He'll Save Every One of Us

For someone born in the early 70's, I feel lucky as to my age when it comes to motion pictures. There have been many many great films before and after this time, but I was the perfect childhood age to see Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tron, The Shining, Blade Runner and all the other great action adventure movies of the late 70's and early 80's. Seeing these movies at any age is a great experience, but for me, it was the age of influence, and these great films helped me to love movies. It was a great era of motion pictures, but there are many that have been forgotten. Some of these movies had a bigger influence than I even knew until I had the fortunate opportunity to catch 1980's Flash Gordon not too long ago.

Flash Gordon is based on the serial stories of Flash Gordon in the 1930's. Flash is Earth's greatest athlete. He is kidnapped by Hans Zarkov, a brilliant (or mad) scientist convinced that the Earth is being attacked. Dale Arden is the beautiful woman who accompanies the two to the planet Mongo where Ming the merciless plans to destroy the Earth, wed Dale, and kill Flash Gordon.

This last summer, I had the opportunity to hear episode one of the Flash Gordon radio program broadcast in 1935. As a huge fan of the movie when I was a kid, I wasn't familiar with the original series, and I was very happy to learn that the 1980 version followed the story exactly. Sure, they made Flash a professional football player rather than just the world's best athlete, but that is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.

The movie stars Sam J. Jones, a real life professional football player turned actor, and is also surrounded by a slew famous actors. Topol plays Hans Zarkov, a pre-Bond Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan a winged foe of Mongo, and then there's Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. Ming is a great villain. He is just evil for the sake of being evil. He plays with Earth because he is bored. He wishes to marry Dale because she doesn't want him, and he leads the people of Mongo with an iron fist because they are too afraid to take him on and defeat him. That is until Flash gets there.

As much as I liked the movie as a child, I thought the movie was kind of dorky and silly. All of the sets are really overdone, and the costuming is over the top. There are little things that bothered me like "Why would people from Mongo call it an earthquake? Wouldn't it be a Mongo-quake?" But it wasn't until I started learning about the old serials of the 1930's and listening to the old radio programs that I learned all of the over-the-top style of Flash Gordon is intentional. They were making the original movie. The original series was over the top. It was overblown and ridiculous and beautiful, and action packed, and everything that the 1980 version contained. This is where it becomes a great homage to the original serial. Knowing that this is how the original series was presented suddenly makes all of these things awesome, rather than cheaply done.

The alien races are very black and white in this movie. Not unlike Star wars, particular races have stereotypical characteristics. I don't mean a group of people who have wings, or another with gold faces, but I mean all of Prince Barin's people feel the same way about the world. All of Hawkman's people feel the same way about the government. This was a huge part of these types of serials. It was very easy to tell the difference between good and bad guys just through their names and clothing choices. This was a huge inspiration for many action adventure movies for years to follow.

Queen did the entire soundtrack of this movie and it's terrific. It's a fantastic example of Queen in its heyday, and a great use of a pop band in the movies. It was a big hit in 1980 and sort of exemplified the music of Queen of this time period. As kids, we used to act out the movie because it accompanies the whole movie so well, not to mention that there are several quotes in the music in case we got lost.

All in all, Flash Gordon was a great childhood movie. It's exciting, fun, and colorful with a very simple story and plot devices. It is a wonderful way to introduce the science-fiction version of good versus evil scenario to a younger audience. As an adult, you can see the remains of the old serials of the 1920's and 30's. Finally as an adult watching with a child, you will be reminded of how much fun it is to be a kid and see this stuff for the first time. Flash Gordon is one of my all time childhood favorites, and now I know that it's not the cheesy movie I thought it was as a kid.