall for
Speaker 1: this episode. Uh, this time, we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about Italian gore master Luccio Folci's film Conquest. I'd say
Speaker 1: this is a decidedly different vibe than Kral. If Karl
Speaker 1: is kind of a lofty but dopey but beautiful but
Speaker 1: highly disorganized, uh high fantasy attempt, this movie is a hallucinatory,
Speaker 1: sort of disturbed child's imagination of a Conan rip off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a totally different film from Kral. That is,
Speaker 1: that is for sure. It is it is like it
Speaker 1: is like a dream. I feel like the movie needs
Speaker 1: a disclaimer at the beginning that says the film you're
Speaker 1: about to experience is a dream. Because once you embrace
Speaker 1: the dream like qualities of a Fulschi film, I think
Speaker 1: it kind of frees you up a little bit to
Speaker 1: uh to to to uh just to speak or listen
Speaker 1: to the language of the film. I think it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've compared Fulchi to two Dreams a number
Speaker 1: of times before, but it's oh, it's almost more like
Speaker 1: it in this case than any of the other ones. Uh.
Speaker 1: I had a weird point of comparison here. So, Rob,
Speaker 1: do you remember a children's horror TV show Nickelodeon called
Speaker 1: Are You Afraid of the Dark? So there was a
Speaker 1: time when I was a kid when I went to
Speaker 1: school and I had a memory of an Are You
Speaker 1: Afraid of the Dark episode that I was trying to
Speaker 1: describe to some friend of mine on the playground, I think,
Speaker 1: And the memory of that episode was that it was
Speaker 1: about a scarecrow who had a chainsaw and he ran
Speaker 1: into a school and was like cutting up students at
Speaker 1: the school with a chainsaw. Now, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: a real episode of the show. I think I dreamed
Speaker 1: it or something and then mistook that memory of the
Speaker 1: dream for a real episode of this TV show, and
Speaker 1: that would not be an episode of this children's horror
Speaker 1: TV show. The most grizzly thing that ever happened on
Speaker 1: it was probably like a vampire bite somebody. Uh. And
Speaker 1: yet I would say Conquest is like that memory of
Speaker 1: an Are You Afraid of the Dark? Episode? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a valid comparison. It is like the deranged
Speaker 1: dream memory of another film, or of or of all
Speaker 1: Barbarian films um because like the the the influences are there,
Speaker 1: and certainly when you're when you're dig digging around in
Speaker 1: Italian b cinema of the eighties, it's easy to point like, oh,
Speaker 1: well they got they got this little bit from Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: You know, here's a little bit of Conan sprinkled here, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And and that's fair. But a lot of times it's
Speaker 1: also more overt. I feel like maybe it's a little
Speaker 1: less overt in the in this particular picture, but the
Speaker 1: dreamlike quality very strong. The I mean, the picture is hazy,
Speaker 1: as if viewed through a mist, an effect that I
Speaker 1: was reading was generated via smoke machines and soft focused
Speaker 1: Len's filter. The narrative is strange and despite the trappings
Speaker 1: of genre and and obvious cinematic inspirations, it's it's difficult
Speaker 1: to predict what's going to happen in this film. Uh
Speaker 1: Like even this is like the third or fourth time
Speaker 1: I watched it, well, I watched it twice over the weekend,
Speaker 1: but but still, like, I'm I've seen it enough times
Speaker 1: that I should know everything that's going to happen, and
Speaker 1: yet I really didn't feel like I knew exactly where
Speaker 1: we were going at any point. So this is definitely
Speaker 1: not your first runaround with Conquests. When you suggested doing
Speaker 1: this for the show, you were already a conquest veteran. Yes.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it gets better every time I
Speaker 1: see it, um and and that may that may be infinite,
Speaker 1: Like every time I see this movie, it will get better.
Speaker 1: It will get more coherent and uh and and and
Speaker 1: more contemplated somehow. Uh it is. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: a dream that keeps like a recurring dream, and the
Speaker 1: gore is also dream like, you know, like as with
Speaker 1: most folksy movies, it's surreal at times. It presents kind
Speaker 1: of you get a weird sense of fixation on the
Speaker 1: fragility of the flesh in it. It's full of magic
Speaker 1: and monsters, their alien voices, their dreams within dreams. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, you know, I'll be the first that this
Speaker 1: is not a film for everyone. Lucio Fulci is not
Speaker 1: for everyone, but I feel like it does draw all
Speaker 1: the viewer in with a certain hypnotic power. No viewer
Speaker 1: be warned. This one is gross, like like all Fulchi movies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is nasty. Yeah it's but it's like
Speaker 1: it's like exposing yourself to a religious text from another dimension. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a weird one, and maybe that's just
Speaker 1: part of it, is just me reading more and more
Speaker 1: into it each time I see Yet No, it's like that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know that trope in the movie where character has
Speaker 1: a recurring dream and every time they have the dream,
Speaker 1: they get a little bit farther into it. They're like
Speaker 1: a little farther down the hall and they're going to
Speaker 1: open the door and see what's on the other side.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's you with watching Conquests. So eventually, one
Speaker 1: of these days you're gonna put it on and you're
Speaker 1: going to see the other side of the door. And
Speaker 1: what's there. It's it's bats. It's bats flying around in
Speaker 1: the cave and you've got to go to to knock
Speaker 1: them down now to be sure. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is definitely an Italian B movie as well. It's well
Speaker 1: technically it's a Mexican, Spanish Italian production, and so many
Speaker 1: of the expected budgetary constraints are very much in place,
Speaker 1: so it has all of those charms. Uh, you're it's
Speaker 1: certainly a film that you can watch and and and
Speaker 1: laugh at and enjoy yourself, though I don't want to
Speaker 1: build it up like what like this is just a
Speaker 1: pure you know, fantasy surrealist art film like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: There's there's plenty of genre stuff and and B movie
Speaker 1: fun to be had in the picture as well. Now,
Speaker 1: this movie is also what's known as a peplum film,
Speaker 1: which descended from Hercules. Author Robert A. Rushing points out,
Speaker 1: is a term that generally generally it's going beyond dismissive
Speaker 1: categorization such as sword and sandal or gladiator films or
Speaker 1: what what's your favorite term for for this sort of picture, Joe, Oh,
Speaker 1: what the leather diaper Barbarian movie? Yes, a leather diaper
Speaker 1: barbarian movie, but generally, especially when talking about Italian cinema,
Speaker 1: apparently peplum is often used to quote signal a more
Speaker 1: serious stance, though Rushing also points out that these films
Speaker 1: are are very often not taken seriously and many very
Speaker 1: much invite mockery. But that doesn't mean there's not a
Speaker 1: lot to read into them, given their their their palates
Speaker 1: of history is real and imagined, the fetishization of masculine
Speaker 1: and feminine bodies, violence, Smith, and more, and he does
Speaker 1: discuss conquest in the book, noting ful chys quote loving
Speaker 1: treatment for the body's disintegration, and he spends a fair
Speaker 1: amount of time in the book talking about what this means. Um.
Speaker 1: I won't attempt to summarize it, but I think it
Speaker 1: kind of speaks volumes for the sort of mystery cult
Speaker 1: that kind of rises up around fulshy films. You know,
Speaker 1: like people people really get into fulshy films because they're again,
Speaker 1: they have all these B movie qualities to them, their
Speaker 1: gore movies, but there is this strange dream and like
Speaker 1: intensity to it, and some of the fixations in these
Speaker 1: films are also really odd. Yes, I agree that the
Speaker 1: like the juicy nous is not just gross, it is
Speaker 1: it is weird in a kind of fascinating way, like that,
Speaker 1: there's a scene in Conquest where one of the heroes
Speaker 1: is hit with the poison dart and we get to
Speaker 1: just watch his wound like like gush juice for I
Speaker 1: don't know, several minutes in close up and the full
Speaker 1: cheese fascination with just the juice coming out of the
Speaker 1: dart wound as like the poison gets into the guy's blood.
Speaker 1: There's something so unappealing about it and the choice to
Speaker 1: focus on that like gross image that makes you think
Speaker 1: that there must be like some kind of transcendent truth
Speaker 1: hidden there. You're like, why why are we still looking
Speaker 1: at this? There's some mystery to it. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: actually the main thing that had Rushing focuses on talking about, like, well,
Speaker 1: that and also the something else that happens later. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that, we get into spoilers. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're the boils have like six minutes of screen time
Speaker 1: just panning up and down the body and he actually
Speaker 1: he does draw on this specifically and points out they
Speaker 1: know a lot of these Peplin movies, you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time with the camera kind of dragging itself
Speaker 1: over untarnished flesh, generally the untarnished flesh of your central
Speaker 1: muscle man character. Uh, this film is instead going to
Speaker 1: focus on pus covered and boil written flesh. That's just
Speaker 1: the sort of film that Fulchi makes. But then again,
Speaker 1: there is something kind of different and distinguished about full
Speaker 1: cheese use of this nasty imagery. Like, I think it's
Speaker 1: not a coincidence. There is some reason why there are
Speaker 1: tons of academic books and papers and film criticism about
Speaker 1: Fulchi that there is not nearly to the same extent
Speaker 1: for lots of other just makers of gross gory films
Speaker 1: where there's blood flying all over the place. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: you might wonder, well where can I where can I
Speaker 1: see this movie? Well, um, I'd rented it twice before
Speaker 1: from Atlanta's own video Drome, and I believe this would
Speaker 1: have been subsequent rentals anyway, where the Blue Underground DVD
Speaker 1: that came out years back. However, for this viewing, I
Speaker 1: picked up the special edition Blu ray of at A
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen code read special edition Blu ray with
Speaker 1: special cover art by heavy metal artist west Bin's Carter,
Speaker 1: who I think has done like a lot of like
Speaker 1: really cool Grizzly images for various bands. You can look
Speaker 1: him up online. But uh, yeah, this this is a
Speaker 1: really awesome Blue Ray package. I'm usually don't get that
Speaker 1: into the physical Blu Ray, like like the need to
Speaker 1: own it and add it to my permanent collection, but
Speaker 1: with this one, I got kind of obsessed and had
Speaker 1: to hunt it down. Um It's a little hard to
Speaker 1: find if you want to like the special edition art,
Speaker 1: but the disc itself is widely available, um, and you
Speaker 1: can you can rent or buy this most places. It
Speaker 1: is a two thousand nineteen HD master of the film,
Speaker 1: and um, I don't know how different the film quality
Speaker 1: actually is compared to the DVD. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: not a film where I feel like the difference is
Speaker 1: necessarily night and day, but it's still it's still a
Speaker 1: very nice special edition. Well with Conquest, a lot of
Speaker 1: the grime is not something that happened to the film
Speaker 1: over time. I think it is baked in from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Like the joke when I was very first introduced to
Speaker 1: this movie was that that they had shot at by
Speaker 1: smearing vasoline on the ends of the camera. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you definitely get that kind of vibe. I mean,
Speaker 1: right from the get go, you're on this this shore
Speaker 1: and it's just like in this world of dream and
Speaker 1: stuff's fading in and out of existence and everything's hazy
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, it's uh it has a distinct look
Speaker 1: to it. So, yeah, this film is widely available. If
Speaker 1: you want to see it, you can digitally rent or
Speaker 1: buy it from Apple or Prime. You can stream it
Speaker 1: on such services as shout TV to be plex free
Speaker 1: v I'm not sure what that is, but it exists
Speaker 1: as a place where you can get it. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's come out over the years on DVD and vhs, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes with some pretty awesome cover art. I included some
Speaker 1: of these for you here, Joe, including that that that
Speaker 1: recent image by m by Wes Ben Scotter here, But
Speaker 1: even the like the some of the original art was
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. Like there, I think people were familiar with
Speaker 1: this film. You may have seen the poster that has
Speaker 1: our barbarian character some sort of big gold um like
Speaker 1: robot man in the background with laser shooting out of
Speaker 1: his eyes, and then are evil sorceress queen here with
Speaker 1: the golden head. That one's really cool. I also like
Speaker 1: the one where the where the font that the title
Speaker 1: is printed in definitely the lowercase e and the s
Speaker 1: do not look different enough, so it looks like the
Speaker 1: movie is called Concrete. Oh and that's something to point
Speaker 1: out the title of the film. Um. I think it's
Speaker 1: like a lot of these films, they just had different
Speaker 1: titles depending on where it was released. A different title
Speaker 1: in Mexico, different title in Spain. Uh, different title in Italy.
Speaker 1: I think it was sometimes known as uh, his Mace
Speaker 1: the Loner or something to that effect. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: was there's an extra on the on the blue ray
Speaker 1: edition that I watched where they talked to Jorge Rivero,
Speaker 1: the star the Mexican film star in this picture, and
Speaker 1: he points out it's like, yeah, I don't really I
Speaker 1: don't really know what these films were released as, like
Speaker 1: they were released as so many different things. He doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know what to refer to them as you could
Speaker 1: almost make up a name at random. Because Conquest, I
Speaker 1: don't really like, there's not really a Conquest in the film,
Speaker 1: per se. No, no, not at all. I I can't
Speaker 1: think of one. I mean, I would say the closest
Speaker 1: is that the evil, uh, the evil naked sorceress like
Speaker 1: conquers the land and she's in charge of it, and
Speaker 1: then they tried to depose her. I guess, but they're
Speaker 1: not really the heroes are not really conquering the land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't particularly make sense, but but fair enough. So.
Speaker 1: The the elevator pitch for this one, uh, I was
Speaker 1: the best I could come up with is a blood
Speaker 1: drenched mushroom trip in Hyperborea. There go, Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: So they have a pretty good one on the posters.
Speaker 1: In the trailer, he says, we may hear this in
Speaker 1: the trailer were about to listen to In a Place
Speaker 1: Beyond Time Comes a Terrifying Challenge beyond imagination. What was
Speaker 1: it again that was on the poster for Krawl. It
Speaker 1: was like the lamest tagline ever. It was something like
Speaker 1: in a place ruled by an evil beast, a hero
Speaker 1: must save a princess or something. He has something to
Speaker 1: that effect, like, yeah, we can tell that from the poster.
Speaker 1: Are some word play in there? Well. The one thing
Speaker 1: I like about in In a Place Beyond Time Comes
Speaker 1: a Terrifying Challenge Beyond Imagination is that it doesn't really
Speaker 1: say anything and you can change you can switch all
Speaker 1: the nouns around and it still makes as much sense.
Speaker 1: In a time beyond challenge comes a terrifying imagination beyond place,
Speaker 1: there you go, makes just pretty good. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's listen to that trailer audio from a place beyond
Speaker 1: Time comes a terrifying challenge beyond imagination. Conquest. Two men
Speaker 1: joined forces in a struggle for power in a realm
Speaker 1: of fear. Conquest an act of courage to conquer the
Speaker 1: Queen of darkness. They faced the armies of evil to
Speaker 1: win the weapons of light. Feel the power, accept the
Speaker 1: challenge of conquest. All right, Well, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the folks involved here. We'll start at the top.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a little bit about Luccio Fulci. But
Speaker 1: again we we did talk about him previously when we
Speaker 1: cover the one Haunted House slash monster movie The House
Speaker 1: by the Cemetery that would have been last October, so
Speaker 1: notable B movie director from Italy through UM Cinematic gore
Speaker 1: master h Then again, there's very much kind of a
Speaker 1: mystery cult surrounding a lot of his his his work
Speaker 1: very much as a as a fan based these days
Speaker 1: UM The House by the Cemeteries we discussed that was
Speaker 1: a film that had a lot of the elements that
Speaker 1: he's most famous for. Undead Things Um, absolutely over the top,
Speaker 1: gore as phantasmagorical approach that feels less concerned with cohesion
Speaker 1: of plot and more about chasing certain dreams and nine Mayors.
Speaker 1: He's best remembered today for his horror films of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and yeah, it's without a doubt one of
Speaker 1: the titans of Italian B cinema from this era. All
Speaker 1: of this really kicked into high gear with nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine Zombie Um. That was a very prolific period of
Speaker 1: his career that produced some of his best remembered films.
Speaker 1: But he'd been directing full length films for something like
Speaker 1: twenty years at that point, including such um horror movies
Speaker 1: is nineteen seventy ones A Lizard in a Woman's Skin,
Speaker 1: seventy two is Don't Torture at Duckling. He did a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine Jallow film titled One on Top of
Speaker 1: the Other. But he directed a number of different genre
Speaker 1: films before the nineteen eighties, including Western spy thrillers, comedies
Speaker 1: and more. He did a Jack London adaptation of White Fang,
Speaker 1: which um I was reading a review of and someone
Speaker 1: pointed out, well, how can you tell a Luccio Fulti
Speaker 1: white fan from any other White Fang adaptation? Well, and
Speaker 1: this one white thing is definitely going to rip somebody's
Speaker 1: throat out and you get to see it all. Conquest
Speaker 1: Or or Mace the Outcast, if you will, is his
Speaker 1: only really fantasy film, and it does stand somewhat apart
Speaker 1: from his his other movies. But it has a lot
Speaker 1: of the elements you would expect. You know, there's the gore,
Speaker 1: there's the gratuity. Um they are these dreamlike qualities and
Speaker 1: it has that in spades. But it also, um, I
Speaker 1: don't know it. Some of the some of the other
Speaker 1: Folky films that I've seen do feel like less put together.
Speaker 1: And I felt like like this is a pretty strong
Speaker 1: entry in his filmography. I feel like it doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of downtime. It feels like like everyone,
Speaker 1: despite budgetary restraints, was trying really hard on this one.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I think it kind of stands out. It
Speaker 1: might be my favorite Folky film. I would say, actually,
Speaker 1: in other Folky movies, the dream logic construction stands out
Speaker 1: more because the other ones that are set in the
Speaker 1: modern world and that have modern characters, you're just constantly
Speaker 1: thinking like why who is this, Why are they here?
Speaker 1: Why are they doing that? But you don't need this
Speaker 1: just setting up a sequence that he just wants to
Speaker 1: show you something. Uh. So there's this dream logic about
Speaker 1: like how did I end up in this room? What
Speaker 1: am I doing here? But that feels weirder when it's
Speaker 1: supposedly the the uh, you know, the superficially rational setting
Speaker 1: of like characters from modern day New York City living
Speaker 1: in a house or something. Um. When it's in the
Speaker 1: world of conquest, it's just you know, barbarians and sorcerers
Speaker 1: and were wolves, and there is not as much superficial
Speaker 1: expectation that people's behavior and uh and location should be comprehensible.
Speaker 1: Right like with the House by the Cemetery. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of times where you might say, well, is it
Speaker 1: logical that a child would say this? Would an adult
Speaker 1: ever say this to a child? And you don't really
Speaker 1: ask those questions about a movie that's mostly about barbarians,
Speaker 1: dream warriors, were wolves and evil queens. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that shalt not question concrete alright, some of the writing
Speaker 1: credits on this one, and a couple of these are
Speaker 1: also involved in production. I'm going to mention them here.
Speaker 1: There's Giovanni Dick Clemente, who has a story producer credit,
Speaker 1: who he lived eighteen, Italian producer and writer. This is
Speaker 1: one of his own, only like three story credits that
Speaker 1: he has, so I think it seems fair to say
Speaker 1: that he's largely a producer, and the same producer who
Speaker 1: I believe, according to star Jorge Rivero, at one point,
Speaker 1: tried to tell them that they had to go ahead,
Speaker 1: just need to go ahead and stop filming, like, go
Speaker 1: ahead and you know we're done. Just make the movie
Speaker 1: out of what you've shot so far. And fol she
Speaker 1: had to had to like rally the cast and crew
Speaker 1: so they could keep going and keep filming, and uh,
Speaker 1: and they did. But this is the guy who produced.
Speaker 1: This guy produced a bunch of films, including the Italian
Speaker 1: Top Gun rip off with Aliens, Blue Tornado. I gotta
Speaker 1: see that. It looks it looks interesting. Has David Warner
Speaker 1: in it now? The writer of Blue Tornado is also
Speaker 1: also has a screenplay credit on this Uh. Dino capone
Speaker 1: and then let's see who else do we have? We
Speaker 1: have Jose Antonio dil Loma, who lived two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: has a screenplay production manager credit. Spanish writer, director, and producer.
Speaker 1: He wrote and directed nineteen eight two Is Target Eagle,
Speaker 1: starring Jore Rivero, Max Voncito, George Boppard and Chuck Connors.
Speaker 1: He also wrote the Rivero movie Counter Force, in which
Speaker 1: also stared star George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Isaac Hayes, Louis Jordan,
Speaker 1: and Robert Forrester. All Right, and then another screenplay credit
Speaker 1: is Carlos Vassalo, Spanish producer, writer and director who produced
Speaker 1: and co directed nineteen nine Day of the Assassin starring
Speaker 1: Glenn Ford, Chuck Connors, Richard Rowntree, Jorge Rivero and Henry Silva.
Speaker 1: He also produced dial Lomo's nine eight four film Goma
Speaker 1: To starring Margot Hemingway, Lee Van Cleef, Jorge Rivero and
Speaker 1: Frank Bronna. He also produced Pit Fight, starring you Guessed
Speaker 1: It Jorge Rivero. So is you can imagine here this
Speaker 1: whole team seems very much in the Jorge Rivero business.
Speaker 1: It says a lot of writers for movies that apparently
Speaker 1: need a lot of writing. Yeah, and you'd yeah, I
Speaker 1: really would have. You expected it to be more of
Speaker 1: a mess. Like generally that's kind of a sign, right,
Speaker 1: The longer the list of writing credits, the more you know,
Speaker 1: the more cooks in the kitchen. Uh So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a minor miracle that this one makes as
Speaker 1: much sense as it does, or doesn't try to make
Speaker 1: more sense than it does. It strikes the right balance.
Speaker 1: Now you've already said his name about forty seven times,
Speaker 1: so I think we should talk about Jorge Rivero, who
Speaker 1: fans of mystery science theater will definitely recognize as the
Speaker 1: breakout star of the movie We're Wolf. Yes, film where
Speaker 1: Wolf starring Richard Lynch and Joe Estevez. I guess that's
Speaker 1: probably where I saw him for the first time. So
Speaker 1: there's there's certainly a whole generation of film fans who
Speaker 1: probably know him best from that. He has a lot
Speaker 1: of great moments. But he plays a like an archaeologist
Speaker 1: named Yuri who decides he's going to create a werewolf
Speaker 1: by hitting a man with a werewolf skull. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he's fun in that, but um yeah, Jorio Rivero bord
Speaker 1: a true Mexican film superstar who worked with some of
Speaker 1: the biggest international film names of the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and that seems to have been like, really that was
Speaker 1: his his heyday, um way before he ended up working
Speaker 1: with Joe Esteves. Um So. I already mentioned some of
Speaker 1: these pictures that had Rivero in and you would probably
Speaker 1: recognize some of the names involved there. But Rivero also
Speaker 1: worked with both John Wayne and El Santo. He worked
Speaker 1: with Chuck Heston or Charles Heston. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I always come Chuck James Coburn Um. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was working with some of the the biggest names
Speaker 1: of the time. That the John Wayne film in question
Speaker 1: is Rio Lobo from nineteen seventy, which was the last
Speaker 1: film directed by Howard Hawks of the Thing from Another
Speaker 1: World Thing Wow. The El Santo movie is nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven's Operation sixty seven and that's directed by Renee Cardona Jr.
Speaker 1: And Renee Cardona Senior. And in that one he plays
Speaker 1: santos sidekick. We should watch that. Uh. Jorge Rivero is
Speaker 1: somebody who you know, I think you could kind of
Speaker 1: compare him to Arnold Schwarzenegger in that somebody who clearly
Speaker 1: like his original appeal is muscles. He was cast for
Speaker 1: his muscles and his body, but actually does have a
Speaker 1: a an appealing screen presence, even if you wouldn't say
Speaker 1: he's a very subtle dramatic actor, Jorge Rivero is you know,
Speaker 1: you don't tune him out when he's talking. You're you're
Speaker 1: there for it. He reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 1: John Saxon, you know, and they both have similarity directories.
Speaker 1: Both both started off as kind of like muscle guy
Speaker 1: mo old guy kind of actors and their careers long
Speaker 1: outlasted like the the youthful appeal of their bodies. So
Speaker 1: they both kept it. I mean they both kept it
Speaker 1: really tight to be clear. And as if this recording
Speaker 1: and Jorge still around, um, he looks pretty pretty good
Speaker 1: for his age. He he has some extras on the
Speaker 1: on the Blu ray that I watched, and he has
Speaker 1: several fun stories. There's one about when he was filming
Speaker 1: the Santo movie. Like first they sent him down them
Speaker 1: to down to like Mexico City to train with the
Speaker 1: luch doors and they like they beat the hell out
Speaker 1: of him because it was like, you know, really tough training.
Speaker 1: But then he was filming on location with Santo and
Speaker 1: everybody else, and then he had like a day off
Speaker 1: or a part of the day off, so he went
Speaker 1: to the grocery store and he goes in there and
Speaker 1: he sees this kind of muscular, barrel shaped man buying
Speaker 1: some groceries, and he has like a nose that's clearly
Speaker 1: been broken several times, and he has a tan line
Speaker 1: that perfectly matches the one version of the Santo mask,
Speaker 1: like Santo had a different mask for eating food or
Speaker 1: for doing an of view, and he had the tan
Speaker 1: line to match it. And so he goes up to
Speaker 1: him and he's like, oh, Santo, and Santo is like,
Speaker 1: don't you ever tell anybody something without my mask on
Speaker 1: A's a a fun little story, wow, But in this
Speaker 1: he is Mace, a barbarian, a friend of animals and
Speaker 1: enemy of all men. He swings a stone bone set
Speaker 1: of nun chucks, and he's he's kind of the destined
Speaker 1: savior of the world. There's an interesting dynamic where when
Speaker 1: we first meet him, he appears to be the sidekick character,
Speaker 1: but then he seems to become the actual hero of
Speaker 1: the movie. Because when it first gets going, it's really
Speaker 1: seems like the hero of this story is is young Ilius. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ilius is. It seems to be our destined hero, our
Speaker 1: destined savior. And Elius is played by Andrea o Chapinti
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty seven. This is an Italian actor who
Speaker 1: worked with Fulci in New York Ripper, which I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. I remember that as not being a good one. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it has some appeal. But other roles include Lomberto
Speaker 1: Baba three film ape Lad in the Dark, but he
Speaker 1: seems to have made a bigger splash as a film
Speaker 1: producer and distributor, involved in such films as two thousand elevens,
Speaker 1: This must be the Place, two thousand elevens, The Kid
Speaker 1: with the Bike, Anti Christ, Funny Games, Open Your Eyes,
Speaker 1: and many others. In this movie, he's our He's our
Speaker 1: wide eyed young hero. He's sort of the the Luke
Speaker 1: Skywalker to Jorge Rivero's Han solo. Yes, yeah, and no
Speaker 1: spoilers yet, but it goes. It goes in some unexpected places,
Speaker 1: but also not completely unexpected. Uh, we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's interesting to think about, alright, our central villain,
Speaker 1: we've already alluded to them, the half nude sorceress with
Speaker 1: the golden helmet for a head. Uh. This is the
Speaker 1: character Okron, played by Sabrina Sanny, also credited as Sabrina Sellers.
Speaker 1: I think she's credited as Sabrina Sellers in the film
Speaker 1: um Sometimes the case again part of the international distribution.
Speaker 1: Born nine, Italian actress who was mostly active from seventy
Speaker 1: nine through eight nine and retired from acting around but
Speaker 1: during this time she was in a bunch of Italian
Speaker 1: B movies, many of which we were violent, gladiator or
Speaker 1: barbarian movies. Some of the titles include um Gunan King
Speaker 1: of the Barbarians, A Tour, The Fighting Eagle. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: the one that ms T three k covered as Cave Dwellers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Texas Gladiators, The Throne of Fire, and Cobra Nero starring
Speaker 1: Fred Williamson. Wow, I don't think I've seen any of
Speaker 1: those except the tor movie. Yeah, I think A Tour
Speaker 1: is the only one I've seen. But yeah. She worked
Speaker 1: with such directors as Fulty, of course, and Berto Lindsay,
Speaker 1: Antonio Margredi, Um, Joe Diamatto and Jeff Franco and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then she plays the evil witch Queen Okron, whose
Speaker 1: face is always obscured behind a golden mask. I'd say
Speaker 1: it's still a good performance. Give and the limitations here,
Speaker 1: there's um this is this is not a like a
Speaker 1: real human kind of role. No, this is a villain
Speaker 1: with super weird vibes, scary head covering, helmet with the
Speaker 1: metal face mask, uh, pretty much naked otherwise, always has
Speaker 1: a snake, wears like a sort of feathery cape, and
Speaker 1: loves to do evil magic and order her werewolf soldiers
Speaker 1: to kill right and eat brains. Also eats brains, Yes,
Speaker 1: eats brains. It does a weird like drugs through sort
Speaker 1: of like a cocaine blow dart gun. Yeah. Yeah. Engaged
Speaker 1: to too, I guess some in dream visions so that
Speaker 1: she can predict the future and then freak out about it.
Speaker 1: But another role in this film is the character Zora,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into, which is a character just covered
Speaker 1: head to toe and some sort of strange black armor
Speaker 1: from another dimension. Uh. It's a small part completely again,
Speaker 1: completely obscured by a suit. So I'm uncertain if this
Speaker 1: is a physical role or a voice roll or both,
Speaker 1: but the character is credited to Conrados and Martin Prolific
Speaker 1: Spanish actor with credit stretching from ninety one through fifteen.
Speaker 1: He lived one through twenty nineteen. He worked with such
Speaker 1: directors as Sergiolione, Jeff Franco and more. Oh and we
Speaker 1: should mention the cinematographer Alejandro Uloa, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: six through two thousand and four. This is the man
Speaker 1: responsible for all the soft focus and fog machines in
Speaker 1: the film, apparently. Other films of note include nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two Horror Express, The Exterminators of the Year three thousand,
Speaker 1: Operation Kid Brother. That one was was actually was featured
Speaker 1: on the MST three K. That's the one with Sean
Speaker 1: Connery's brother in it playing a Bond knockoff. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that one's terrible. Yeah. The Diabolical Doctor Z that's no
Speaker 1: relation to Za. And also the Paul Nashy Werewolf movie
Speaker 1: from One Night of the Werewolf. Is this the one
Speaker 1: you were showing me clips from the other week? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. There's a million of these and it
Speaker 1: is not not one that I've looked. Lesli. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say uh true. Star of of Conquests. The
Speaker 1: single best thing about the movie the music, The music
Speaker 1: is a Gamma ray burst. I love it. I absolutely
Speaker 1: agree this is a great score. This is by Claudio
Speaker 1: Semonetti bord N two, a true synth legend. This is
Speaker 1: our second film to feature a Claudio Semonetti score. The
Speaker 1: first was Hands of Steel, which was a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but I remember as commenting that while I had some
Speaker 1: nice moments, it maybe wasn't Claudio Semonetti at his finest.
Speaker 1: This one is just absolutely terrific. It's a gentle and
Speaker 1: ethereal in places, frightening and unsettling in other places. You know,
Speaker 1: has a jarring synth quality um that you know goes
Speaker 1: well with nightmare imagery. And there are notes here and
Speaker 1: there that reminded me a lot of the I d
Speaker 1: M the intelligent dance music genre to come. And indeed
Speaker 1: you have albums like Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest is
Speaker 1: really inspired by scores much like this. I'm to understand,
Speaker 1: if not this film in particular, because again Claudio Semonetti
Speaker 1: is a big name in when it comes to synth
Speaker 1: scores of this era, certainly when you're looking at it
Speaker 1: tag in cinema, I believe I've seen Claudio Semonetti in concert.
Speaker 1: I've seen Goblin, Uh, so I think he was with them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's the of course, the the long time keyboardist
Speaker 1: for Italian Prague rock band Goblin. He's still active today
Speaker 1: and yeah, he's had his hands in some of the
Speaker 1: most iconic scores of Italian genre cinema. Uh, films like
Speaker 1: what Suspiria deep Red, also some lesser known works that
Speaker 1: that I really love, like Warriors of the Wasteland. That
Speaker 1: one's from three as well. I think the score for Conquest,
Speaker 1: I think it's actually made even more wonderful by how
Speaker 1: it is sometimes very inappropriate for the sen you're watching,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't always match the movie. Sometimes it does,
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But if the music is always great,
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you see it enough times, I
Speaker 1: think those that they come together perfectly, so I can't
Speaker 1: imagine any of these scenes without uh the existing score. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's the case where a really great score on
Speaker 1: one of these pictures has not been re released and
Speaker 1: isn't available. Uh, this is not It's not the case
Speaker 1: with a Conquest from Claudio Seminetti. You can stream it
Speaker 1: through all the major places. I've had to go to
Speaker 1: the grocery store earlier today, and I streamed it to
Speaker 1: and from the grocery store. Absolutely loved it. But if
Speaker 1: you're a vinyl collector, then you're also in luck because
Speaker 1: Russ Blade Records the same the same company to put
Speaker 1: out the Hands of Steel vinyl. Uh. They have it
Speaker 1: out in a limited vinyl release with movie poster, and
Speaker 1: it is fittingly printed on smoke transparent vinyl. It actually
Speaker 1: even has tracks that are not featured in the digital release,
Speaker 1: which is exciting. It almost makes me wish I had
Speaker 1: a record player. What is the which Which is the
Speaker 1: track that has that awesome like synth symbol beat that
Speaker 1: plays when they are throwing the poop grenades at the
Speaker 1: werewolves in the camp? Um, I'm not sure. Is it
Speaker 1: the one that kind of goes done to Dunton don't
Speaker 1: Dunton da da don da da da da da No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, it's more it's more just percussive. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly which track that is, but but
Speaker 1: I loved all the music I heard in the film.
Speaker 1: Let's hear just a little bit, if we can hear seth,
Speaker 1: if we can have the legal limit on the track
Speaker 1: titled black Birds. Anyway, that one's definitely on the digital release. Uh,
Speaker 1: well worth picking up or or checking out. This music
Speaker 1: is your jam like it is mine. All right, let's
Speaker 1: dive into the plot, Rob, I could feel your love
Speaker 1: for the movie because I noticed that your notes about
Speaker 1: the plot were copious. Um, and who can blame you.
Speaker 1: But so the the opening of this movie, it's weird,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to find the way to describe it.
Speaker 1: I'd say it's like this. The opening shot is like
Speaker 1: you are trying to pull up a Google street view
Speaker 1: of a bay in Australia that's famous for shark attacks,
Speaker 1: but the image won't finish loading, so it's just a
Speaker 1: blurry inlet with a blurry beach and then this droning,
Speaker 1: shimmering music of the spheres, Rob, is it kind of
Speaker 1: a little bit music from the Hearts of Space? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that's a very fair comparison. I mean that
Speaker 1: they do feature a lot of different sorts of music,
Speaker 1: a lot of different ambient varieties of music on Hearts
Speaker 1: of Space. But yeah, a lot of the music that
Speaker 1: Seminettie did for this film has a very ethereal quality
Speaker 1: to it, and is their chill again. You have those
Speaker 1: alarming tracks, those jarring tracks, but a lot of it,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just very relaxing, chill stuff.
Speaker 1: Then while we're watching, we're waiting for the street view
Speaker 1: to load, and it never does. Instead, we sort of
Speaker 1: fade into a different, blurry view of the same scene. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's some kind of ritual. We see like wizards
Speaker 1: and some priestesses dressed in white robes, and we see
Speaker 1: an a tour kind of guy and this is our
Speaker 1: this is our young hero Ilias. Yeah, this and there,
Speaker 1: this is their character that is is faded, uh, to
Speaker 1: journey into another land, right, he has a quest of
Speaker 1: sacrifice and courage. Sacrifice has mentioned at least once, if
Speaker 1: not a couple of times here, and he's going to
Speaker 1: be sent into an evil land. That's right here, there's
Speaker 1: like a Santa Zeus character, and Santa Zeus says, you've
Speaker 1: chosen the path of courage and sacrifice, Elias, a journey
Speaker 1: into the heart of a very dark and evil domain.
Speaker 1: Many blessing on your son. You are an example of
Speaker 1: bravery among men. Come back safely and govern us with
Speaker 1: the wisdom of your experience. So it's almost like I
Speaker 1: think he's being sent on a journey into an evil
Speaker 1: land as tryouts to become king maybe or to become
Speaker 1: their leader. I guess it's like an excursion. He's supposed
Speaker 1: to learn and grow and then come back and and
Speaker 1: rule them. But they're they're not sending him in there
Speaker 1: with nothing there. They put some leather armor on him.
Speaker 1: And then Santa SEUs reaches out and like with a
Speaker 1: tractor beam, grabs this bow. And this bow is a
Speaker 1: major plot device. It is the bow of Chronos. And
Speaker 1: we find out that many sons ago, Chronos fought with
Speaker 1: this magic bow and drove back the terrible creatures that
Speaker 1: invaded the land. Uh. And we learned a legend. It's
Speaker 1: that when Chronos ran out of arrows and the sun
Speaker 1: dropped down from the sky and became arrows that shot
Speaker 1: from his bow as flames and uh. And then Santa
Speaker 1: Zeus explains that this story means that Chronos had become
Speaker 1: a man, and you have chosen the path of courage
Speaker 1: and sacrifice, you will not turn back. You are a man, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's some kind of repetitive talk in there about that.
Speaker 1: But then Elias says, no matter what happens, I shall
Speaker 1: not forget these words, and I think that's incredibly wrong.
Speaker 1: He definitely will forget those words. Now, it's this whole sequence,
Speaker 1: it's really unclear if these are supposed to be human
Speaker 1: characters or these kind of like Elvin characters, or they gods,
Speaker 1: they they it's it's we quickly learned that they seem
Speaker 1: to have at the very least a level of technology
Speaker 1: above that of the denizens of the Evil World that
Speaker 1: he's about to take a boat too. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: think they're supposed to be humans, but they come from
Speaker 1: a better place. So they're from this bay in Australia,
Speaker 1: whatever this is. And we learned through some dialogue later,
Speaker 1: like he's explaining to Jorge Rivero. He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: in our place, we don't have to hunt down food
Speaker 1: every time we're hungry. We actually have farms. We grow
Speaker 1: the food near where we live. And Mace is like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's too complicated for me. So it's just like,
Speaker 1: I think he comes from a place where they've got
Speaker 1: more peace and more technology than in the Evil Land
Speaker 1: where most of the movie takes place. I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: But these people are still very much like fading in
Speaker 1: and out of focusing, out of reality. Though we have
Speaker 1: that dream layer of from fulg that kind of throws
Speaker 1: everything potentially into question and keeps you wondering. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: speaking of layers, I mean, I think the film in
Speaker 1: this scene, we're we're seeing multiple layers of camera exposure
Speaker 1: at the same time. And there are some shots in
Speaker 1: this opening sequence where it seems literally like there was
Speaker 1: gunk physically stuck to the camera lens, because there are
Speaker 1: parts where there's like a blob in the frame, and
Speaker 1: then the camera pans and the blob stays in the
Speaker 1: same place. Yeah, And I don't know enough about like
Speaker 1: the details of this sort of thing to know if
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at is just an artifact of like
Speaker 1: the quality of the remaining footage, or if this is
Speaker 1: something that's an artifact from whatever kind of technique they
Speaker 1: were doing, uh, in addition to like soft focus and
Speaker 1: fog to make this look the way it does. Right.
Speaker 1: But so Elias he's got to go on his journey
Speaker 1: and then begin titles, and immediately I just typed like,
Speaker 1: o MG, the theme music is absolutely sick, just awesome.
Speaker 1: So some of these compositions I think also would have
Speaker 1: been really cool in chip tunes form as like music
Speaker 1: to an A E. S game. Can't you imagine like
Speaker 1: the main conquest theme is like one of you know,
Speaker 1: like a Batman for the NES style side scroller. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is the track you're talking about here,
Speaker 1: kind of has a data vibe to it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So Elias jumps on the boat. Um, everyone fades out
Speaker 1: of existence, and Elias is on his way to the
Speaker 1: new and evil land, right, and so what goes on
Speaker 1: in the evil Land while they're gonna show us? So
Speaker 1: we see like tribes of people hanging out, sitting around campfires,
Speaker 1: hanging out with goats, and then we see that all
Speaker 1: of these people are under the spell of a scary, evil,
Speaker 1: nude sorceress wearing a metal mask who like makes them worshiper.
Speaker 1: And then she sends werewolf soldiers to attack them and
Speaker 1: rip them literally rip them apart. That's right, okrun As
Speaker 1: we we learned her name is, she causes the sun
Speaker 1: to rise and the people of this land worshiper, and
Speaker 1: she sends she sends forth her minions, which I thought
Speaker 1: was very interesting that her minions consists of people in
Speaker 1: beast masks. With kind of like wooden beast masks and furs.
Speaker 1: And then there are people who have become half beast
Speaker 1: that are like werewolves or dog men. So they come
Speaker 1: rampaging down. They meet with the humans who live here
Speaker 1: that are kind of like their goat herds and maybe
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers. Uh. They demand tribute, but refuse the offer
Speaker 1: of goat flesh, and they also refuse the Bible leader
Speaker 1: who's like, take me, I'm old, and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're too old. Oak prefer prefers young flesh. And Okra's
Speaker 1: demands must be met, we're told otherwise she will plunge
Speaker 1: them all into eternal night, because again she commands the sun.
Speaker 1: And so then the dog men rip a woman from
Speaker 1: the tribe limb from limb and carry her head back
Speaker 1: to Okrahn. It's a really gross scene, but then it's
Speaker 1: immediately funny after that, because so the werewolves bring the
Speaker 1: severed head back and Ocron starts eating the brains of
Speaker 1: the severed head, and she goes yum uh. There's the
Speaker 1: feast of the brains, and then we have the gentle
Speaker 1: Claudio Simonetti music playing, and the werewolf beings take these
Speaker 1: like straws, and they take turns blowing some sort of
Speaker 1: substance into each other's nostril, and then one of them
Speaker 1: blows the substance through the nostrils of the mask of Okron,
Speaker 1: and then she begins to writhe on a bed of
Speaker 1: furs while snake crawls over. And then she has given
Speaker 1: the dream prophecy, a dream prophecy of her own death,
Speaker 1: in which a faceless warrior jumps out of the mist
Speaker 1: and slays her with an arrow of light. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: so we just heard about a prophecy of this guy.
Speaker 1: Sounds like sounds like Ilius and Okron here are going
Speaker 1: to clash. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like there's their destined
Speaker 1: to run into each other. But okay, Ilius is uh,
Speaker 1: he's arrived in the land now, so he's gonna be
Speaker 1: wandering around and he starts meeting people. That's right. He
Speaker 1: saves a human water gatherer from a snake, kills the
Speaker 1: snake with his arrow. I think this might be important
Speaker 1: later on. But then hey, the agents of Okron are
Speaker 1: washing and they're like, hey, that guy's got a bow. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think there was a dream about this. Were supposed
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for this guy, so they
Speaker 1: jump out and they attack him. After the human water
Speaker 1: gather has left, it looks like Elias might not be
Speaker 1: long for this world, but then Mace jumps in and
Speaker 1: makes the save. This is I think a pretty fun
Speaker 1: fight because is this the first time we get to
Speaker 1: see Mace use those fun like stone bone nunchucks that
Speaker 1: he has, Well, this is the first time we see
Speaker 1: Mace at all. But yeah, in the very first scene
Speaker 1: he's he's swinging around his rock nunchucks and uh, just
Speaker 1: whirling them and whack in the I don't know where
Speaker 1: there werewolves here. I think there are, but they're they're
Speaker 1: also just dudes and masks. He beats them all up
Speaker 1: and they run away, and so, you know what, Mace
Speaker 1: what a good guy he's he's helping Ilius out. But
Speaker 1: then we find out that, uh, maybe he's not so
Speaker 1: initially friendly because he explains he's like, oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: your friend. Every man is my enemy. Yeah, but animals
Speaker 1: are his friends because he almost immediately engages in some
Speaker 1: bird rescue. There's like a bloody bird and he's like,
Speaker 1: let's get this bird cleaned up, and so he rescues
Speaker 1: the bird it's very sweet. He's actually got a tattoo
Speaker 1: on his head though, like he has a face tattoo,
Speaker 1: and he says, see this tattoo, it means every man
Speaker 1: is my enemy. To let them know. Like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really help Mace out because he can't actually see it.
Speaker 1: How's he going to get a job with that? Now,
Speaker 1: there's a great scene that follows where we have we're
Speaker 1: back in Okron's misty chambers and wounded I think a
Speaker 1: human soldier here, one of her minions is. They're telling
Speaker 1: her about this fabulous weapon, this new weapon technology that
Speaker 1: this stranger had, and so she's instantly interested. Uh, and
Speaker 1: of course this ties in with her her vision. So
Speaker 1: she sends her Lieutenant Wolfman. I think this guy is
Speaker 1: that he her main Wolfman is sometimes called Fargo or
Speaker 1: Furgo or something. Uh. She's like, hey, go out and
Speaker 1: get this bow, get this guy. So she sends him out.
Speaker 1: He and the rest of the crew are out to
Speaker 1: find this guy. So, I think, did you understand it
Speaker 1: the same way that there are no bows in this land?
Speaker 1: This is the first time any of them has seen
Speaker 1: a bow and arrow, right, So even ignoring the idea
Speaker 1: that this bow might one day shoot arrows of light.
Speaker 1: The mere fact that it shoots arrows is instantly aweing
Speaker 1: everybody in this land, like this is new weapon technology,
Speaker 1: and and that alone is is of note. I. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Elias is just kind of handing it around, like he
Speaker 1: lets Mace use it. Yeah, he's like check it out.
Speaker 1: And ma says like, oh, this is good. There's a
Speaker 1: good weapon. And in fact, Nice uses it to kill
Speaker 1: a man almost immediately. There's this there's like a guy
Speaker 1: over here that's he's got some sort of dead animal,
Speaker 1: you know, hunter gatherer. Mace murders him with the bow
Speaker 1: and then goes and steals the animal flesh from him,
Speaker 1: and and it's a deeply weird scene that's thankfully expanded upon. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's this. There's this great scene at the campfire where
Speaker 1: Elias and Mace are eating the meat and Mace explains,
Speaker 1: when a man meets a man, you never know which
Speaker 1: one will die, but when an animal meets a man,
Speaker 1: it's always the animal that dies. I'm on the animal side.
Speaker 1: And then Elias says, isn't that this an animal you're eating?
Speaker 1: And Mace says, I didn't kill him, very good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is road kill vegan. Possibly we Mace has a very
Speaker 1: particular code of honor here, like he is a friend
Speaker 1: of the animals, he is an enemy of all men.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna go hunting animals and eating them, but
Speaker 1: he has to eat. And so if he encounters a human,
Speaker 1: well all men and all men are his enemy, so
Speaker 1: he can certainly kill those men and get their food,
Speaker 1: even if that food is an animal that had been
Speaker 1: previously killed. But it's not long into this feast before
Speaker 1: there's some sort of commotion outside. Um Elius is like,
Speaker 1: it's probably animals, probably for for food, and May says,
Speaker 1: now it's probably men looking for trouble. So they grab
Speaker 1: their weapons, they go out there, or they start to
Speaker 1: go out, and then here are the agents of Okron
Speaker 1: are attacking again. They've lit some fires, and so our
Speaker 1: heroes have to escape into the caverns. They seem trapped.
Speaker 1: But then this is where we have that kind of
Speaker 1: raiders at the lost dark moment where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a snake. Uh. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: many scenes in which Mace is guided by animals, and
Speaker 1: so he follows the snake and they're able to escape
Speaker 1: once more. Alias gets freaked out by the snake. But um,
Speaker 1: but Mace explains a snake is harmless as long as
Speaker 1: he doesn't bite you. This, of course, is in stark
Speaker 1: contrast to Elias's slaying of a snake earlier. Yea, now
Speaker 1: we get some of the more whimsical Claudio Semonetti music
Speaker 1: and the scenes that follow followed by joyous music, because
Speaker 1: first our heroes steal a dead sheep from from a
Speaker 1: from a guy. They don't kill him that they make
Speaker 1: off with the meat, and then they run off and
Speaker 1: we have joyous music and they head to the this
Speaker 1: population of cave people, and these are the folks are
Speaker 1: going to hang out with, and they're gonna cook some
Speaker 1: goat flesh with uh. Mace has basically got like a
Speaker 1: sort of on and off girl friend here at the cave.
Speaker 1: And so they're hanging out of the cave to eat
Speaker 1: mutton and party. That's right, there's an intense meat eating
Speaker 1: scene with another great Claudio Semonetti track going on. A
Speaker 1: lot of scenes have you setting around the fire eating
Speaker 1: the meat. There's an attempted seduction of Elias by one
Speaker 1: of the cave women. But before this can go anywhere,
Speaker 1: the agents of Okron attack once more. They kill the
Speaker 1: human woman, they actually kill all the human denizens of
Speaker 1: the cave, They knock a Mace out, and Elias is
Speaker 1: taken prisoner. So there's a recurring thing in this movie
Speaker 1: where the bad guys hit somebody over the top of
Speaker 1: the head with the rock or over the nax or something,
Speaker 1: and every single time it does the same thing, which
Speaker 1: is it seems to just like completely remove the entire
Speaker 1: top of their head in terms of skin and bone
Speaker 1: and just like creates a perfect, perfectly exposed brain meat hemisphere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a It's one of these gory, perhaps not realistic
Speaker 1: bits of of violence in the film, but it's very
Speaker 1: It certainly makes an impression on you, and I think
Speaker 1: it lines up with that idea of full cheese um
Speaker 1: fascination with the fragility of flesh. Like one blow to
Speaker 1: the head is just instant brain exposure in this film.
Speaker 1: So there were a number of moments in this movie
Speaker 1: that I found really funny. But one of the legitimate
Speaker 1: laugh out loud ones is when Okay, everybody's been killed,
Speaker 1: Elias is kidnapped, Mace's left alone. Things are horrible. Everything
Speaker 1: is so grim. This this horrible kidnapping and murder has
Speaker 1: taken place. Dark syntho music is playing, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: Mace looks up at the sky and there's like happy
Speaker 1: bird squawking, and it's so funny. The birds will guide him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the birds are his guide multiple times here and he's like, hey, birds,
Speaker 1: well so the birds yeah, are gonna clearly take him
Speaker 1: to Elias. Meanwhile, Elias is held captive by this whole
Speaker 1: war band of of humans and dog men, and there's
Speaker 1: this great scene or I thought it was great where
Speaker 1: there there they stopped for the night and they're they're
Speaker 1: tying Elias to the steak, and the head like the
Speaker 1: lieutenant of the dog man comes forward and he says,
Speaker 1: I take you to Okra and alive Okron make you die.
Speaker 1: And then there's more Okron rule the sun and make
Speaker 1: night and day and he and he says that's not true.
Speaker 1: No one can rule the sun. And then the wear
Speaker 1: of just growls. Clearly wasn't prepared for this level of
Speaker 1: philosophical discussion. This is a fundamentalist, ochronist werewolf and he
Speaker 1: Elias just tried to explain evolution to him, and he
Speaker 1: did not take kindly to it. But I like how
Speaker 1: this kind of this more than implies that Okron might act.
Speaker 1: You know, even though she clearly is messing around with
Speaker 1: some dark, deep magic, she may not actually control the sun.
Speaker 1: This may also this may just be a hoax that
Speaker 1: she's perpetrating in order to control the stone age peoples
Speaker 1: of this land. Oh that is how I read it.
Speaker 1: I read it as she does not actually have any
Speaker 1: power whatsoever over the sun, and she has just convinced
Speaker 1: people she does, right, But she clearly has some power
Speaker 1: she's not to be messed with. And we find out
Speaker 1: later from Mace. Like Mace is like, look, I leave
Speaker 1: her alone. She leaves me alone. We have this whole
Speaker 1: truce thing going on. But I mean Mace's interfering with
Speaker 1: her business here because Mace rescues Ilius and uh rescues
Speaker 1: him from the camp. But in this great scene where
Speaker 1: there are dung grenades, I guess they're dung grenades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's you see him grab these balls of possible dung,
Speaker 1: wraps him in leaves and then later he's thrown him
Speaker 1: into the dog men's campfire and causes this big explosion.
Speaker 1: This scene has awesome music. Yeah, we get some more fighting,
Speaker 1: so it's a successful rescue. And then but this means
Speaker 1: that the head where Wolf, the head dog Man, has
Speaker 1: failed and so the following scene is him being roasted
Speaker 1: alive on a great glowing rock in Okron's layer, and
Speaker 1: we get more terrific music on top of this. Yes,
Speaker 1: and now there's a great part where Okron is like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need some help. So what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: I'm going to appeal to a really evil god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So she goes back to the dreamtime you, back to
Speaker 1: the furs and the snakes, and she summons the King
Speaker 1: of Darkness, the Master of treachery, the Light of all evil.
Speaker 1: She she reaches over and there's a dog. There's like
Speaker 1: a wolf dog next to to where she's laying, and
Speaker 1: she transforms, or this creature transforms into Zora, a towering
Speaker 1: figure in black armor, who then agrees to help her,
Speaker 1: but she must promise her soul in return. This doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be a big sticking point for her. She's
Speaker 1: just like done, yeah, soul. Yeah. She's like, I've got
Speaker 1: to get this guy taken care of, so, yes, whatever
Speaker 1: whatever the cost. Time in so we we cut back
Speaker 1: to to Mace and and Alias. They're discussing Okron and
Speaker 1: and Okron is like, we we gotta, we gotta take
Speaker 1: Okroon out. She's too powerful. She's she's she's no good.
Speaker 1: And Mace's like, you don't want to go messing with Okron,
Speaker 1: she's way too powerful. And I maintain this kind of
Speaker 1: neutrality with her. Um And while they're having this discussion,
Speaker 1: Zora attacks them. We get poison arrows ripping through the sky,
Speaker 1: and and our heroes flee from this. They flee by raft,
Speaker 1: but right as they're getting on the left, Elie takes
Speaker 1: a dart in the leg and then the poison threatens
Speaker 1: to overcome him. Wait, I'm sorry to back up just
Speaker 1: a moment, but is this the scene where the form
Speaker 1: that Zora takes in order to attack them is as bushes.
Speaker 1: I didn't take it that he was the bush, but
Speaker 1: there is some kind of like bush shaking going on. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you think he's something in the bush or I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just thought he was the wind carrying darts of poison.
Speaker 1: I'm not I guess I thought this was the Lord
Speaker 1: of Darkness possessing some shrubbery and using that evil shrubbery
Speaker 1: to shoot poison darts at our heroes, and it could
Speaker 1: be a powerful divine or infernal entities have been known
Speaker 1: to speak through vegetation. Well, anyway, Ilius is hit with
Speaker 1: a poisoned dart here and then full cheese, like, let's
Speaker 1: get a look at that. Yeah, let's spend some time
Speaker 1: on these uh, these these pus oozing sores, blood oozing sores.
Speaker 1: As Elias arrivees with fever and delirium. We just spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time watching these these sores, uh swell
Speaker 1: up and then erupt. And there's a whole sequence after this.
Speaker 1: This that's pretty great. But Mace has to go retrieve
Speaker 1: a medicinal herb that will cure the poison that's in
Speaker 1: Ilius's blood now, but in order to do so, he
Speaker 1: has to fight his way through a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: bog zombies. And this part is great. Some of the
Speaker 1: zombies are a little less human than others, or some
Speaker 1: are just kind of like decaying human corpses. But there's
Speaker 1: some rob I don't know if you noticed this that
Speaker 1: like sort of don't have faces, Like their heads are
Speaker 1: just sort of a big lobe. Yeah, yeah, these are
Speaker 1: these are fultry zombies, and you know he's going to
Speaker 1: deliver when it comes to the undead. This is also
Speaker 1: scene that has just maximum smoke machine and and soft focus,
Speaker 1: so at times it's it's it's all. It's almost difficult
Speaker 1: to make out exactly what's happening. But still there's some
Speaker 1: great zombie slang action. You definitely get to see some
Speaker 1: zombie juice is splurting. But Mace does make it all
Speaker 1: the way back with the medicinal herb uh, though there's
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a twist before before we
Speaker 1: get the treatment here, right, that's right, because we see
Speaker 1: Mace arrived back at Elias and uh and Macey's maze
Speaker 1: is like, all right, I'm here, I'm gonna give it
Speaker 1: to you, and then he lifts up a rock like
Speaker 1: he's gonna smash Elias with it. But then no, we
Speaker 1: realize this is an evil double of Mace. The real
Speaker 1: Mace shows up and we have a mirror match. The
Speaker 1: fake Mace is brandishing a wooden club and real Mace
Speaker 1: is of course using the most stone bone nun chucks
Speaker 1: and we get a fun fight scene here. Eventually, legit
Speaker 1: Mace has his double pinned down, and the double reveals
Speaker 1: itself as Zora, the black armored entity from another dimension
Speaker 1: and or whatever, and then Zora vanishes and laughs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Mace versus Mace fight scene is great. But Mace,
Speaker 1: the real Mace, prevails and Ilius is nursed back to
Speaker 1: health by Mace putting these little like leaves all over
Speaker 1: his skin and uh. And then basically Ilius is like,
Speaker 1: all right, piece out, I'm the sea. Later, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go get back on my boat and go across the
Speaker 1: ocean and go back to our our nice, peaceful farming community.
Speaker 1: And Mace is like, that's a great decision. You should
Speaker 1: definitely do that. He tries to give him his boat, don't.
Speaker 1: He's like, here, you love violence, you should use this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he's like now this, he says, this weapon is
Speaker 1: still too dangerous for this land. So Mace is very reasonable,
Speaker 1: like he was. He turns down the one ring here.
Speaker 1: That's right, so that the part ways. Yeah. Meanwhile, back
Speaker 1: in Oakran's layers, Zora assures, Okrun, look, it's gonna be done.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take care of it. He's not gonna live
Speaker 1: much longer, but she and she's she does he seems
Speaker 1: to sort of doubt this a little bit, and she's
Speaker 1: very insistent, like, look, he needs to die. The archer
Speaker 1: needs to die because of my visions. So at this point, yeah,
Speaker 1: Elias has seemingly set off to return to his his land.
Speaker 1: Mace is marching on his own business. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where he's going, but he's headed that way. He's going
Speaker 1: through a rocky coastal region and suddenly there are these moaning,
Speaker 1: chirping creatures amidst the rocks. Um they are. They are strange.
Speaker 1: They are kind of difficult to describe. I was gonna
Speaker 1: describe them as a bunch of pit pats from Mr. Show,
Speaker 1: but just covered in cobwebs. Yeah, they're kind of like
Speaker 1: cobweb covered more locks with big glassy green eyes. But
Speaker 1: there I think they're I mean, they're obviously not real.
Speaker 1: You don't look at these creatures and say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: real organisms, what are they? No, No, these are these
Speaker 1: are obviously movie monsters. But there's there's a level of
Speaker 1: detail to these guys that I thought was really impressive.
Speaker 1: Like I I buy them as impressive movie monsters. They
Speaker 1: have some sort of strange life going on here in
Speaker 1: the rocks and now they're jumping out and they're coming
Speaker 1: after Mace, grabbing at his ankles, saying take it from me,
Speaker 1: I love you. They do have weird voices. They get
Speaker 1: a net over him, and then the lead web morlock
Speaker 1: creature here says, whereas your friend, And he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't have any friends. I'm Mace, and he's like, do
Speaker 1: you lie? I will make you tell me. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: kind of robot computer voice and it. Yeah. Meanwhile, Elias
Speaker 1: is out on the boat headed home, but he's he's
Speaker 1: having doubts. He's having some voiceover doubts that are reminding
Speaker 1: him that his is a path of courage and sacrifice.
Speaker 1: So what does he do. He turns the boat around,
Speaker 1: he looks up, he sees birds and he's like, those
Speaker 1: birds will take me to Mace. That's right. Yeah, remember
Speaker 1: what Santa Zeus said, you will be courage and a man.
Speaker 1: And so he's he's back into the action. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it really the movie just gets crazier and crazier from
Speaker 1: here on out. Um. You know, obviously Mace doesn't snitch
Speaker 1: to these cobweb morelock creatures. Um. He also may be
Speaker 1: wrestling with the notion of human friends and what it
Speaker 1: means to have a friend. But the creatures intend to
Speaker 1: make him die in water. They've lashed him to some
Speaker 1: cross beams. But then Elias shows up, and Elias has
Speaker 1: now mastered the true power of the Bow of Chronos.
Speaker 1: He is no longer afraid, so when he pulls back
Speaker 1: the string, he's able to cause the bow to glow
Speaker 1: with like laser energy and shoot laser arrows for everyone.
Speaker 1: It's powerful now. I have to note that it is
Speaker 1: also in the in the Conan the Barbarian movie that
Speaker 1: Conan gets crucified, and that's Trvie Mace gets crucified. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a coincidence. But a big difference is
Speaker 1: that Conan gets crucified in the desert, and here Mace's
Speaker 1: crucified on the shoreline and his cross tumbles into the
Speaker 1: water like he's cruizy. He he's attached to the beams
Speaker 1: and he falls into the surf. That's right lucky for
Speaker 1: for Mace, though, he's got friends underwater as well, because
Speaker 1: then the dolphins show up and the dolphins start breaking
Speaker 1: his bonds. They start freeing him from the cross. Literally,
Speaker 1: the dolphins are chewing the ropes off of his wrists
Speaker 1: to free him. I love this, Like if you could
Speaker 1: just another level of like late seventies early eighties weirdness
Speaker 1: to have the dolphins show up, uh to totally unexpected
Speaker 1: in this film and save the day. Okay, So maceon
Speaker 1: Elias are back together, um and uh, it's there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a showdown, right right. They realize now Okron has
Speaker 1: to go, like, we're both united on this front. Now
Speaker 1: we're both brave about it. We both realized there's no
Speaker 1: other way around it. So they set out that way
Speaker 1: towards her mountain. But they realize, well, it's better to
Speaker 1: travel by night because we don't want to go across
Speaker 1: all this open ground during the daytime. So they set
Speaker 1: up camp. But of course the freaks come out at night.
Speaker 1: Elias is pulled into the ground by these claws that
Speaker 1: come out of the earth. He's pulled into dark caverns
Speaker 1: by Okron's minions. Mace goes after him, but then we
Speaker 1: get this scene where it's just lots of claws and
Speaker 1: red eyes in the dark. There's blue and black combat.
Speaker 1: Mace eventually overcomes his attackers. This scene, you you cannot
Speaker 1: see what is happening in this scene. It's just some
Speaker 1: blurry dark shapes moving around, but there was there is
Speaker 1: an extremely hilarious part where bats start attacking Mace. I
Speaker 1: revealed this earlier. The bats started attacking him, and he
Speaker 1: whips out his nun chucks and starts screaming at the
Speaker 1: bats as he like whirls it around above his head.
Speaker 1: But then he seems to realize, oh, they're bats. I'm
Speaker 1: a friend of all animals, and then the bats kind
Speaker 1: of guide him out. Yeah. Yeah, But then tragedy because
Speaker 1: he's moving along through the cavern. It seems like the
Speaker 1: surface is just ahead, there's light, but then there's a
Speaker 1: dripping of blood on his shoulder. He looks up and
Speaker 1: there is Elias, his headless body hanging from the ceiling,
Speaker 1: dripping blood down on him. That's right, folks, our young
Speaker 1: hero is dead, like really dead like heads shocking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we get the same where Zora, the Black Armor
Speaker 1: demon being from beyond, brings this this head to to
Speaker 1: Okron and she says, while his flesh is still warm,
Speaker 1: I shall open his temple of secrets and devour him. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's it's time to eat it. Eat
Speaker 1: the head's brains, but before she can strike, she like
Speaker 1: gets the striker to bash open the skull like she
Speaker 1: did earlier. But then the eyes of the head open,
Speaker 1: and she says, Zora, you idiot. Shouldn't say you idiot,
Speaker 1: but says, Zora, you have slain his body, but not
Speaker 1: his soul. And she realized that she's still in danger
Speaker 1: from the omen. I don't know what that means. How
Speaker 1: was she how was he supposed to slay Ilius's soul?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's magic stuff. We're not we're not
Speaker 1: meant to understand the ways of wizards. But she seems
Speaker 1: pretty convinced that, like, you didn't really pull this off,
Speaker 1: because look, the eyes on this head opened. There is
Speaker 1: a scene where Mace burns the rest of Ilius's body,
Speaker 1: and uh, full cheese, Like, let's get a look at that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's watch all of this. Um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: he realized that a lot of times when a body
Speaker 1: is burned in emotion picture, you don't really get to
Speaker 1: see everything that happens. So this movie make sure to
Speaker 1: show you everything from the initial licking of the flames
Speaker 1: across the body to the melting of the fat and finally,
Speaker 1: the charring of the skeleton itself. At the risk of
Speaker 1: reaching I'd say the cinematography here actually seems kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: especially when compared to the convention within existing Peppler movies
Speaker 1: of spending just lots of time lingering over the immensely
Speaker 1: mountainously fleshed bodies of the of the heroes, where you're
Speaker 1: just like panning over their gleaming muscles. Uh. Here, you're
Speaker 1: panning over the bones as all the flesh has been removed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is something that Robert A. Rushing
Speaker 1: spends a fair amount time in the in the book
Speaker 1: talking about, Yeah, the rendering, the annihilation of the hero
Speaker 1: body in this film. And then Mace has left, like
Speaker 1: Mace has taken pretty hard. And then Mace decides that
Speaker 1: he will avenge Jimmy, like swears to avenge Elius, and
Speaker 1: he covers his body in the smeared ashes of his
Speaker 1: dead friend. And so now we're on a collision course.
Speaker 1: It's Mace versus Okron. Uh. These two are going to battle.
Speaker 1: Um two may enter, only one can survive. I was
Speaker 1: surprised how quickly this battle was over. Mace shows up
Speaker 1: and now he's wielding Elias's bow, the bow of Kronos
Speaker 1: and using the multi shot lasers, and he just he
Speaker 1: just gets it done really quick. Yeah, so the way
Speaker 1: it goes down Okron with Zora by her side, she
Speaker 1: comes once more to those goat hurting people. She's got
Speaker 1: to do the rising of the Sun ritual to keep
Speaker 1: you know, this con going. But then yeah, Mace shows up.
Speaker 1: He opposes her on an opposite peak. He calls for
Speaker 1: the bow, it comes to him, and then Zora just
Speaker 1: kind of like turns and looks at Okron and just vanishes.
Speaker 1: He just like completely pieces out. It's like one of
Speaker 1: those memes where like Homer is fading into the shrubbery
Speaker 1: or or or the kid is just a slowly vanishing.
Speaker 1: Zora is like, I just remember to have to go
Speaker 1: return to videotapes. So Zora's gone. Okern sends her warriors
Speaker 1: after after Mace, but he's got the laser arrows now,
Speaker 1: so he just takes them out. She teleports back to
Speaker 1: her layer, but then Mace shoots a laser arrow through
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain which destroys her golden helm,
Speaker 1: which reveals that she has this wretched, uh like monster face.
Speaker 1: Like a hag's face underneath. Then Mace teleports into the
Speaker 1: layer somehow, I guess, with the power of the bow
Speaker 1: and vengeance uh and cinematography uh. And he's in the
Speaker 1: layer now, and so he draws back the bow once more,
Speaker 1: finishes her off with another laser arrow, completing the prophecy.
Speaker 1: It seems more or less like her her own visions
Speaker 1: of her own death earlier in the film. And then oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is the perhaps the most amazing uh
Speaker 1: demise of a villain ever an emotion picture, because yeah,
Speaker 1: he appears. He finishes off with a laser arrow, she
Speaker 1: falls to the misty floor, the music intensifies, and then
Speaker 1: then she transforms into a wolf dog, very very much
Speaker 1: like the wolf dog that she transformed into Zorah earlier
Speaker 1: in the picture. That wolf dog runs off with another
Speaker 1: wolf into the wilderness, and then Mace two strides off
Speaker 1: into the wilds as the sun rises once more. Just
Speaker 1: a weird, weird ending, but also feels like it's resonating
Speaker 1: with some sort of hidden ful chy mystery. Beautiful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: So did you interpret that as she's not actually killed,
Speaker 1: she just becomes a wolf, don't. I Mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on in this movie with the relationship between
Speaker 1: humans and animals. Uh. I mean we have Mace who
Speaker 1: is the friend of animals, and Elias doesn't really understand
Speaker 1: this and has to sort of learn how to trust
Speaker 1: the animals. There's the fact that Okron uses like her
Speaker 1: minions are all wearing like beast masks or have become
Speaker 1: part beast. She uses a wolf for a dog to
Speaker 1: transform and manifest Zora. Then she turns into a dog
Speaker 1: or wolf when she dies. Uh. Yeah, there's it's it's strange,
Speaker 1: UM's it's it's weird stuff. I love it. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's some sort of there's some sort of hidden
Speaker 1: meaning behind all of this. There's some sort of like
Speaker 1: untranslated scripture beneath all of these strange images. Let us
Speaker 1: turn now to the Book of Okron, chapter three, verse fourteen.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happens next, Like, is Mace going
Speaker 1: to go explain what happened to the people or are
Speaker 1: they just really freaking out because they think the sun
Speaker 1: isn't gonna complete it's rising now or if it sets again,
Speaker 1: it's never gonna come up. But Mace probably doesn't care.
Speaker 1: He's not a friend of all humans. He's all humans
Speaker 1: are his enemies. He's more concerned with the animals. Do
Speaker 1: you think Mace has become more friendly to humans in
Speaker 1: general by the end? I think so. I think yeah.
Speaker 1: I think his friendship with Elias changed him. I think
Speaker 1: we see growth in his character. I think think we
Speaker 1: see growth in both their characters. Yeah, it could have
Speaker 1: been a sequel. Oh, you can't have a sequel to
Speaker 1: film this perfect like. They nailed it. They absolutely nailed it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a fun bit on the the the interview with
Speaker 1: Rivera where they're talking he was talking about filming this
Speaker 1: and how about how how much of a perfectionist fult
Speaker 1: she was. How he'd have the entire crew with him
Speaker 1: and there on this um, this this Italian island that's
Speaker 1: normally a vacation island, but this was in the winter,
Speaker 1: is the off season, and they'd march out into the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere and he'd go, no, no, this isn't right.
Speaker 1: Let's keep going. And so they keep marching and they
Speaker 1: get to some new location. Then he go, now they'll
Speaker 1: go back to the other place. They march back and
Speaker 1: filmed there. Um. So it seems like he put a
Speaker 1: but a lot of a lot of energy into this one,
Speaker 1: and I think maybe some of it from what I understand,
Speaker 1: some of his later films were marred by by illness.
Speaker 1: But and then of course there were with films of
Speaker 1: this caliber, they're all always budget arey issues. But uh,
Speaker 1: this one, it feels it feels very complete. I feel
Speaker 1: like this again, there's some sort of hidden scripture behind
Speaker 1: this film leaking in from another dimension. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go and close it out there, But obviously we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone. Do you have memories of Conquest? Um? Certainly?
Speaker 1: Have you ever saw this in the theater? Uh, you're
Speaker 1: having to catch this one onto straight back in the
Speaker 1: day or something. Let us know, Um, if you have
Speaker 1: memories of seeing it on VHS or various DVD releases
Speaker 1: over the years, or thoughts on other folkty films. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: right in, we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to follow all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered on Weird House Cinema, you can go to letterbox
Speaker 1: dot com. It's L E T T E R B
Speaker 1: O x D. We have a we have an account
Speaker 1: on there just called weird House and you and find
Speaker 1: a list of all the movies that we've covered so far,
Speaker 1: and you can see like some wonderful visualizations of those
Speaker 1: those those box arts. You can sort them by decade
Speaker 1: and by order of release and so forth. And we
Speaker 1: also have links to the individual episodes there, and I
Speaker 1: also blog about these individual episodes at Samuta music dot com.
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to embed the Claudio Semonetti music on
Speaker 1: that post. Hues thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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