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I just got the DVD yesterday, not having seen the film since I was ten or so, and absolutely loved it. This is the perfect realization of everything Flash Gordon suggests to me in any form.

I remember FLASH being a semi-regular presence on 80s television, where eventual familiarity made it, rather than Buster Crabbe or even Alex Raymond, the reference point for everything I knew and expected of this particular mythos. As Adam West was/is Batman to me, so too did Sam Jones solely inhabit the boots of Flash in my imagination. Like the former example too, whatever accents of "camp" were present were wholly lost on my young palate. I simply took it as the straightforward if lighthearted space opera it was clearly intended to be; rather than funny, it was genuinely thrilling and, to all ends and purposes, totally canonical.

Looking at it after all these years, and since becoming acquainted with the Raymond strips, my initial judgment...born of that uncanny sense of wonder rather than aesthetic maturity...seems not so far off the mark. In any form, Flash Gordon was only pseudo-serious at best.

Raymond's adventures were invariably excuses to imbibe his intoxicatingly beautiful art and coast along on Perils of Pauline-esque cliffhangers. Flash and Dale could be nearly stewed alive by the blue-skinned Tusk Men one week, trapped in the nest of preternatural pterodactyls the next. Only the characters' determinedly straight faces and their chronicler's overheated verbiage masked the delirious frivolity of the enterprise.



De Laurentiis and Semple took that absurdist nucleus and pushed it to its wildest, most wonderful extremes with a clear love of the material (note the mistake of equating lighthearted with arrogant dismissal). The adaptation is as brilliantly realized as their KING KONG was monstrously incompetent, and it's well supported all around. Sam Jones makes for an agreeably wholesome Savior of the Universe, which is absolutely all the character needs to be. Max Von Sydow IS Ming the Merciless. The performances of Timothy Dalton and Brian Blessed lend color and weight to the proceedings. Even the relatively small contribution of Richard O'Brien, holdover from an earlier and equally rocky picture show, serves to augment the ambiance of colorful eccentricity.

The production design is simply breathtaking...I'm a bit tempted to say unmatched. I wouldn't particularly want to live in that trumpeted STAR WARS universe, but this is something else again!!! No appreciation of this film is complete without a mention of Danilo Donati, perhaps the project's true artiste. The primitive vigor a child feels at truly gazing into the heavens for the first time is infused into every frame...that's the power so deftly harnessed here.

If there's another thing that initially escapes one's youthful perecptions, it's definitely the sex appeal. The sights and sounds of Aura being whipped to a bloody mess under interrogation, or Flash "rising from the grave" clad solely in black leather underwear tend to fly right over one's junior head. Subliminally resonant, perhaps, but the young ego comfortably dubs the aforesaid in the name of fun and fantasy.



Only much later does one discern the forest...and the tease. The fun and heroic adventure of bygone days thereby attains added levels of appreciation. Suitable for all ages but aquiring a unique context depending upon one's level of understanding.

Finally, and the value of this effect cannot be underestimated, FLASH GORDON is one of the most joyous things I've seen in a very long time. I actually felt better after watching it. Would that more comic adaptations followed this example.

I enjoy the Buster Crabbe serials and have even caught a number of those German TV episodes, but heavenly daze...the 1980 film will always be the last word for me. It's really the only adaptation endowed with the full measure of technical/aesthetic ability to bring Raymond's visions to life.

Seeing this version, and its surprisingly high eroticism quotient, made me recall the X spoof FLESH GORDON. I haven't seen that one but the Harryhausen-type stop motion effects certainly look interesting, particularly for a film of this type. Perhaps it merits a viewing in the future.

Thrills, romance and adventure are indeed at the heart of Flash Gordon, whether under the auspieces of Raymond's exquisite draftsmanship or at the mercy of low-budget German TV.

And De Laurentiis' film has those things in spades, in my honest view at least...those things with one other vital addition; a true sense of wonder. Verily, a quality that cannot be consiously instilled, and admittedly it's not always intentional, but one endowing all the best fantascapes in fiction and film. The Raymond strip had it, as did, to some extent, the Crabbe serials and sundry minor adaptations...but De Laurentiis' transcendental FLASH most of all. While remaining totally faithful to its source material, it is an autonomous tour de force in its own right.

I sincerely don't think De Laurentiis mocks the material...he has fun with Flash, rather than makes fun of him...for what is this but a meticulously-crafted, gazillion dollar tribute to a character the producer loved? He even lent Semple his personal, all-in-Italian hardbound Flash anthology for purposes of research!

As a kid, I took every moment in dead earnest. Now I laugh at parts of FLASH...and BATMAN too...but never, never in that arrogant "crikey, this is so stupid" kind of way. That would be an incalculably cruel thing to do to my formative idols. The adventure and heroism inherent in both are still there, augmented with an added depth of appreciation. Or sophistication, if this old man may be permitted to flatter himself. I think that's what the creators intended.

There's a very wide berth between the goodhearted guying of FLASH and the mocking parody painfully evident in something like William Dozier's failed WONDER WOMAN pilot. I love the innocent joy of enterprises such as these.

cjh5801 wrote:

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And De Laurentiis' film has those things in spades, in my honest view at least...

Well, we're certainly seeing the film with different eyes. To me, it's Flash Gordon by way of Barbarella. Worth a laugh, but absolutely no sense of wonder. Bonking Flash on the head with the globe-thingy wasn't making fun of the character? Having Flash crash the commuter plane into Zarkov's laboratory, making a greasy spot of Munson, was totally faithful to the source? The gaudy, psychedelic, unconvincing miniatures that represent Mongo capturing Raymond's exquisite draftmanship? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

I see what you're saying, Clark; I'm not suggesting the film is perfect by any means. I was indifferent to the more obvious slapstick-type of stuff as a kid and now regard those bits as weaknesses. But that doesn't change the overall highly successful experiment in sensory immersion, thrills and adventure the film offers, nor its status as a faithful adaptation of Raymond. It is a straight adventure film in addition to anything else.

I think it might help one's appreciation of the film if he sees it first in childhood, when one will be largely ambivalent to the humorous content. The rush of colorful adventure overwhelms all other factors. Coming into the thing with all the expectations of adulthood might produce quite a different reaction.

Truth be told, the Wood Beast sequence actually scared my five year old self...