1980 / 111 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

If you absolutely, positively have to watch a big-budget sci-fi movie made specifically to capitalize on the surprise success of “Star Wars”, watch “Flash Gordon”. Truly, accept no substitutes.

For my second entry into a series I’m thinking of calling “Fresh Popcorn”, actually entertaining alternatives to most of the crap at the multiplex, I’ve chosen “Flash Gordon”: a curiosity of a film that would make for a stupendous “Shitty Movie Night” selection. It’s not precisely a “good” movie, but like 2000’s “Dungeons and Dragons” it’s awful in the best possible way.

First, a bit of backstory. In the mid-1970’s a recent University of California graduate named George Lucas was looking for the project to follow up the modest success of “American Graffiti”. Being a bit of a nerd (my hypothesis here) George wanted to make the sort of fun, fantastic sci-fi serial he had grown up on. His first thought was to simply remake, with 70’s effects, the material that had initiated his love of sci-fi to begin with: “Flash Gordon”. Unfortunately, the rights to this property had already been obtained by Dino DeLaurentiis, legendary producer of “Conan: The Barbarian”, the 70’s version of “King Kong” and damn near anything. So poor George was forced to concoct an original science fiction story instead. “Star Wars” was the result.

“Star Wars”, as we all know, was a tremendous hit. Lines around the block. Dino, loving money as he does, was anxious to capitalize on the sudden renewed interest in science fiction and fantasy. He searched far and wide for the next blockbuster involving spaceships and planets and derring do before realizing that he had the rights for “Flash Gordon” all along. Now, this is all pure speculation, but I believe Dino just buys the rights to anything, literally anything, that crosses his path, and then sits on it until he feels the time is right to make said property and get himself a shitload of money. He did the same thing with the rights to the Hannibal Lecter character in the mid-80’s, which is why “Hannibal” turned out to be such a bitch to get off the ground. I’m sure they gave him his honorary Academy Award a couple years back just so they could wrangle the rights for something away from him. (Side note: I’d be curious in knowing what other famous properties Dino has a stranglehold on. If I had a personal army of private eyes, I would send them to find out.)

Dino, the smell of money thick in his nostrils, soon put “Flash Gordon” on the fast track. His first choice for director was Federico Fellini. Fellini passed (probably not enough potential for hallucinatory clown imagery). Nicolas Roeg was next. He, too, passed. According to the Internet Movie Database eight directors passed on this project before Mike Hodges finally climbed aboard. Mike Hodges is most famous for directing the original “Get Carter” which is one of the grittiest and most badass films in the history of film. “Flash Gordon” was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., who also wrote “The Parallax View”, which is another of the grittiest, most badass films of all time. “Flash Gordon”, unfortunately, is not.

When I saw the film, I figured the director and producer had completely screwed with the source material. In the film, Ming the Merciless, an evil emperor from the planet Mongo (”Mongo like candy”) has discovered the planet Earth. It’s so peaceful (from a distance) that he just can’t resist fucking with it. He unleashes a string of natural catastrophes on Earth, apparently by shooting a laser from a ring into a futuristic (for 1980) television. Dr. Zarkoff (played by Topol, whose own name sounds like a perfect fit for this story if you ask me), unlike the rest of humanity, believes that the source of these catastrophes lies in Outer Space. He rightfully thinks some higher intelligence is attacking us, and builds a spaceship to prove his point. He then tricks/kidnaps a football player named Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) and some chick named Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) to accompany him into Outer Space to see what’s going on. They soon arrive at the planet Mongo(loid?) and are immediately captured by the evil emperor Ming (Max Von Sydow). Ming tries to kill them, Flash tries to unite the oppressed people of the universe against him, odd aerial battles and sword-fighting ensue. By the end, according to Queen’s theme song, Flash Gordon has proven himself the, ahem, “savior of the universe” and “master of the impossible”. As I said, I originally thought this plot had to be the deranged invention of Dino and his cronies. Researching “Flash Gordon” on wikipedia, however, I discovered that this plotline is shockingly similiar to the original comic strips, movie serials and novels. Aside from Flash being a quarterback for the New York Jets, everything in this movie is pretty true to the source material.

So let’s rip this sucker apart. Is it a good movie? I wouldn’t go that far. It is, however, easily the cheesiest film I’ve ever seen. Easily. The plot is a loose configuration of coincidences at best, an excuse to get from one silly set piece or alleged action sequence to the next. For being the alleged “savior of the universe”, Flash Gordon doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot. He’s usually being saved by someone else at the last minute, most often Princess Aura (played by the delicious Ornella Muti), Emperor Ming’s own daughter. The only reason we’re given that the evil emperor’s daughter defies her father and rescues this big lug is that she thinks he’s hot. That’s it. The rest of the screenplay is equally lazy. Flash defeats Ming’s thugs in a game of football (ugh) and tries to unite warring factions oppressed by Ming’s cruelty with the stirring speech: “Let’s team up and fight Ming!” Bear in mind I am not paraphrasing that. That’s exactly what the big lug says. It’s a cinch Semple’s script was not nominated for Best Screenplay.

The acting ranges from over-the-top to barely there. On one extreme, we have Flash himself, played with negligible panache by Sam J. Jones. Sam was cast when Dino’s mother-in-law spotted him on an episode of “The Dating Game”. I’m not making that up. Sam Jones parlayed this starring role into…nothing. The remainder of his career was spent in lame B-movies and made-for-cable flicks. Five minutes of his performance is a clear indication why. He could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout and the results would have been virtually the same. And yet he’s not a complete void. There’s something about this guy, some dull charisma that actually keeps you rooting for him. He’s not good, but he fits in with the spirit of this thing. He delivers some of the dumbest dialogue in the world and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t make it sound halfway natural…at least within this cheeseball setting. He’s big, dumb, blonde and he’s got muscles, which is really all that’s required of him. He’s also touchingly naive. Naivete is pretty hard to convincingly play, which is something that perhaps only Keanu Reeves’ fans truly understand. Flash is a big, dumb jock whose enthusiasm and brawn save the world…and Sam J. Jones plays that with a wooden perfection. Melody Anderson is worse as Dale Arden. She’s expected to do nothing more than look cute and act plucky, and a little of that goes a long way. Her performance is pretty forgettable. Pretty much anyone with a pretty face could have done what she does here. Ornella Muti fares much, much better as Princess Aura. She’s a seductive, sexual being sleeping with half the characters in the film…and Ornella sells that to the hilt. It doesn’t hurt at all that she’s hot and has an enticing Italian accent. Though her presence is rather jarring compared to the dreamy, kid-friendly world around her. She even gets tied to a table and whipped, for crying out loud.

On the “over-the-top” side of the scale we have Topol as Dr. Zarkoff. Topol plays a man who believes himself to be the leading genius on Earth, the only man who can see the truth behind the strange weather phenomena and meteor attacks. When we first meet him, he’s trying to get his assistant to test the rocket ship he built…at gunpoint. He’s a man who has the utmost confidence in the power of his own mind and Topol is extremely convincing. He takes this shtick as far as he must to make it work…and then he keeps going, making it work overtime. The same could be said of Timothy Dalton, who is the real hero of the film. Where Flash is a big, dumb, enthusiastic jock, Timothy Dalton plays his Prince Barin with all the flair and exuberance of Errol Flynn in his heyday. Dalton is simply rousing here, a true swashbuckler with a twinkle in his eye. And Brian Blessed is awesome, just awesome, as the hardy and boisterous leader of the Hawkmen. He’s a big, swaggering man with a loud laugh and terrible, papier mache looking wings strapped to his broad back. He gives even the most ridiculous line of dialogue a swaggering, boisterous, full-bodied air, as though each cringe-inducing bon mot had come from the pen of Shakespeare himself.

But none of these hardy souls can match the epic, scenery-swallowing grandeur of Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. If there was a school for overacting, Von Sydow’s performance would be studied like a master’s text and dissected from every angle. It is as though Max knew the rest of the film was rubbish, but decided that, with the strength of his own manic delivery, he could push the film into the realm of high art. And damned if he didn’t nearly succeed. Ming’s velvety line delivery and regal presence reminded me of a line the Merovingian had in “Matrix Reloaded”: “it’s like wiping your ass with silk”. Max Von Sydow has style, class and he attacks every scene with the gusto of a Viking attacking a village in Newfoundland. He takes no prisoners and offers no quarter. He takes the movie by force, and does so effortlessly. Mere words cannot describe the wonder of Von Sydow’s performance, a performance so majestic and awe-inspiring that the entire movie transcends to another level because of it. Sure, this movie is pure cheese, but Von Sydow single-handedly turns it from Velveeta to fine camembert.

The sets are big, elaborate, breathtaking productions. Like Von Sydow, the production department of the film put true love and care into their construction. The forest planet inhabited by Dalton and his subjects is particularly lovely. The costumes are big, garish spectacles. I was astonished that Princess Aura and Ming could stand upright in the outrageous, gravity-defying monstrosities they were required to wear, let alone walk in them. The women in this film wear complex, bedazzling tiaras on their heads that would make a drag queen cry bitter tears of envy. The special effects are pretty terrible, but there’s a cheesy brilliance about them nonetheless. Like the rest of the film they’re not what you might consider “good” but they are definitely entertaining. The production design and effects work didn’t remind me of “Star Wars” so much as they reminded me of “The Wizard of Oz”. They have the same oversized, dream-like quality to them. The worst thing about the movie, aside from the cheesy script and effects, is the score by Queen. It’s always a tricky proposition to have a rock band score your film. It either ends up as nothing more then an album by that band, which threatens to take your entire movie in a different direction than you intended, or the band tries to emulate a traditional film score, in which case you would have been better off hiring a composer. Queen penned one song for the film, and they didn’t exactly bust their ass to write lyrics. The majority of the song consists of the word “Flash” followed by the sort of sound Freddie Mercury might have made during an orgasm. The remainder of the film is underscored by a cheesy synthesizer riff that essentially screams “1980″ at the audience. I’m not sure the film would have benefited from a dozen original Queen songs, but I generally like Queen and I suspect the results would have been better than their half-assed instrumental approach. I don’t think AC/DC is the greatest band in the world or anything, but at least when they were approached to do the music for “Maximum Overdrive” they wrote more than just one actual song.

Add up the cheesy Queen song, the cheesy screenplay, the lovely and cheesy set design and the lunatic enthusiasm of Von Sydow, Topol and Brian Blessed and you get a movie that’s hard not to love. It’s not exactly good, but it is mind-bogglingly entertaining. It’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that actually earns the praise “so bad it’s good”. “Flash Gordon” may have been made to cash in on the success of “Star Wars”, but it’s not just another lame retread of the “Star Wars” formula like so many early 80’s films. No, no, it’s something much nuttier than that. “Flash Gordon” is a deranged triumph, a lovingly staged fever dream of “bigger is better” mentality and bizarre pageantry. It’s really no better or worse than “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and for all the same reasons. It taps into the same sense of camp and love of cheesy sci-fi, and it’s more streamlined, has bigger, better sets, and is arguably more fun to watch. If this movie isn’t shown at midnight in seedy theaters to the appreciative howls of a (possibly gay) cult following, then it really should be.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.