Flash Gordon

In the past few weeks I inflicted myself with a barrage of Flash Gordon.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I was curious about the intrepid space hero and thought I’d see something fun and interesting in it all, but very little of it was very entertaining.  The least I can do, however, is describe my experiences.  Maybe someone else will enjoy it more than I did.

 Characters.

Flash Gordon.  The rugged, handsome, space hero.  Not a genius, but bright enough to get the job done.  He can fight, but it’s mostly brute force; he doesn’t seem to know any martial arts.  Flash has no particular skill as a space pilot and not much in the way of ray guns, rockets, or other high-tech gadgets.  Mostly he seems to punch his way out of trouble.  Buzz Lightyear is actually smarter than Flash.

Dale Arden.  The obligatory female love interest so we don’t wonder about Flash and the other male characters (a real danger given some of the costumes, which are more flattering for the men than they are revealing for the women).  She is marginally attractive, average intelligence, and doesn’t seem to do much besides scream and get into or out of danger.  In a sense, she’s the prototype for most of the Bond movie women.  Unlike those women, however, Dale never appears in a bikini or even shows even the slightest cheesecake – nor, for that matter, do any of the other women.  Like Star Trek: The Next Generation, where sex in the future seems to be obsolete.

 Dr. Zarkov.  The scientist, not particularly mad or really that much of a genius, not all the brilliant or imaginative (I could claim that Geordi would run rings around him, but even Scotty is his match) but given Flash’s aptitude for science (or lack thereof) that really makes the Dr. the go-to guy for this by default.

 Emperor Ming (the Merciless).  Despite the name and make-up, he doesn’t seem to be Asian, especially since none of his minions from Mongo appear to be Asian either.  In fact, all the extra-terrestrial races appear to be white.  Even Edgar Rice Burroughs gave the aliens different-colored names (though these were still simply alternate-colored whites, even the “black” and “yellow” men). 

 Sources

Cartoon.  By Alex Raymond.  This appeared in the Sunday comics from 1934 to 1943.  By now there are compendiums available on Amazon.com for $46, but I wasn’t tempted to splurge on these.  I’m not really into comic books in general and don’t even spend that much on Dr. Strange or the Freak Brothers, much less this one that I’m only marginally interested in.  I can’t even remember reading them in the papers myself (I was born in 1969).  So I had to pass on the original source material.

 Movie Serials.  These were black & white and fairly short episodes done in three batches:  Flash Gordon (1936), Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).  They were originally shown in movie theaters as trailers before the main features, but each of these was later turned into a feature length film.  I’ve seen the 2^nd and 3^rd.  Buster Crabbe plays the lead role.  He has the strongest claim to having established the character, as no one else improved on his portrayal. 

            The acting is about as good as any porn movie, and the special effects are endearingly cheesy, but both elements wore thin to me in about 5 seconds.  Overall I found them extremely boring.  Something about the plots struck me as being as sophisticated and enthralling as those of a children’s TV show, yet these are supposed to be for adults.  The absence of the slightest romance (even with Dale) pushes this further into the kiddie zone.  Even Harry Potter has more than these.  So they managed to make a space-adventure epic series, spanning all sorts of different planets and races, which is dreadfully boring. 

 1980 Movie.  It had a modestly impressive soundtrack by Queen, featuring Sam Jones as Flash, Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin (the Robin Hood type guy), Topol (best known as Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof”) as Dr. Zarkov, and Max von Sydow as Ming.  It was pretty flashy (!) with respectable production values and special effects, and had considerably better acting than the original serials, so this is probably the best format to enjoy it in.  Despite not liking the movie serials, I did enjoy this movie. We had actually seen it in the movie theater in Paris, France when it came out.  This one does the best job of keeping some element of campiness without being too silly – the right balance.  Sam Jones has a cameo in "Ted", as Mark Wahlberg's character has a particular nostalgic fondness for this film. 

 1974 Parody – Flesh Gordon.  Remarkably, this predates the 1980 movie by 6 years; there is enough similarity with the latter (though a completely different plot) that I wonder if the 1980 producers had seen this.  For a soft-porn parody the acting is remarkably good.  Moreover, it has considerable stop-action animation special effects, in the famous Ray Harryhausen tradition: some penis-snake one-eyed monsters early on, corkscrew penis killer robots later on, and a huge Cyclops type of demon at the end.  These ingredients alone give it some cinematic merit, though I’ve never heard of it being touted as a cult film, e.g. “Jason and Argonauts”, which some (Tom Hanks) consider the premier stop-action animation film.  Of course there is also considerable nudity and some soft-core sex (the collector’s edition DVD, despite its claim, did not restore the long-lost hard-core scenes which were cut out long ago).  I put this as a close #2 to the 1980 film.

 Honorable Mention/See Also:

Leather Goddesses of Phobos.  Ages ago, back in high school (1982-1986 B.C.) we were playing text adventure games by an imaginative company called Infocom (watch for a blog in the future).  This was a time at which graphic adventures were developing but still fairly primitive and not all that impressive; we never did finish the “Hi-Res Adventure: Cranston Manor”.  I suppose the Infocom designers were frustrated novelists, because they felt that a thousand words were much better than any picture.  Anyhow.

            LGP was their tribute to Flash Gordon.  Since it was kind of raunchy (it even had a 3D cartoon booklet which included considerably more cheesecake, though no nudity, than the original Flash Gordon) I’m beginning to suspect the writers had indeed seen “Flesh Gordon”.  I have to say I enjoyed it.  NOW, someone needs to adapt these text adventure games as smartphone apps.  Who’s on it?