I don't remember how I ended up there, but a few weeks ago I saw that someone had ripped the entire 1980s, cheese-fest comic book movie version of Flash Gordon and posted it on You Tube in eleven, 10-minute chunks. I hadn't seen it in like twenty years, but I remember viewing it very fondly when I was in Junior High and it was on HBO seemingly every afternoon. I remember my dad being kind of horrified by it at the time, and in retrospect I had some appreciation of how campy it must have been, but I didn't remember thinking it was cheesy, because I didn't have the experience or maturity to understand that concept when I was 12.
I do now, but I watched it anyway, and had a great time.
The You Tube image quality is crap, but it's watchable, and the sound is good and the eleven segments autoplay right in a row, so you don't even need to move a finger to click the next part when one ends (though you'll need to move something when your screen saver comes to life). I watched the whole thing this afternoon, and laughed through most if it, but still enjoyed it, and not just for the nostalgia. It's almost immeasurably cheesy; with the outrageous set decoration, the hammy acting, the jaw dropping dialogue, the Mardi Gras-suble costumes, the physical improbabilities, and the overall sensibility. It's not meant to be taken entirely seriously, thankfully. There are enough nods to the more adult viewer mixed in with the child-pleasing action that you know the filmmakers were in on the joke. I think my favorite element of that was when the hawkmen lined up, like a flying marching band, to spell out "Thanks Flash" in the sky at the end. I laughed so hard at that part I nearly coughed out one of my new earrings.
I recommend alcohol with the film. I watched the first 5 segments straight, but by the time the costume drama entered the second hour I could tell a buzz would help. So I peeled a couple of ruby red grapefruit, partially crushed them, and poured a double shot of Tanqueray into the bowl. Sipping that and eating the fruit during parts six and seven made parts 8-11 much more enjoyable, and I was just about a one-man Rocky Horror Picture Show audience by the pillow-swinging cat fight in part 9. The red digital readout of how many minutes are left before the moon crashes into the earth in parts 10 and 11 had me howling, and when Flash crashes the ship right into the throne room, and it somehow stops without blowing up, but moves just far enough that the point skewers Ming. Moments later, when Flash menaces him with a solid gold broadsword, I demanded that he peel off the foil and eat the chocolate inside. It was easily the funniest thing I've seen this year. In no small part thanks to the pulp-added
greyhound I'd just enjoyed.
I can't really recommend it as a movie, since it's not any good. Unless you're 12. But it's fun for the nostalgia, or even if you've never seen it it's just bad enough to be good. It wasn't sexy at all, which surprised me. I still remembered thinking the princess was super sexy in most of her outfits, and especially when she was seducing Flash during the telepathy scene on her spaceship. Watching it now it was just silly. That was partially due to the low image quality of You Tube blurring her beauty (and everything else), but mostly since I'm not 12 anymore, and the thought of a pretty woman kissing a guy isn't enough to give me tingles in my toes(ies).
Just for fun, here's a breakdown using my usual scoring matrix:
Flash Gordon, 1980
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 7
Physics Believability: -7
Eye Candy: 7
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
I can't vouch for any of those figures, even though I just typed them. For one thing I'm still a little buzzed on the gin, but moreover I'm so not objective about this one. I harbor happy nostalgic feelings for it that cloud my present judgment. And really, it's like critically reviewing a puppet show at a child's birthday. The movie isn't meant to be taken seriously. If you're expecting a serious science fiction drama you won't make it through the opening 10 minutes of MST3K quality-cheesiness, so just turn off your brain and enjoy. As best you are able. Ideally with the aid of alcoholic beverages.
Honestly, it's not any good, but it's fun. And funny. Adjust your expectations accordingly. I was definitely in a forgiving mood, hence my enjoyment. As for the Physics Believability score, a negative seven might be too high, but since the movie isn't trying to pass itself off as realistic, don't let it bother you. I remembered thinking how cool the world/universe of Ming's was when I was a kid, and watching it now it's still cool, if utterly illogical. The "moons" upon which each of the princes and their people live aren't moons. They're small and only habitable on one surface. But how do the "moons" remain aloft, when the're clearly not in orbit? Why/how is there gravity and breathable air all the way up from the surface to the moons? What do they do without any commerce or agriculture? How do they sustain their populations without any women or children?
Leaving aside the sky cities, what are they sky cities above? Ming's planet appears to consist entirely of one quasi-futuristic imperial throneroom/moon base, surrounded by a desert of spiky rocks. What's on the rest of the planet? Where do they grow food? Where do they fabricate materials and technology? Who makes all of these costumes? How does the whole thing travel through the universe? Is it like a world inside a spaceship, with a permanent artificial sun (it's never nighttime in the entire movie) and the illusion of a world?
Furthermore, what's with saving the world? So there's some sort of energy ray chewing up the moon and knocking it out of orbit, so it's going to crash into the earth. That would indeed end life on this orb, but it's not as if the moon would actually have to hit us to destroy civilization. Just a slight perturbation in the moon's orbit would spur tides high enough to swamp every coastal city on the planet. The moon moving closer would cause every geologic fault on earth to rupture, creating nonstop earthquakes of unimaginable magnitude. Volcanoes would pop up all over from ruptures in the crush over the molten core, every river would change course from the broken land, structures would be flattened, etc. Like every disaster movie you've ever seen, x10. And no, it wouldn't just be the Eiffel Tower and Te Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House that got destroyed, like in the movies.
So in the end Flash "saves" us by killing (sort of) Ming, like 1 minute before the moon is going to crash into the Earth. As we've already established, that would be far too late, but that aside, how does killing Ming help? He's not a sorcerer; there's some kind of technology involved, and it's not keyed to his pulse; the energy rays work on their own, and would/should have been disabled by the general destruction to the city (and the earth death ray machinery should have been shown at some point in the film). More likely, the energy rays were only required initially to knock the Moon out of orbit. Once it's become eccentric it's only a matter of time until it crashes into the Earth, and that time could be exactly plotted. So killing Ming wouldn't do anything to stop that; what would be necessary is to use the energy rays to knock the moon back into it's customary orbit. None of which happens. Oh well.
In a larger sense, good scifi or fantasy creates a whole world around the principles, so it seems like a real place in which the protagonists are carving out their own sphere of influence. Bad scifi or fantasy plops down the heroes into an unsustainable world full of special effects and obvious sets, where the main characters are the only people of any importance. That's
Flash Gordon, to a ridiculous extent. The entire population is about 500, and it consists of a few principle bad guys, various good guys, colorfully-garbed extras who serve as moving scenery, and lots of inept guards who serve as cannon fodder.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not a realistic one. And since this movie isn't shooting for that, no worries. The characters need to be evocative though, and they are, if only just. In this sort of film the good guys should be fun to root for, the girls should be hot, the romance should be juicy, and the bad guys should be hissable, and should die enjoyable deaths. They do, for the most part, though I got one disappointment. Three quarters of the way through the film I was sure the evil general lady was
Frau Farbissina, of
Austin Powers fame. It certainly could be her; it's almost the same character, with the same imperious, scowling, yowling voice and Nazi overtones. Sadly, it appears that it's a different actress. I don't know the name of the character in
Flash Gordon and don't care enough to figure it out, but
Flash Gordon is not listed on
Mindy Sterling's resume. It could have been her; she was 27 in 1980, but alas.
At any rate, before I go on any further, here's
the link to part one. The others are all listed in the related films, but as I said, you need not click. They'll all play in sequence if you just let them run.
Labels: movie review, you tube
