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For this Sunday Kino Night, we’re starting off with Fires on the Plain (1959), a WW2 survival drama featuring an ill Japanese soldier left behind on a deserted Philippine island at the end of the war. He has to use all of his wits to survive the bleak landscape; surely, this will end happily. This is arguably the magnum opus of renowned auteur Kon Ichikawa (otherwise best-known for The Burmese Harp [1956]), and is considered one of the best Japanese war films of all time, so let’s check it out. After that is Conan the Barbarian (1982), the legendary sword-and-sorcery epic written by leftist Oliver Stone and directed by rabid Reaganite John Milius (otherwise best-known for Red Dawn [1984].) Join Conan as he rises from slavery to kill the evil hippie cult leader Thulsa Doom. It has all the blood, gore, sex, and muscles that you would expect, but also a surprisingly intelligent script that deals with mythic narrative in interesting ways. It also features one of the greatest film scores of all time, courtesy of Basil Poledouris. I was going to do a Conan double feature tomorrow, but I don’t think I’ll have time, so fine, it will have to take a Sunday slot. It’s a little less kino than normal, though still more kino than the many films it inspired. Oddly, it deals with many of the same Nietzschean themes that The Fifth Seal (1976) did last Sunday. A good thematic pair.

We’ll start at 9PM EST on Hextube, right here:

https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

  • Fires on the Plain: https://letterboxd.com/film/fires-on-the-plain/
  • Conan the Barbarian: https://letterboxd.com/film/conan-the-barbarian/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

  • Fires on the Plain: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.
  • Conan the Barbarian: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/61991

CWs for Fires on the Plain:

  • Death of dog.
  • Gun violence.
  • Starvation.
  • Sanity slippage.
  • Cannibalism.
  • Corpses.
  • Sad ending.

CWs for Conan the Barbarian:

  • Nudity.
  • Sex.
  • Blood and gore.
  • Slavery.
  • Deaths of animals.
  • Decapitation.
  • Children in peril.
  • Mind control.
  • Body horror.
  • Child abuse.
  • Drug use.
  • Alcohol abuse.
  • Animal cruelty.
  • Snakes.
  • Someone is physically restrained.
  • Conan is forced to have sex with a female slave. Nothing is really shown other than her being thrown into his cage. Also, the women in Doom’s cult are implied to be his sex slaves, though he is not directly shown using them as such.
  • Cannibalism.
  • Someone is burned alive.
  • Amputation.
  • Broken bones.
  • Unconsciousness.
  • Finger mutilation.
  • Torture.
  • Someone falls down stairs.
  • Death by falling.
  • Kidnapping.
  • Ghosts.
  • Spitting.
  • Audio gore.
  • Suicide.
  • Obscene language.
  • Objectification of female characters.
  • Sad ending.

Links to movies:

  • Fires on the Plain: https://vimeo.com/909295139
  • Conan the Barbarian: https://vimeo.com/909301641