Tagged: Flash Gordon

Joe Corallo: Just Say What?

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As many of you know, Nancy Reagan recently passed away at the age of 94. Her legacy, as well as her husband’s, invoke incredibly powerful emotions from both ends of the political spectrum. We’ve been reminded of that this past Friday. Some of you reading this may not be aware of Nancy Reagan’s connection to comics. It’s a very loose connection, don’t get me wrong, but it’s there. I’ll try not to embellish this connection to avoid having the townspeople show up at my doorstep with pitchforks and torches in hand.

Anyone aware of the Reagan’s and life in America in the 80s knows of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign, which, ironically is my stance on the Republican Party today. What you might not be aware of is back in September of 1986, Nancy Reagan was greeted by members of the Defenders of the Earth including Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Lothar and Mandrake the Magician. No, not the “real” Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Lothar and Mandrake the Magician. They were merely actors portraying the characters on a five-day coast-to-coast tour to help kids say no to drugs. I imagine the real Defenders of the Earth were too busy saving us all from Ming the Merciless to tour the country themselves.

The ReagansAt the time, Defenders of the Earth was a cartoon produced by Marvel Productions in association with King Features Entertainment. King Features owned the above mentioned comics properties used in the cartoon. They added a bunch of kids to the mix to make it more relatable to them (I guess) and in turn we got a cartoon that was good enough for one season. In that one season we got the episode titled “The Deadliest Battle”. The deadliest battle, of course, was against drugs.

Yes, drugs. In this episode, Rick Gordon (Flash Gordon’s son) is being pressured not only by school to make good grades, but by his father to be a better hero. Randomly, a suspicious juvenile at Rick Gordon’s school offers Rick drugs unsolicited and for free in the middle of the school’s busy hallway. I can’t quite tell if that was a lack of understanding on how these things happen or a cynical assumption that kids would actually be that stupid. Anyway, we then have a scene in a classroom with a teacher going over D.A.R.E. which stands for drug abuse resistance education. We even get a nice shout out to Nancy Reagan with the teachers saying, “Just say no.”

Rick takes the drugs anyway which do in fact make him feel a whole lot better, but it comes at a high price. The drugs also make Rick absent minded, causing him to forget to finish setting up their new defense system. This allows Ming the Merciless to come right in to take out the Defenders of the Earth once and for all.

After Flash Gordon uses some excessively harsh words with his son, one of the other kids on the team is able to help save the day and teach Rick a valuable lesson about responsibility and how it’s never okay to take anything that will get your mind off of how the walls of your life are closing in on you.

Flash Gordon does at least acknowledge that he’s been too harsh with his son Rick, which was a nice touch. I was expecting something that put the entire weight of the drug problem on Rick and the dealer.

If it wasn’t for Nancy Reagan, we might have never been able to experience this animated gem. If you want to experience it for yourself again or for the first time, you can check it out here. Many other cartoons also tackled drug prevention at the time including Thundercats, He-Man, Jem and the Holograms, and many others. And the drug war legacy still plagues us to this very day. However, Nancy Reagan didn’t meet with the Thundercats, or He-Man, or Jem and the Holograms. When she got a chance to meet the heroes to help kids say no, she chose comics heroes. Or her scheduler did. Either way, when she wanted help getting her message to kids she met with classic comics heroes that have stood the test of time to this very day. To some of us at least.

Did Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign help people? Maybe a few. Did it give people a false sense of security and a cramp in their arms from patting themselves on the back too much for doing something about an issue that over time ended up destroying countless more lives than it ever saved while also wasting an unbelievably large amount of our taxpayer dollars?

You bet! Maybe she should have asked the Defenders of the Earth to help end the Cold War instead.

Mike Gold: The Ghost Who Rocks!

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harvey-hits-9476257People have been arguing the “who was comics’ first costumed hero” question for decades. Some feel it was Mandrake the Magician, by Lee Falk and Phil Davis (1934), others cite the truly obscure Red Knight created by John Welch and Jack McGuire, and still others prefer to credit E.C. Segar’s Popeye (1929). But I think it’s safe to say that most comics fans and scholars bestow that honor upon The Phantom, created by Lee Falk and Ray Moore 80 years ago this past week.

Neither Mandrake nor Popeye are “costumed heroes.” They perform their feats of daring in their regular work clothes. Whereas the Red Knight got his start in 1934 as a guy named Bullet Benton, he did not don the Red Knight costume and, therefore, the costumed hero persona until April of 1940. I suspect somebody at the Register and Tribune Syndicate took a gander at the McClure Syndicate’s success with Superman.

So much for history. Here’s where it gets personal. Yep, this is really all about me.

I discovered The Phantom in a comic book called Harvey Hits #26, which was sort of like DC’s Showcase but with a much shorter attention span. This was in 1959, when costumed heroes were very few and extremely far between. DC had just given The Flash his own bi-monthly title, Archie was struggling with The Fly and The Shield, and Marvel was devoting its energies to such monster fare as “Invasion of the Stone Men.” So finding this treasure was quite an event for a kid who had just turned nine years old.

phantom-7706928It didn’t matter that Wilson McCoy’s artwork was, to be polite, clunky. So clunky that Falk hated it, but the guy was foisted upon him by King Features. Even the cover to this reprint comic was clunky – if you take a good look at it, the perspective is out of the Negative Zone. Attributed to Joe Simon, the cover was in keeping with the interior art.

That didn’t matter. I loved it. The whole bit about the hero replacing his father for an uninterrupted chain of 400 years or so was breathtaking – sort of like how my peers in England felt about Doctor Who in 1966 when the Time Lord “reincarnated.” But, for me, something more important came out of my discovery of Harvey Hits #26.

I was sitting around my school’s lunchroom talking with my pals and mentioned this Phantom comic book. One of my friends said “Oh, that’s in the newspaper!” Really, I replied excitedly. “Yeah; the Chicago American.” Well, until a couple years before the Chicago American was a Hearst paper and no such rag would befoul my parents’ home. It had been sold to the Chicago Tribune and that paper was allowed, but only on Sundays.

leefalk-1224440The next day my friend brought in the American’s Sunday comics section and changed my life forever. Yep, the Phantom was there – but so was Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon. Every Sunday morning I was wedded to our teevee set watching Buster Crabbe gleefully taunt Charles Middleton, but I had no idea he got his start in the comics. And Raboy’s art was something mighty to behold… and it still is. Blondie, the Little King, Bringing Up Father – I was familiar with all of them from other Harvey Comics reprint titles. But when I turned to Hal Foster’s full-page Prince Valiant feature, I was incapable of speech and I might have needed a respirator.

This led to my discovering the other newspapers in my town – Chicago had five back then – as well as in neighboring areas. That, in turn, led to my falling in love with newspaper lore. Within a year I was buying four of those five newspapers every day, and I read them damn near cover-to-cover. This exercise had a massive expansionary impact on my worldview and it led me to journalism school which ultimately led to my typing these words now.

I had the privilege of knowing and working with Lee Falk – we double-teamed King Features to get them out of the way of our Phantom comic book at DC, but that’s a tale for another time. I thank Lee from the bottom of my heart for showing me my life’s path.

The Phantom is also known as The Ghost Who Walks. Not in my case. In my case, The Phantom is the Ghost Who Rocks.

Tweeks: Bif Bang Pow & Entertainment Earth Interview

Seriously, is there a cooler job than toy maker?  In an effort to find out just how awesome it is to make geek toys, we talk to Bif Bang Pow Co-Founder, Jason Lenzi, and Entertainment Earth toy designer Griffin Maghari.

 

Mike Gold: More Superhero Movies of the Ancients

Last week, I taunted you with visions of ancient superhero movies – serials, as they were called back then. Today we’d call them really low-budget webcasts. Here’s a few more worthy of your consideration, and this time we’re delving into a trio of iconic heroes from the pulps and newspaper strips – and now, of course, comic books.

the-shadow-6920190The Shadow is the best-known of all the classic pulp heroes, and for a very good reason: many of the more than 300 stories published were quite good. Walter B. Gibson created something magical – a series with a lead character who had plenty of secrets but no secret identity, aided and abetted by a slew of agents who had no idea who their master was. The character’s popularity was enhanced massively by a highly successful radio series, one that gave The Shadow an alter-ego and a female companion and took away most of his agents.

Sadly, The Shadow didn’t fare as well on the silver screen. I don’t think the sundry producers could ever reconcile the differences between the pulp stories and the radio show, and they certainly were restricted in the deployment of violent action. But there is one major exception, the 15-chapter Columbia serial from 1940. Whereas they did a decent job of using three agents (including Margo Lane), the real beauty of this production was the man who played the lead, Victor Jory. A talented and accomplished actor (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Miracle Worker), Jory had the additional benefit of actually looking like The Shadow and his adopted form of Lamont Cranston, as portrayed in the pulps. Serials generally lacked verisimilitude; The Shadow had it in spades. And it’s a damn fine actioner, by serial standards.

spider_serial2-3922375If you found The Shadow pulps to be lacking in action, The Spider made up for it and then some. Every plot revolved around a madman’s quest to destroy humanity. New York City got trashed more often than a Thing vs. Hulk fightfest. The death count in your average Spider story was at least in triple digits. The books should have been published in red ink.

Obviously, they couldn’t duplicate that degree of violence in the movie serials. But they got the flavor and the spirit right, giving the Spider a real costume (he didn’t have one in the pulps), keeping his cast of associates intact, and using Warren Hull, who played the lead, in the various disguises typical to the pulp hero. There were two Spider serials: The Spider’s Web and The Spider Returns, and both are quite worthy.

flash-gordon-9076016I’ve left the best for last. The one series of serials I would recommend even to people who don’t like serials or kids who can’t handle black and white and cheesy special effects.

The Flash Gordon serials, Space Soldiers, Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, are blessed with a cast that, by and large, looks as though they were designed by Flash Gordon creator Alex Raymond. All three follow the spirit and direction of the classic newspaper strip, and the first serial is as close to a literal transition from comics to film as I’ve ever seen. Whereas Buster Crabbe is impeccable as Flash and his relative inexperience as an actor inures to the benefit of this part, it is Charles Middleton as Ming who steals the show, as well as the popcorn off your lap.

In my jaded worldview, Middleton’s Ming is the best villain on film, period. He’s evil, he’s imperial, he’s a warrior, he’s a master scientist. He is everything Fu Manchu wanted to be. Middleton pulls it off with style and aplomb without overacting – which, in serials, is unique. The only actor who comes close was Roger Delgado as the original Master in Doctor Who. Even when Ming is being cooperative with our heroes, he doesn’t have a shred of sympathy to draw upon. Ming’s nobility works hand-in-glove with his position as Emperor of all he sees.

These serials are generally available from the usual sources – you might have to Google around for The Spider, but the Flash Gordon trio is easily available. Much of it all is on Hulu, YouTube, and sundry other streaming services.

These are the characters that provided the budding comic book medium with its backbone. It set the standard for all future heroic fantasy films. Check a few out.

 

Flash Gordon (1979) vs Flash Gordon (1980)

  • News
  • March 28, 2013
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The end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s saw fans confronted with two completely different visions for what Flash Gordon could be.

It began in the late Seventies when producers Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer wanted to make a full-blown, live-action Flash Gordon movie, probably for television but possibly for theatrical release.  They commissioned a script that turned out to be, in their description, extremely close to the original pulp source material and potentially amazing as a film–but also far, far too expensive to produce.

flashgordonanimatedcover-6181283Instead they decided to create an animated version of the movie using essentially the same script.  They did so, complete with references to Hitler and the Nazis working with Ming the Merciless, but then decided to revamp the concept into a weekly animated series.  That’s how we ended up with the show as it now exists–known at the time simply as FLASH GORDON but today called “The New Adventures of Flash Gordon” to distinguish it from other versions of the property.

Needing extra money to be able to complete the project, they hooked up with film producer Dino de Laurentiis (he of “Orca” and 1976 “King Kong” fame) to help fund the show in conjunction with the production of a live-action movie.  This, of course, would result in the Sam Jones/Max von Sydow 1980 “Flash Gordon” film.  De Laurentiis saw the animated series as perhaps raising public awareness of the property in the months leading up to his big-budget movie’s release.

As it turned out, the movie was about what one would’ve (or should have) expected from De Laurentiis–an over-the-top camp-fest, best remembered today mainly for its fantastic Queen music score.

The animated series, however, lives on as a mostly very-good-to-excellent example of late Seventies animation (with rotoscoping of human movement, interesting back-lighting effects, and pioneering use of scale models for spacecraft animation).  It’s also just a flat-out great planetary adventure pulp story, with Flash first confronting (as foes) and then gathering to his side the leaders of the various other kingdoms of Mongo, in common cause against their evil ruler, Ming.

As a side note, not only was the animation cutting-edge, the music is excellent (an orchestral score–for a Saturday morning cartoon!) and the women… well, let’s just say you can tell this project was conceived as a movie for grown-ups and retrofitted into being a kids’ cartoon!  Wow!

The series is available on DVD and, with the ability to fast-forward through some of the repetitive parts necessitated by the serialized format of a weekly half-hour show and budget constraints, it is well worth your time.

(Addendum: The voice of Ming the Merciless is performed by Allen Oppenheimer, later known as the voice of Skeletor in Filmation’s “He-Man” and “She-Ra” series.  This might prove distracting to some, as the voice is quite distinct.)

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Harry Harrison: 1925-2012

stainless-steel-rat-1-1192910Harry Harrison, best known for his character Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (adapted into film as Soylent Green) died yesterday at the age of 87.

Harrison started as a comics illustrator in 1947, notably with EC Comics’ two science fiction comic books, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, as well as a short stint on Blackhawk for Quality, and various war, western, and romance comics– even western romance comics. Harrison was one of Wally Wood’s early employers and the man who brought Woody to EC.

He also edited comics in the 50s for very small publishers. He used house names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines, and has published other fiction under the names Felix Boyd, Hank Dempsey, and even as Leslie Charteris on the novel Vendetta For The Saint. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, creating the Rick Random character and writing the Flash Gordon comic strip during the 50s and 60s.

Harrison is now much better known for his writing, particularly his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Ratseries (which was adapted into a comics series by Kelvin Gosnell and Carlos Ezquerra) and the novel Bill, the Galactic Hero (which satirizes Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers). But he may be best known for Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted into film under the title Soylent Green— which (spoiler alert) is delicious.

He is survived by two children, Todd and Moira. Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

Related articles

Read Ardden Entertainment’s Flash Gordon #1 And #2 For Free

  • News
  • December 2, 2011

PRESS RELEASE:

Ardden Entertainment LLC is excited to offer the critically-acclaimed and sold-out FLASH GORDON: THE MERCY WARS #0 and #1 for free! See where Ardden’s Flash Gordon series got started!

Find out why Publishers Weekly, Ain’t It Cool News, Newsarama and others have given it such raves, saying such things as: “With each new issue in (Ardden’s) series we are witnessing the definitive modern take on the Flash Gordon mythos” (Geek Goggle Reviews).

To read FG: TMW #0 and #1, simply click on the following link:

Additionally, any comic book retailer who sends Ardden Entertainment a copy of Dynamite’s FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST #1 will receive a FREE copy of FLASH GORDON: THE SECRET HISTORY OF MONGO, the 80 page trade paperback original that features stories by J.M. DeMatteis, Denny O’Neill, Joe Casey, Jim Krueger, Len Wein, Tom DeFalco, and more!

This 80 page book retails for $7.95! For more information, please email us at Ardden.Entertainment@GoogleMail.com or visit us at http://www.ardden-entertainment.com/

Ardden Entertainment LLC was formed in 2008 and is the proud publisher of FLASH GORDON: THE MERCY WARS, FLASH GORDON: INVASION OF THE RED SWORD, and many more quality comics. They are also the publisher of the upcoming Flash Gordon arcs: THE VENGENACE OF MING, in which Ming invades Earth, and KING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE, promising a Flash Gordon unlike any ever seen before!

http://issuu.com/richemms/docs/www.ardden-entertainment.com

Dynamite Entertainment Releases an Extended Preview of FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST #1

  • News
  • November 29, 2011
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Wraparound Cover Art: Francesco Francavilla
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Cover: Alex Ross

Dynamite Entertainment has released a preview of the upcoming FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST #1, which debuts November 30th wherever you buy your favorite comic book entertainment.

Click on images for a larger view.

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Cover: Francesco Francavilla

FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST #1
32 pages FC • Full issue introductory price $1.00 • Teen +
Written by ERIC TRAUTMANN
Plot and Art Direction by ALEX ROSS
Art by DANIEL INDRO
Covers by ALEX ROSS (75%), PAUL RENAUD (25%), FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA (1-in-10), WAGNER REIS (1-in-25)
“Negative Effect Art” Retailer Incentive cover by ALEX ROSS
“Retro Original Art” Retailer Incentive cover by FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA
“Black & White” Retailer Incentive cover by PAUL RENAUD

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Cover: Wagner Reis

“Sketch Art” Retailer Incentive cover by ALEX ROSS
The year is 1934, a time of two-fisted swashbuckling, of fearsome threats and wild adventure—and of ever-growing threats on the horizon.

Three valiant humans — Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov — are plucked from the Earth, traveling to the distant planet Mongo. Their exploits are legendary, battling the machinations and terror schemes of the dreaded emperor Ming, the All-Seeing Ruler of Mongo. But they did not fight alone…

Written by Eric Trautmann (Vampirella, Red Sonja), from a story and designs by Alex Ross (Kingdom Come, Marvels, Project Superpowers), and illustrated by Daniel Lindro (Sherlock Holmes: Year One).

To learn more about Dynamite Entertainment, please visit http://www.dynamite.net/.

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Cover: Paul Renaud
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Look for FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST #1 in stores November 30th.

Doing Double Duty?

  • Uncategorized
  • August 31, 2011

There’s an interesting article about shared properties like Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars, and The Spider over at Robot 6. You can read it at http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/08/the-middle-ground-67-double-duty/

What do you think? Is having the same license and multiple publishers simultaneously a good or bad thing? Tell us what you think in the comments.

FLASH GORDON (1936)

  • News
  • June 26, 2011

FLASH GORDON (1936)
1936
Universal Pictures
Directed by Frederick Stephani
Produced by Henry MacRae
Written by Basil Dickey, Ella O’Neill, George H. Plympton
Based on the comic strip by Alex Raymond
Say whatever you want about The Internet.  It’s done all right by me so far.  It’s a never ending source of delight to me that I can find and rediscover movies, books, comics and old TV shows that I thought I’d never see or experience again.  But it’s all out there and thanks to the wonderful technology we now have, it’s a joy to be able to relive some of my childhood pleasures.  This is one of ‘em.
Set The Wayback Machine for pre-Netflix days, Sherman. (I’m talking about the 70’s and 80’s, folks) when the only way I could see cliffhanger serials from the 30’s and 40’s was to either borrow them from the library and hope the VHS tape hadn’t been dubbed from a poor copy or wait until they were shown on PBS.  Usually during the summer PBS would have a Saturday night marathon showing of “Spy Smasher” “Perils of Nyoka” “The Masked Marvel” or “Manhunt of Mystery Island” in their original form.  Much more common were the edited versions of cliffhangers that Channel 9 or Channel 11 here in New York would show on Saturday afternoons.  15 chapters were edited down into 90 minutes.  It gave you a good flavor of what cliffhangers were like but that was all.
But now we’ve got Netflix and it was while accidentally finding they had “King of The Rocketmen” available, I hunted up some other serials as well.  Including what is probably the best known and best loved cliffhanger serial of all; FLASH GORDON starring Larry “Buster” Crabbe.   The man was known as The King of The Serials due to his playing in serials arguably the three most popular comic strip heroes at that time: Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Tarzan.  Talk about your hat tricks.
But there’s a reason why Mr. Crabbe got to play such heroes.  The cat looks like a hero.   He had the genuine square chin, steely eyes and a build most guys would give ten years off their life for.  But I think that Buster Crabbe’s real appeal in this serial lay in his Everyman quality.  His Flash Gordon isn’t the smartest guy in the room.  And he’s okay with that.  He’s more than happy to let Dr. Zarkov be the brains of the outfit while he does the dirty work.   He’s clever and resourceful.  He’s got morals and compassion for the little guy.  And when it comes to kicking ass all over Mongo, just step back and give Flash some fightin’ room.
By now, the story is legend.  The planet Mongo is hurtling toward Earth on what appears to be a collision course.  Earth’s weather is going crazy as well as the populace.  Flash Gordon is on one of the last cross country flights as he wishes to be with his scientist father when the end comes.  Also on the plane is Dale Arden (Jean Rogers).  Due to the severity of the weather, Flash and Dale are forced to bail out by parachute and happen to land right near the spaceship of Dr. Hans Zarkov (Frank Shannon) who talks them into a suicide mission to fly through space to the planet Mongo and somehow stop it from crashing into Earth.
Flash and Dale agree to go along and our intrepid heroes successfully make it to Mongo where they are promptly captured by Captain Torch (Earl Askam) who takes them to his Emperor: Ming The Merciless (Charles Middleton) who rules Mongo by fear and terror.  Ming and Flash take an instant dislike to each other.  However, Ming’s daughter Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson) falls immediately in love with Flash and tries to save him when her daddy throws Flash in the Arena of Death with three brutal ape men.  Now mind you, this is just the first chapter and I didn’t even describe half of what happens.
The next 12 chapters are a goofy blizzard of classic space opera pulp adventure as Flash and his friends are chased, captured, enslaved, escape, battle and struggle against Ming while making friends and allies with Vultan (John Lipson) King of The Hawkmen, Prince Barin (Richard Alexander) the rightful ruler of Mongo and Prince Thun (James Pierce) of The Lionmen.
First off let me say up front that you have to have a love of this kind of thing from Jump Street or at least be curious to learn more about this genre.  This entire serial was made for less than a million bucks which today wouldn’t even pay for the catering for some of today’s movie.  So we’re talking about production values that are downright laughable by today’s standards.  The acting is nothing to brag about.  But it is sincere.  Buster Crabbe sells it with all his heart.  When he’s up there on screen he convinces you that he’s in the deadliest of peril even while fighting the most obvious rubber octopus in the history of movies.  And the rest of the cast follow suit.  Especially John Lipson as Vultan who I was afraid would belly laugh himself a hernia, that’s how much he’s enjoying playing the Falstaffian King of The Hawkmen.
Jean Rogers as Dale Arden is kinda blah, even for this material.  She mostly just stands around looking gorgeous in her flowing, gossamer robes.  Mongo must really be hard up for women since everybody who meets Dale wants to marry her.  Her contribution to the story consists of either fainting or screaming at least once every chapter.  I gotta give her props, though.  Not many actresses even today could give so many inflections to one line; “What have you done with Flash?” which is usually all she gets to say.
Princess Aura is much more fun to watch as she’s the real woman of action here.  She’s always pulling a ray gun on someone, even on her own father to rescue Flash.  Something she does a surprising number of times.  There’s even a scene where Aura tells Dale that if Dale really cared about Flash, she’d do something and not just stand there cramming her fist in her mouth to hold back yet another scream.  Whenever she hears Flash has been captured yet again, Aura grabs  the nearest ray gun, holds up her dress so as not to trip and runs off in her marvelously high heels to save him.
Frank Shannon is amazing as Dr. Hans Zarkov, one of the greatest Mad Scientists in fiction.  There’s a scene in the spaceship that made me laugh out loud:  Our Heroes are heading for Mongo when Flash asks Zarkov if he’s ever done this before.  Zarkov admits that he hasn’t but he’s tested with models.  “What happened to them?” Flash asks.  “They never came back,” Zarkov sheepishly admits.  If you watch this serial, check out the expression on Flash’s face.  Priceless.
And while I’m sure that Mr. Crabbe didn’t mind having to wear shorts through the whole production, I would think Frank Shannon and Richard Alexander did since they don’t have the legs to pull that look off.  At least Charles Middleton didn’t have to.  He doesn’t have the fabulous wardrobe Max Von Sydow sported in the 1980 movie but he does have the sufficient gravitas to make us take Ming seriously.  Flash Gordon vs Ming The Merciless is one of the most celebrated hero/villain pairings in heroic fiction and I believe it’s largely due to the work Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Middleton do in this serial as well as the two sequels.  They are never less than convincing and in their best moments they make us forget the cheapness of the production.
So should you see the 1936 serial version of FLASH GORDON?  It depends.  Are you just looking for a casual Friday or Saturday night movie? Then  go Netflix the 1980 version starring Sam J. Jones as Flash and Max Von Sydow as Ming with the absolutely kickass Queen soundtrack.
But if you consider yourself a student of pulp fiction, of heroic fiction in film, of the cliffhanger serial or of the science fiction movie genre or of just plain movies then I say that there is no way you can call yourself a student of any/all those genres and not watch the 1936 FLASH GORDON at least once.  It’s the great-grandfather of 90% of filmic space opera that came after it and need I remind you that the major reason George Lucas created “Star Wars” is because he couldn’t get the rights to do FLASH GORDON, which is really what he wanted to do.  If things had turned out different we might have been watching Flash Gordon, Prince Thun and Prince Barin wielding those lightsabers.
Ideally you should do it the right way and watch one chapter a week on Saturday to get the real effect of watching Saturday morning cliffhangers but I’m a greedy bastard and watched it all in one day with 15 minutes breaks in between.  No, it’s not the same but I kinda think that after the first two of three chapters, you’re gonna keep watching.
Taken as a cultural artifact it is a superior example of a style of film storytelling that isn’t done anymore.  As a gateway drug into pulp in general and as cliffhanger serials in particular, there are few better examples than FLASH GORDON.  Load it up on Netflix and enjoy.
FLASH GORDON has no rating but be advised that it is a culturally and racial insensitive movie by our standard today.  If you’re willing to overlook that and understand it was made in a less socially enlightened time, fine.  If not, give it a pass.
245 minutes (13 Episodes)

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