Flash Gordon (1980)
“Flash, Flash, I love you…but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!”
Ming the Merciless, Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, Hans Zarkov, and the music of Queen. What’s not to love?
Flash Gordon isn’t the best sci-fi film ever made. It’s not in the top hundred. But it is a lot of fun.
You hear a lot about movies that are a “love letter” to an earlier genre, film, or director. That is usually a kind way of saying the filmmaker has plugged in a lot of (maybe too much) fan service in order to attract people who liked the original…or that they are being a little pretentious and testing the viewer to see if they are hip enough to get the nods.
Flash is a love letter to the campy sci-fi films of the 1930s to 50s…but there is nothing pretentious about it. The movie, more or less faithfully, draws from the 1936 Buster Crabbe serial and, to a lesser extent, the 1954-55 tv series with Steve Holland as Flash and Irene Champlin as Dale - right down to the cheesy hawkmen wings and spacey sound effects.
So for those who think the only Flash is Barry Allen…
The contours of Flash Gordon are pretty much the same as when I watched reruns of the Crabbe series on TV 50 out of Detroit in the 1970s.
Flash (played by Sam J. Jones - one of the hardest working men in Hollywood) is a famous football player (in the original, a polo player) who, along with the lovely Dale Arden (Melody Anderson - Battlestar Galactica…the original), is kidnapped by Dr. Hans Zarkov (one-named wonder, Topol - Fiddler on the Roof). The details are fuzzy in all the tellings, but Zarkov isn’t all there. Believing he has discovered a planet that is launching attacks on the Earth, he builds a rocket, drafts Dale and Flash, and shoots off into space.
While that should be the end of the story until Elon Musk’s space car bumps into Zarkov’s ship and three decades-old bodies in orbit, it turns out that Dr. Z is right and not only does his rocket make it into space, it successfully lands on the planet Mongo - home to the evil Ming the Merciless (played devilishly by veteran Max von Sydow - The Exorcist).
Mongo is a crazy quilt of races and cultures, from flying hawkmen to robinhoodesque Arborians to lizardmen (‘though, strangely, no lizard women). Much of the films and its ancestors focus on these groups as Flash works to unite them against Ming. We won’t Spoil the end, but Flash does a pretty good job of playing quarterback to his pickup team and Ming ends the season 0-1.
The Good:
As mentioned, Flash Gordon is simply a fun romp. It doesn’t take itself seriously and although it sprinkles in an update or two for 1980 sensibilities, most of it would have played just as well in the 1930s.
There are some predictably good performances (von Sydow) but a few surprises, including an impressive job by a young man named Timothy Dalton. I’m not sure if did anything after, but the boy had promise. Italian, Ornella Muti is also a delight to watch as Ming’s daughter, and Peter Wyngarde is fantastic as his equally merciless henchman.
The final Good elephant in the room is the music of Queen. They were at the top of their game, with an infectious theme and less known but cool injects throughout the movie.
The Bad:
While a solid, if not exceptional, flick, it is a little long at just shy of two hours. There is plenty of action, but it did drag a little at times.
Should you watch this?
Sure. If you are down for a film that doesn’t make you think too much, that does not take itself seriously, and that has a killer soundtrack, Flash Gordon is probably for you. It is, for the most part, kid friendly (a few violent scenes, but most is pretty comic bookish), and a good popcorn and movie night pick.
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Three out of Five Mongo-bound Rockets.
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Post Credit Bonus #1 -
Episode 1 of the 1936 series!
Post Credit Bonus #2 -
A bit of cool trivia: In addition to playing space hero Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe also wore the jetpack of cosmic crusader Buck Rogers!
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