Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Flash Gordon (1980)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Dino De Laurentiis’s 1980 sci-fi comic book extravaganza “Flash Gordon,” directed by Mike Hodges and featuring the music of Queen.
(originally published 2/16/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have a
fun one here for you today. This episode originally published
two sixteen, twenty twenty four. It is our episode on
nineteen eighties Flash Gordon. This movie is an extravaganza, so
we're gonna dive right in, listen to a little Queen
and rock out with its cosmic Shenanigans.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
This is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
In.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Today's film on Weird House Cinema is the cheeky nineteen
eighty science fiction adventure Flash Gordon, allegedly starring Sam J.
Jones and Max Foncito. But I would say more more
like arring Brian Blessed and Queen, and boy, what a
film this is, you know. I was just thinking about

(01:07):
how we cover all kinds of movies on Weird House Cinema.
We do good movies, conventionally bad movies, well known movies,
obscure gems, big and small, loud and quiet. But lately
I think we've kind of been on a streak. We
have featured a lot of very big, very loud type
movies extravaganzas, if you will, specifically movies like this from

(01:30):
the early nineteen eighties that are kind of a weirdness overload.
So we did The Apple from the year nineteen eighty,
we did Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain from nineteen
eighty three, and now we're back with another movie of
this type yet again from the year nineteen eighty and
its Flash Gordon. In the tradition of the other two
I just mentioned, this movie is a lot. It is

(01:51):
almost overwhelming in its thrilling and hilarious flamboyance.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, there's so much here. This is the film seen
many times over the years, and yet going into it again,
you know, watching it maybe for the first time in
oh maybe ten years, there's so much I'd forgotten. So
there were the big things that I was eager to
re experience, and then equally overwhelming things that had slipped
my mind, and things that were maybe a little more

(02:20):
subtle that are also just as weird and wonderful. So
it's quite an experience. You know.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
There are a lot of things I want to talk
about with this movie, but one thing that really struck
me about it is that, and of course it's not
the only movie of this sort, but it felt really
strong here is that this is a movie made with
a palpable sense of nostalgia. It feels interesting because this
now is a movie that's like forty three, forty four

(02:47):
years old. Probably a lot of current adults have nostalgia
foreseeing the nineteen eighty Flash Gordon movie as a kid.
But it's also a project where you can feel how
the filmmakers were trying to with some ironic distance, just
like shamelessly indulge in nostalgia for a type of storytelling

(03:09):
they themselves had loved as children, maybe forty years or
so before that.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, Yeah, getting into Flash Gordon's origins as a Depression
era comic book, it's passed as a part of these
various action serials and so forth. It was a very
influential series, a very influential fiction on a number of
future filmmakers, future writers, future comic book authors and illustrators, etc.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Now, this movie is not overtly a comedy. I guess
you would say that the genre is science fiction adventure.
But it is a deeply funny movie. And you could
look at movies like that that are, you know, not
overtly comedies but are very funny, as the kind that
are intentionally funny and the kind that are not so
intentionally funny, maybe the latter category, you know, ed wood

(03:59):
films such this movie, though, is very intentionally funny, even
though comedy is not its overt category. One way I
would describe this is a defining sensation in watching Flash
Gordon is the thin clacking sound of plastic pieces of
costume armor hitting one another in the battle scenes. Like

(04:21):
it feels like a significant choice that there was not
an attempt to edit out that plastic clacking sound or
to like folly in a weightier sound. It's just part
of the magic of Flash Gordon. You are supposed to
hear the plastic on plastic grind.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, that's a good point about that. The plastic armor. Gosh,
there's so much plastic armor. Yeah. It is an extravagant
campy updating again of this old comic book, this old
series into a kind of late seventies cinematic vision comes
out in nineteen eighty, but you know very much the
late nineteen seventies trajectory getting this film made and it

(04:59):
is out it out yet another sci fi film of
this era that was chasing the hit that was Star
Wars MM, which is ironic, of course, because George Lucas
was heavily inspired by the old Flash Gordon comic books
and actually wanted to make a film adaptation at one point,
but the rights were too expensive, so he began an

(05:19):
alternate journey that would result in Star Wars and the
Star Wars franchise that would spill out of it. In
the wake of the success of Star Wars, however, famed
Italian producer Dino de Larentz, who've talked about on the
show before, picked up the film rights and set out
to produce the picture.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
That is funny and Yeah, I was wondering about exactly
that kind of thing, because for a long time I've
understood that part of the animating spirit behind the creation
of Star Wars was an excitement for this type of
storytelling that George Lucas remembered from when he was a kid, Yeah,
like the adventure serials and stuff, and he wanted to
recreate that feeling with his own movie. I don't think

(06:01):
I realized that he directly wanted to do an update
of the Flash Gordon comics but but that would make
a lot of sense. Ultimately we got Star Wars, which
is a you know, more new, original kind of thing,
which is wonderful in its own right. And then yeah,
like so you're saying that the Star Wars that George
Lucas had to make because he couldn't make he couldn't

(06:21):
get the rights to Flash Gordon ultimately inspired them to
make a new Flash Gordon movie.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah. Yeah, Essentially, Star Wars is an evolution of the
basic concept. So in a way, what you know, Dealer
Interesting sets up to do is kind of it almost
feels kind of backwards by comparison, Let's go back to
the thing that inspired the amazing new thing and see
what we can create. And you know, to their credit,
it doesn't feel as much in its substance like a

(06:48):
Star Wars ripoff. It doesn't feel like you're chasing Star
Wars so much, certainly not as much as other pictures
we've talked about. But yeah, with this film have come
into being without Star War being the success that it was,
he can make a strong argument that it would not. Now,
of course, Dino de Lorento's was not going to direct this.

(07:09):
You know, it's a predominantly, it's always been a producer
puts the pieces together right. At one point he had
none other than Nicholas Rogue attached, who of course directed
The Man Who Fell to Earth, which we previously discussed
on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I love Flash Gordon the way that it is, but
I wish we could have seen the Nicholas Rogue version.
I'm imagining it would be a lot sadder and more
psychologically complex and would have like fifty times more full
frontal nudity.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, yeah, there's there's actually a whole special feature about
this project that never came to be on the Arrow
Blu ray of Flash Gordon, which I watch for this
this episode rendered from videodrome. Of course, Rogue apparently wanted
to make a big Hollywood picture, and a lot of
work went into writing and storyboarding his vision for Flash,

(08:00):
and they point out that Rogue was notoriously protective of
his vision for a picture. In the end, however, Dino
didn't think that his vision was fun or funny enough.
It was apparently like pretty serious and you know, just
like you'd imagine, it wasn't as campy as what we
end up getting, and so he Dino de Lerence is

(08:22):
get ends up going in a different direction, someone perhaps
more suited in his view for the vision that he
sees for Flash Gordon. And also, according to some of
the commentators that they talked to in this feature, atte
someone who's maybe a little a little more willing to
play the game with a producer like Dino. So, yeah,
it's always fun to imagine, you know, pictures that could

(08:43):
have been, especially with some of these big, big films
like this. But you know, it's hard. It's hard to
imagine another version of Flash Gordon being as fun as
this one is.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I think that would fully depend on whether they got
Brian Blessed or not. And it's sounds like the rogue
version of this film, Brian Blessed's presence would not make
as much sense.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, he is the atlas holding up this picture. I
don't have an elevator pitch for Flash here, Joe, I
don't know if you if you do it, I mean,
it's Slash Gordon. What can I tell you?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Here's the elevator pitch.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
I love you, but we only have fourteen hours.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
To say the.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, all right. Let's
listen to the original trailer audio here because and if
you haven't seen the film, and there's a lot to see,
but still the sonic experience of the trailer is pretty convincing. Clides,
I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?

Speaker 3 (09:45):
An obscure body in the SKA system of your majesty.
The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I like to play with things. While before annihilation pathetic earthly?

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Who can save you?

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Now? Drange object imaged in the Imperial Botic?

Speaker 3 (10:17):
He said, who.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
The art woman? They paid half for a pleasure? Don't
killing yet? Father? I want him to flesh to.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
F can out.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Side. All right, Well, if you want to go out

(11:30):
and watch nineteen eighties Flash and Gordon, there are multiple
places to see the film these days. It wasn't always
the case. I remember a period of time when I
wanted to pick the movie up and I don't think
it was available on disc gett. But again, I watched
it on the excellent Arrow Blu ray. That Blu ray
also includes the full length documentary Life After Flash, amid

(11:50):
a bunch of other extras.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
I just streamed it on one of the major services
and the quality was good, So yeah, it's out there, all.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right, let's talk about the people involved here. Okay. So
the director ist Nicholas Rode. The director that Dino Dealer
NTO has ended up going with is Mike Hodges, who
lived nineteen thirty two through twenty twenty two. English director
and writer, whose first big film hit was nineteen seventy
one's Get Carter starring Michael Kine, followed by seventy two's Pulp,
seventy four as the Terminal Man, and seventy eight's Damien

(12:20):
Omen two.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Ah, that's the Omen movie with the like the all
Boys Prep School. Okay, have you seen that one?

Speaker 1 (12:27):
I haven't seen that. I know you went through a
tear with your Omen movies a while back.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, a couple of years ago, or either last year
or the year. Maybe it was just last year. Rachel
and I watched all of the Omen movies. We enjoyed
the second one. I don't know if i'd say it
was good, but we enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I just subsequent credits after Flash included eighty five Morons
from Outer Space, eighty nine's Black Rainbow, and two thousand
and threes I'll Sleep when I'm Dead. Also, he did
some TV, including a nineteen eighty six action movie called
Florida Straits with Roald Yulia in the lead role. And
he also did two music videos for Queen Flash, which

(13:04):
is of course is one of them. The songs from
this film as well as body language.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Weird coincidental or I would assume coincidental double Panos Cosmatos
overlap This guy is a movie called Black Rainbow, and
in Flash there's a planet called Arborea, which is the
name of the center in Beyond the Black Rainbow by
Panos Casmonos.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, those connections are there. I one has to believe
they have meaning. Now, apparently Hodges had the right energy
for this project, which, according to some of the bits
I was watching on the Blu ray, involves a lot
of sort of going with the flow on such a
large and at times it sounds like maybe slightly chaotic project,
you know, because you know, a lot of moving pieces,

(13:48):
and I think there were definitely some places where they
say that, you know, they had to kind of make
things up on the fly to figure out how to
piece everything together.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
I think with one advantage of doing a big extravaganza
movie like this is that the success of the film
doesn't hang so much on the on the story being
executed in a coherent way, so like you can have
you can have a lot of things kind of like
get pieces get moved around and things get messed with,

(14:18):
and still over all the experience will kind of work.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect with Flashboard,
which is not to discount the talent that went into
this film, like so much about the the just the
visual flare of the film, and we're not even gonna
be able to get into all the names involved there.
But yeah, so many pieces do come together perfectly. It's
just that you can definitely tell there moments where things
feel like certain scenes have been rushed in terms of

(14:45):
the overall vision for the picture and the flow of
the plot. Uh huh, all right. The screenplay credit goes
to Lorenzo Simple Junior Live nineteen twenty three through twenty fourteen,
American writer whose credits include one hundred and twenty episodes
of the original Batman series, which I think is telling,
but also films like nineteen seventy three's Papillon, seventy four's

(15:08):
The Parallax View, seventy fives, Three Days of the Condor,
the nineteen seventy six, King Calling Movie, nineteen eighty three's
Never Say Never Again, and nineteen eighty four Shena. The
other writer that's credited is Michael Allen, whose other credits
include Enter the Dragon and also a half dozen other titles,
but Flash being the biggest by far, and it's where

(15:31):
we also should point out that the character Flash Gordon
was created by Alex Raymond, who lived nineteen oh nine
through nineteen fifty six, an American cartoonist an illustrator who
created Flash for King Features Syndicate back in nineteen thirty four.
And I believe it was essentially an attempt to like, like, Okay,
the competitor has Buck Rogers, we need a Buck Rogers too.

(15:52):
Let's make him. Okay, what are we gonna call him? Well,
we can't call him Buck. How about Flash? We can't
call him Rodgers? How about Gordon? There you go make
it work. And it grew from that. All right. Now,
getting into the cast here, I'm gonna try and divide

(16:14):
it up among our core factions. You know, it's sort
of like Game of Thrones here, we have different factions involved.
We're gonna start with the Earth Links, all right. First up,
we have Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon born nineteen
fifty four, former US marine model and American football player,
who was cast in this film over various hot commodities

(16:35):
in Hollywood due to his debut in the nineteen seventy
nine Blake Edwards ten. His professional life after Flash, which
is again is the subject part of the subject of
his twenty seventeen documentary, consisted of a lot of TV
work as well as films like eighty five's Jungle Heat,
ninety two's Maximum Force, and a lot of just you know,

(16:55):
general action television action films not necessary like The Cream
of the Crop, you know. But he worked a lot
more recently. He was in both Ted and Ted two,
and he remains active to this day.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
It's easy to see why he was cast when you
think about this movie as a comic book adaptation, because
he has such a comic book illustration look about him,
more so than most biological humans.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, there's no denying has a great look. Also no
denying that he's rather green. But at the same time,
it's it's almost unfair to compare his acting to other
actors in the film, because you know he and also
is co star Melody Anderson, who will talk about in
a minute. I mean, they're in there with just an
international cast that features not only like very tenured actors,

(17:47):
but also generational talents, and so it's you know, how
can you compare one to the other. And then also,
and I think this is more important he gets there's
a fair amount of fun that's made at the expense
of this character and to a certain degree of this performance.
But I think it's pretty perfect, right, I mean, what
more do you want from the role of Flash Gordon here?

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Oh yeah, come on, let's be nice to Sam J. Jones.
He does Flash great. You know what, what would you change?
What kind of notes are you going to give him?

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah? I mean if we were talking about Nicholas Rogues
flash Gordon, yeah, okay, maybe that's a different animal we're envisioning.
But this vision, this Flash Gordon, I think there's nobody
else you put in there. I've read that people like
Arnold and even Kurt Russell, who would have been interesting
in this role. You know that they were up for it,
but it just I can't imagine it wouldn't be the same,

(18:38):
wouldn't be the same. I'd go as far as to
say that Arnold even at the time, would have been
wrong for this role.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, I'm an Arnold defender. You know, a lot of
people make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting, but I think
he's actually a better actor in a lot of ways
than people give him credit for. But I don't know
if he's who I want. Is Flash?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, and I'm definitely not In nineteen eight Now I
mentioned Melody Anderson. This is the actress playing Dale Arden.
This is the other key Earthling. This is his I
guess it's not his girlfriend at the beginning, but becomes
essentially the Flash Gordon love interest.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
So.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Anderson was born in nineteen fifty five Canadian actress who
started off on TV with small parts and shows like
Welcome Back Catter, the Logan's Run TV series Battlestar Galactica.
She also had a supporting role in John Carpenter's nineteen
seventy nine Elvis TV movie.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Oh Interesting, Did that have Kurt Russell in it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (19:34):
That was Kurt Russell as Elvis.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
She followed up Flash with a nineteen eighty one horror
movie Dead and Buried nineteen eighty six is Firewalker, and
various TV shows she retired from acting in the mid nineties.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
You know, I think Melody Anderson's a lot of fun
in this She has the right you could tell she
has the right sense of humor in approaching this role.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah. Yeah, so I like her in this role as well.
All right, So that's two out of three Earthlings. The
important third is doctor Hans Zarkoff played by Topol Topel
lived nineteen thirty five through twenty twenty three Israeli actor, singer,
and illustrator, best known for his starring role in nineteen
seventy one's Fiddler on the Roof and his supporting role

(20:19):
in nineteen eighty one's For Your Eyes Only. It's been
a while since I've seen For Your Eyes Only. He's
not the villain in that Bond movie.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
He's like, no, he plays ally. Yeah, he plays a
criminal that Bond ends up joining forces with to take
out the villain in the end. He's sort of like
a lovable rascal smuggler.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah. Other projects of note include the starring role in
a nineteen seventy five Galileo movie, and he also shows
up in one episode of Tales of the Unexpected. And
I have to say, it's easy to forget about this
performance in a movie that features both you know, Brian
Blessed and Max Foncido just aim for the rafters with

(21:01):
their performances, but Topaul hits the ground running with some
just great a ridiculousness, just also just really chewing up
the scenery well also later on the picture, you know,
breathing varying degrees of not only ham but also thoughtfulness
in some of the scenes. So it's he does a

(21:21):
great job.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
And you know, for this picture, Yes, I'm gonna say
this character in Topoul's performance is all over the map.
It's inconsistent, but it's mostly very good. Like he's zany
in some scenes, and he brings a very good, convincing zaniness.
There is one scene I want to talk about later
that I think is just wildly tonally inappropriate for the

(21:46):
movie in that it gets very serious and even emotionally
moving in a way that does not exactly feel welcome
in the context. But it's mostly because of him that
it works out that way, and it's quite powerful. Strangely,
I think you know what I'm talking about, Like the
mind conditioning scene.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, yeah, that'll be a good one to talk about,
all right, let's get into Ming's court though, this is
like the centerpiece of the film. And of course, as
we mentioned already, we have Max Foncido playing Ming the Merciless.
Foncito lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
So one of the things that has not aged well
about this movie is that I think it's pretty undeniable
that there are some elements of racial caricature in the
way Ming the Merciless is imagined.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, it is important to note that the character Ming
is along with the likes of fictional characters like Fu
Manchu and more than a couple of characters from like
Marvel Comics and so forth. There are examples of the
quote yellow menace trope, and it's also a character here
that's steeped in orientalism and racial stereotypes. Various later adaptations

(22:56):
of Flash have sought to distance the character from these origins,
and I don't know. In this picture we see kind
of like a mixed approach there where certain things are done,
but also you could make a strong argument that not
enough is done, certainly by modern standards.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, So from what I understand, I'm not deep on
a Flash Gordon lore. From what I understand the character
is is an alien, so it's not like he is
from a country on Earth. But it's just that in
the way he is depicted, it relies a lot on
like on visual and thematic cues associated with stereotypical Asian villains,

(23:32):
mainly Fu Manchu.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Right right, So that's that's undeniable with this particular film.
For a long time, I always felt like, Okay, well,
Meeing here feels more Satanic. He feels more like they
patterned him after the Church of Satan's founder Anton Leavy.
But I was looking into that more recently, and I

(23:55):
saw folks online pointing out that Leavey may have patterned
his personal look on Ming the Merciless, Oh, because he
would have grown up with the old flash comics and
and I assume the older film adaptations and serials and
so forth. So on one hand, though, if they did
do that, if they did say, let's make Meing more
like Anton Lavay, well, if Anton Lavay was mimicking Ming

(24:19):
the Merciless from the old comic books, then then what
are you doing? Just going in a circle at this point.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, I would say that in this movie some visual
elements that I think are still being borrowed from the
racial caricature version of this character. Are there on the
way on the way that Max Foncido is dressed and stuff,
but it is not there in Vonsido's performance. Like he's
not performing a racial caricature, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Right, He's not doing a voice. He's playing it and
he's playing it pretty straight, and really he brings a
certain grandeur to the role, like it's it's you know,
these issues aside, it's a very fun performance. It's a
very you know, over the top and entertaining villain role.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yeah, I would agree. So it's just it's just a
bummer that these elements are still somewhat there.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah. Now, as for Max foncidoa legendary Swedish French actor,
I think everyone has seen something he was in. If
you have watched these movies at all, you stand a
really good chance because he was active for like seventy years,
as his career spanned that long. His Swiss credits go
back to nineteen forty nine. Igmar Bergman's nineteen fifty seventh

(25:34):
film The Seventh Seal was his real like international breakthrough role,
expanding his career to include a host of European and
American films. His many films include nineteen seventy three is
the Exorcist, nineteen eighty two's Conan the Barbarian, eighty three's
Strange Brew just to you know, mix it up a
little bit, eighty four's Dreamscape, eighty four's Dune. He is

(25:57):
in Ghostbusters too. He's the uncredited voice of Vigo the Carpathian,
the real villain of that piece.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, nineteen nineties Awakenings, nineteen ninety three's Needful Things. He's
in the ninety five Judge Dread Movie, two thousand and
two's Minority Report two thousand and nine, Solomon Kane. He late,
very late in his career. He pops up in twenty
fifteen Star Wars, The Force Awakens, and TV's Game of Thrones.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Wait, I feel like I see more Dino connections here.
Didn't Dino de Laurentis produce the eighty four Dune directed
by David Lynch.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah? I think he must have been a favorite, uh
of Dinos? Yeah? Interesting, but it's he's he's again one
of these actors who drop him in just about anything.
Be it something like very serious or something more on
the campy, you know, or even blockbuster scale, and he
brings he brings a certain grandeur to the role. He
brings a certain power in presence.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
He improves anything he's in.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, all right, so that's Meing the merciless. But Meing
has a daughter, and this is Princess r played by
Ornella Muti born nineteen fifty five. This is the evil princess,
evil seductive princess, very sort of typical role that you
might imagine if you haven't seen the film. Muti is

(27:14):
an Italian actress's who has worked extensively in Italian TV
and film, so a lot of her credits are not
things I'm not familiar with, but her early credits include
Romberto Lindsay's Oasis of Fear that's from nineteen seventy one.
Ray Lovelocke is in that We've touched on Ray love
Locke before, but she went on to appear in such

(27:34):
films as Tales of Ordinary Madness in nineteen eighty one
and the nineteen seventy nine Russo Italian movie Life Is Beautiful.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
She does also some wonderfully comical overacting in this, which
again I think is intentional, like the way she's ogling
Flash Gordon in the first scene where he comes into
the palace throne room is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Now, an, this is essentially our b villain. This is
a mean, immediate underling that like Lord's over his secret Police.
This is the character Clytis, who is kind of a
If you're familiar with this character, think Doctor Doom except
gold Mask, and that's essentially who this character is.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Great villain, extremely over the top, perfect sardonic vocal performance
by the actor here, and also a physical performance which
seems unnecessary given how heavy these costumes all apparently were. Like,
even if they are made of plastic instead of metal,
these were apparently really weighty.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah. And he also is just like a comical depiction
of evil in that he frequently makes statements of disgust
whenever someone expresses love or selflessness in any way. You know,
somebody is like, Flash, I love you, and he's like pathetic. Yeah,
this is a fun performance. The actor here is Peter Wingard,

(28:56):
who of nineteen twenty seven through twenty eighteen British television,
stage and film actor, best known without the mask for
playing the fictional Jason King and a pair of British
TV shows.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
His other credits include sixty ones The Innocence and nineteen
sixty two's Night.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Of the Eagle Top Shelf hinge Yes.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
But then there's another hint, and this is kind of
Clytus's Hinchman or hinchwoman, and that is Kala played by
Marian Glimlato, who lived nineteen forty one through twenty thirteen,
an Italian actress whose other credits include nineteen seventy three's
Love and Anarchy and nineteen seventy four Swept Away. Both
of these were directed by Lena Vertmula. And we're co

(29:39):
starring gian Carlo Janini, who, of course great Italian actor
who's been in a lot of big international films.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah she, I guess we're gonna have to say this
about a lot of actors in this movie. But she
also is doing some very pleasing overacting, just like really
punctuated over annunciation of her lines, if you know what
I'm talking about. Yeah, uh, it's it's really good stuff.
She has a lot of really good lines that get
singled out and appear in the Queen tracks. I guess

(30:07):
we'll get to that in a minute. But like when
dialogue is sampled from the movie. A lot of the
dialogue is either Brian Blessed or her saying lines like
what do you mean flash Gordon approaching?

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Yeah, I mean it's Flash of Gordon. Go big or
go home? Shoot for the rafters. Don't leave your subtle
acting at home, because that's whatnot that's what That's not
what this movie is about.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
And yet the very next actor we're going to talk about,
I would say, gives one of the sort of straightest,
cleanest performances in the movie. And yet is I would say,
quite good.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah. Yeah, we're getting into the faction of the Arboians,
who are I guess you describe them as space elves
kind of like what if the Ewoks were British dudes?

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yes, exactly right, Yeah, if the Ewoks were just humans
dressed like Robin Hood.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yes, there's space Robin Hood's yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we
have Prince Baron. Is Baron here Baron? They just say Baron, Yeah, Baron.
Prince Baron played by the great Timothy Dalton.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
In this role, he is handsome, swave, dangerous. He's great
when he's one of the bad guys, and he's great
when he's one of the good guys. I really like
him in this.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, and he's got that swashbucklan mustache. So it's a
great look for this film that is ultimately hinging on
a lot of nostalgia for the like old action serials
and so forth. Totally yeah, so yeah, future James Bond here.
At the time, he already had some really impressive credits,
including sixty eight's The Line in Winter, seventies Cromwell, a

(31:36):
nineteen seventy adaptation of Worthering Heights. Of course, he plays
the lead in that. What's his name not Garfield, the
other one Heathcliff. Yeah, and he followed Flash up with
a number of period pieces for TV before taking up
the role of Double O seven for nineteen eighty seven's
The Living Daylights.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Funny thinking about Wuthering Heights because Heathcliff is a classic
byronic hero, and Baron in this movie is kind of
a byronic hero.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yeah, you need a character like that in a movie
where your other like romantic lead lead guy is just
a football beef.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Man, you know. And I think maybe this comes back
to his casting in the James Bond franchise. He only
did the two films, the other one being Licensed to
Kill from eighty nine the follow up. But he was
kind of like a pivot to a more dangerous Bond,
right getting away from the Roger Moore series, which I
mean a lot of love for Roger Moore, but I

(32:32):
think at the time people had kind of maybe had
enough of the hammier comic side of Bond, and they
wanted something a little harder, which is kind of an
up and down trajectory you see throughout the entire franchise.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Roger Moore is a very languid, dry humored Bond, you know,
he's just he's a very raised eyebrow and quip kind
of Bond. Timothy Dalton. Yeah, they brought in to be
a much darker, meaner, more emotional and dangerous feeling James Bond.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah. Yeah, kind of unpleasant Bond, if you will.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
But in a way that's an interesting place to take
the character.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And and I remember I was quite
a fan of him back in the day because when
I was a kid during like my Key Bond movie
appreciation period, like he was the new Bond, he was
the current Bond, and I remember feeling a bit betrayed
when we changed bonds after only two films. I was like, no,
this is not You're not supposed to switch out after
two You're supposed to keep it, keep him going for

(33:31):
just years and years and years.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah. I could see what you mean, especially because after
after him doing two movies, they switched to Pierce Brosden,
which was basically a reversion to the Roger Moore bond. Yeah,
it's more again the raised eyebrow and the quip.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
And then going dangerous again with the with the harder bond.
So I think we're due for a comic bond. I'm
people keep talking about, Oh, which which, which handsome fella
or or or lady or what have you is gonna
play bond next? But really the pattern shows we need
somebody funny. We need somebody with that dry wit and.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Like a bond who doesn't sweat.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
This is the thing about the funnier bonds, like Pierce
Brosnan and Roger Moore just seems like they move less.
They're more just stationary, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, Yeah, we'll see what they put together, all right.
So that's the Prince of the Arborians. They are a
bunch of Arborians. But the only other one that really
matters for just our quick discussion here. We may touch
on some others later on, but we have Richard O'Brien
playing the character Fikoh.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
I didn't catch him at first. It took me a
bit to realize, like, well, wait a minute, that bold
guy's Richard O'Brien.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, that's right. Born nineteen forty two, the mastermind behind
the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he also played
riff Raff, the future Mister Hand in nineteen ninety eight's
Dark City. So it's a very small role, of fun role,
and we'll come back to rich O'Brien another time.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Are we done with the cast yet?

Speaker 2 (34:57):
No?

Speaker 1 (34:58):
No, because the next faction we can't forget the Hawkmen.
Oh yeah, and we cannot, absolutely cannot forget the Prince
of the Hawkmen, Prince Voltan, played by Brian Blessed.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Brian Blessed, did you say.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
That's right? Oh my god? This has any actor ever
made such a feast of his lines as Brian Blessed
in this film.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Maybe I've said this before, but he is vomiting digestive
enzymes all over the scenery so he can slurp it
up like a spider.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, he is like the galactus of consuming the scenery
for sure. Oh my god, every moment Brian Blessed is
on screening, this is just amazing, just I mean, a
booming actor for starters. Even if you didn't see him,
if oh, you've only heard him, if he were voicing
a puppet, it would be overpowering. And it's just so intense.
But on top of that, you get to see him

(35:54):
and he has this, you know, just intense eyes and
a laugh that somehow manages to allow you to see
all of his upper teeth at once.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah. Yeah. One way I was thinking about it was,
you know when there's an actor in a movie who
only has one line and they're like a little bit part.
They have one line, but they're trying to be really memorable,
so they go way over the top. He's like that,
except he has like fifty lines and he treats every
one of them like that.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
He does Oh my god, like the famous one that
will come back to being Gordon's alive. I can't even
do it the way he does, like the way he
says it. He just complains, you've heard it. It's just
how does he do it? I don't know, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
He looks like he has bitten people's fingers off, you know. Yeah,
and just imagine somebody got too close and he just chomped.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, I mean, just amazing physical presence that would be clear.
The Hawkmen is well described. But they are wearing like
sort of like leather pants and like and belts, and
they have big like helmets on with horns, and then
they have full sized like eagle wings. So there's a

(37:06):
lot going on here in the visual presentation of Prince Fulton.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
A lot of leather straps and stuff, and they've got
these clubs that have a hook on the end. It's
a very nasty looking weapon.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, some sort a vicious cudgel. And then I think
they all have spraytn on as well. Yes, all right,
so we'll keep talking about Brian Blessed. But yeah, he
is a legendary actor of stage, screen and TV. A
lot of his early roles were on TV shows, such
as the nineteen sixty three Musketeers series, in which he

(37:38):
of course played Porthos. He was also on The Avengers
a few times. Other TV roles include I Claudius in
seventy six. He was on multiple episodes of black Adder
in eighty three. He was in an eighty three adaptation
of the Hound of the Baskervilles. He was on Doctor
Who in eighty six. He was on the series Crossbow
in eighty seven, and he made a big splash of course,

(38:00):
Henry the Fifth in nineteen eighty nine, directed by and
starring Kenneth Brona.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Oh did he play Exeter.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
I had to look it up, but yes, yes, that
was the role he played in The Nice Perfect He'd
ultimately appear in four of the five Shakespeare films directed
by Kenneth Brona, the others being Much Ado About Nothing
in ninety three, Hamlet in ninety six, and As You
Like It in two thousand and six.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
I can just really imagine him getting mad about tennis balls.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
So really too many things to list here, but we
do have to mention that he provided the voice of
Boss Nass in The Phantom Menace and continues to do
just a lot of voice work, So he's still still active,
at least as a voice actor.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Has anybody ever interviewed him about like what he was
thinking going into this role, Like what why did he
choose to act to the level that he did.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
You know, I didn't see anything offhand. I'm sure someone
has asked him about it, but I mean I don't know.
I almost like, why would I question the man? Like, yes,
he nailed it, you know. I mean, this is a
very like loud, boisterous character, and he's just played as
loudly and boisterously as possible. Okay, all right, now at

(39:16):
this point we're we're gonna skip ahead a little bit again.
I'm skipping over so many talented people involved with the
visual look of the picture. But we've got to get
to the music.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Oh lord, the music. That's one of the real stars
of the film.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
That's right, because now we have sort of two things
going on with the music here. We have the more
traditional swashbuckling orchestra music in this picture, and it's very
effective and again fitting since you know, swashbuckling and so forth.
But this is the work of Howard Blake born nineteen
thirty eight, whose scores include nineteen seventy Seven's of the Duellists,

(39:51):
That's the Ridley Scott picture, eighty three's Amityville three D.
And he was nominated for a BAFTA for his work
on this film. But the rest of the music is
famously the work of the legendary rock band Queen.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
I knew the song the theme song from Flash Gordon,
before I knew there was a movie Flash Gordon, Like
way back when I was letting like middle school, I
somehow was able to download an MP three of the
Queen song Flash and not even realize that it was
connected to a movie. I just thought there were these
wacky lines people were saying in the song.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, because the track as is featured on the soundtrack
for the album, which is available you know, anywhere you stream,
anywhere you find Queen music, you can find this. It
has all these samples from the picture, which in their
tremendous samples, like any they managed to fit like so
many great lines into the track.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
We get Flash gordons alive, we get what do you mean,
Flash Gordon approaching, We get I think Dispatch, Dispatch, war Rocket,
Ajax to bring back his body.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yes, so many great lines. So this movie in nineteen
eighty six is Highlander. Are the only films that Queen
ever really worked on in this sort of exclusive capacity,
you know, in both cases creating tracks exclusively for these films,
with Flash being the only film where Queen contributed not
only to the soundtrack but also to the score. This

(41:20):
is something I don't think I quite appreciated as much
until recently. But yeah, some of the most stirring and
just vibe defining tracks in the score for Flash Gordon
are Queen compositions.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah. Yeah. So there is the main theme, which we
can talk about, I mean that has like singing in lyrics,
but there also is a lot of just great sort
of mood music, you know, setting the scene for things
happening in the plot. That is part of the Queen score.
You know, these great these drum tracks when they're like
approaching the Imperial Vortex and the you know, the the

(41:52):
pulsing synthesizers and all that that are just doing the
you know, the regular work that a film score needs
to do to put you in the in the right
frame of mind for a scene. But it's it's part
of what Queen contributed.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah. Yeah, So the writing credits are broken up a bit,
but Freddie Mercury is credited for Ming's theme. This is
a blistering synth number that plays whenever, especially the first
scene when we see Ming, you know, enter the throne room.
And then Brian May is credited on Flash's theme, John
Deacon is credited on execution of Flash, and Roger Taylor

(42:28):
is credited on in the space capsule the love theme.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
It's amazing how well Queen fits the subject matter. And
so we were talking about this on chat before we
came into the to the session here. But I was
thinking about how part of Brian May's signature guitar sound
is that like that harmonized double lead thing where he would,
you know, he would multi track lead guitar lines and
solos in harmony together, and that it just sounds like

(42:56):
Flash Gordon. But he was doing this from before the
Flash Gordon soundtrack. He does that on you know, much
earlier albums.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, it's I have to have to
admit with Queen, I've I've been a Queen fan since
I was a kid, but I've always been a Queen's
Greatest Hits Queen fan, So like, there were a lot
of tracks I missed out on and had to like
re explore later on. And I've never been like like
super tuned into like their trajectory from one album to
the next. But I was reading an article by an

(43:24):
author by the name of Ryan Reid. This was on
Ultimate Classic Rock dot com. It came up in search
titled how Queen embraced the synthesizer on Play the Game,
and this article points out that Queen first embraced the
synth on their nineteen eighty album The Game, just six
months prior to this film score.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Mmm, yeah, okay, so they had said I think on
earlier albums that they were not really interested in synthesizers
like that. They even had one album that in the
liner notes it had a little dig that said something
like no one on the synthesizer. But then they I
guess they came around to it, and you know they
use it. Well.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, absolutely Again, that ming track Meing's theme alone is
just so great and just sets the tone.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
I was trying to think of another non musical movie,
meaning like a movie where the characters don't sing, that
has an original soundtrack with music that has lyrics about
the characters and plot, which the title track here Flash
does have and doesn't just play in the credits that,
by the way, plays within the movie. There are the

(44:29):
parts where you hear them singing about Flash. Is there
another I can't think of another thing like that?

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, And to be clear. It needs to be a film.
It doesn't not a film that is based on a ballad,
but a film that has essentially a ballad that was
created to be the theme song for the picture about
the main character.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yes, exactly. It'd be like if there was like a
Captain America movie that had a song that played what
in a scene in the movie with lyrics about Captain America?

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Who? I guess the main example that comes to mind
is the theme song to Shaft.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Oh, okay, there you go? Or I can't remember. Does
that only play over the credits or that plays in
the film as well?

Speaker 1 (45:11):
I don't remember, you know, I don't know that I've
ever seen Shaft, but I mostly just heard the theme song.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Okay, we gotta go back and confirm that. Listeners, if
you can think of examples of songs like this, let
us know, contact a stuff to blow your mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
All right, well, let's get into the plot of this baby.
Because there's a lot of stuff that happens.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
We're not gonna be able to do the entire thing
in exquisite detail the kind of detail deserve. We'll have
to skip over some things, but we'll do our best.
So it begins with the star field, and we hear
the humming of the engines of a starship, and then
we hear the voice of Max Foncido, who's again playing
the villain Emperor Ming, who says he says, Clitis, I'm bored.

(46:02):
What plaything can you offer me today? And the voice
of Clyta says, an obscure body in the s K system,
your majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth,
and then we see giant Sci fi crosshairs zooming in
on the planet Earth as it rotates in space, and

(46:22):
Ming says, how peaceful it looks. And then we see
a close up of a gloved hand with this elaborate
chunky ring and the ring lights up, seemingly activating some
kind of machinery. Then we see a console with flashing
indicators that say things like earthquake, tornado, hot hail, typhoon.

(46:44):
What is hot hail? I don't know?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Will we find out ya?

Speaker 3 (46:48):
And then just here laughter, and Clita says most effective,
your majesty, Will you destroy this Earth? And Ming says later,
I like to play with things a while before annihilation,
and then we begin the pulsing of the theme song
by Queen the title screen Flash Gordon, which is written
in this great I don't know what you call this

(47:10):
kind of font, but it's a it's kind of swooping
script with red and gold letters. And then over the credits,
we occasionally see television feeds of natural disasters occurring on Earth,
intercut with hand drawn imagery from the Flash Gordon comics
and the sound of Max Foncito laughing again. He's just back.

(47:31):
They're going, Oh, these tornadoes are hilarious. And after the
credits finish, we go down to the surface of Earth
and we are at some deserted rural airfield where we
meet Flash Gordon. Now you might expect him to be
doing some heroic or impressive stunt at first encounter, but
instead he is sitting in a station wagon reading a newspaper,

(47:53):
listening to football on the radio, and watching the hot
hail come come down around the car while he's waiting
for a flight. So maybe he's more active when he's
not waiting for a flight.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
This whole section of the movie, it's it's interesting to
look at because this movie knows it needs to get
into outer space as soon as possible. It knows that
any time spent on Earth in a mundane setting is
wasted time for this film. But they've got to do it.
They've got to set these characters on Earth before you
can place them in this other world. But the clock

(48:26):
is ticking and you got to get them there before
you lose the audience. And I think it's commendable. They
try and keep the pace up.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Oh yeah, it moves right along. By the way, I
shouldn't mention that Flash Gordon is wearing a T shirt
that says Flash.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
He's got a brand he's got to represent, you know exactly.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
We see another passenger who's going to be on the
same flight as she arrives in a transport van from
a local resort. This is Melody Anderson playing Dale Arden,
who we learn is a travel agent, and they exchange
a meaningful glance as she passes by his car, and
then they both get on the airplane. It seems to
be some kind of private flight. It's not a commercial flight.

(49:03):
They're like no other passengers, just the two pilots, Flash Gordon,
Dale Arden. So the plane takes off soars into the sky. Meanwhile,
the ming induced weather gets worse. We see hot coals
raining down from the sky and just plunking into bodies
of water, leaving these trails of steam and what. In
the airplane, the pilots are talking about their famous passenger.

(49:25):
One of them says, well, I sure hope Flash Gordon
had a great vacation. He's going to have to work
hard to top last season. And he's also holding an
issue of People magazine with Flash Gordon on the cover.
So we learned that Flash Gordon is a famous football player.
And I was watching this with Rachel and we were wondering,
is Flash Gordon already known to be some kind of

(49:47):
hero or savior of the world at the beginning of
this movie. Is this like another one of his adventures,
or at this point is he simply a famous football
player and this movie depicts the first of his world
saving adventures. I think it is the latter.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I think so. Yeah, I think he's football famous at
this point.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Anyway, the plane starts jerking around in the air, and
we hear Max Foncito just bellowing laughter again, echoing through
every corner of space time, and the turbulence is clearly
upsetting Dale, the travel agent, because she is afraid of
flying the irony of this is noted, and then Flash
goes up to check with the pilots to see if

(50:26):
anything is wrong, and he suggests that the air might
be smoother at a higher altitude. This amazing early example
of arrowsplaning. I think all flights should allow passengers to
come up to the cockpit and tell the pilots what
they're doing wrong. Anyway, Dale, who appears to be extremely

(50:47):
uncomfortable and anxious, yells up to Flash to tell him
to leave the pilots alone. So he comes back, and
he starts telling her that the plane is bouncing because
of turbulence. He's like explaining how turbulence works, and they
start chatting and hitting it off. A Flash confesses that
he saw Dale at the hotel the night before and
ask the matre d who she was, because he was.

(51:08):
He's clearly he's smitten. He's like, I couldn't believe a
girl like you was alone, and she's, you know, impressed.
They're flirting and stuff. Flash talks about how he's taking
flying lessons, more about how turbulence works, and then out
of the windows the skies turn red clouds of blood
block out the sun and somehow ming the merciless appears

(51:29):
bodily in the form of a giant meteor in the
sky and abducts the two pilots. I didn't quite understand
this part. It doesn't seem to fit with anything else.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
This is never explained, But this is what appears to happen.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yes, But also like Ming seems confused when they show
up later, So it's not like Ming is trying to
retrieve the specific plane of Flash Gordon. He doesn't know
who Flash Gordon is.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Yeah, it seems to be a questionable choice.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
So Flash and Dale they go up to the cockpit
and pilots are missing, so they try to takeover flying
the plane, but it is clear we are headed for
a crash landing. Meanwhile, elsewhere, we check in at some
kind of remote atmospheric monitoring facility where two scientists are stationed.
One of them is doctor Hans Zarkov played by Topol,

(52:16):
and we learn from TV reports he is a researcher
formerly affiliated with NASA who has been ridiculed and dismissed
by the scientific establishment for basically suggesting that all the
bad weather is being caused by alien intervention instead of
regular physical forces. Zarkov's partner gets woken up when flaming

(52:37):
rocks crashed through the skylight and set his blankets on fire.
He wakes up Zarkov. They look at their feeds and
stuff and figure out what's going on, and the scientists
observe that the sun is blotted out due to an
unscheduled eclipse. H that's not supposed to happen. The Moon
has been spiraling into the Earth, and Zarkov takes of

(53:00):
this situation. He concludes, this is it. This is the
alien attack. It's begun. All my fringe theories are finally vindicated.
So he's got some kind of scheme where he has
constructed a secret rocket ship that will be used to
fly up into space and counterattack the evil that is
causing the moon to spiral into the Earth. But the

(53:21):
rocket ship needs at least two people to operate it.
I don't know why he built it that way, but
that's what he did. Zarkov tries to get his partner, Munson,
into the ship, but Munson doesn't want to do this.
He freaks out and runs away. Zarkov tries to appeal
to his spirit of humanity. He's like, yes, they will
probably die on this mission, but they alone have a

(53:41):
chance to save the human race. Anyway, this conflict is
interrupted by a plane crash. Flash and Dale, their plane
crashes into Zarkov's laboratory. Does the plane crash kill Munson? Unclear?
We just never see him again.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah. I took it to mean that Munson had just
taken it off, but oh, Okay's unclear.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
But Flash and Dale survived the landing. They're fine. They
climb out of the plane and meet Zarkov and they're like,
can we use your phone? And Zarkov is like, oh, yes, yeah,
good to see you. You're well, yeah, the phone is
right here inside this rocket ship. So they go and
they go inside and then Zarkov confronts them with a revolver,

(54:23):
explains his plan, locks them inside, and they blast off.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Yeah, Zarkov is just in full mad scientist mode of
this whole this whole initial meeting, Like we were saying earlier,
this performance, this character is all over the place. But
that's where we are now with him.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
He is a mad scientist, but he's like a benevolent
mad scientist. He's very committed to like sacrificing his life
to save the planet Earth.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yes, and his and his plan to save the planet Earth.
As we'll find out, he's basically go into space with
a pistol and take out who's responsible.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yeah, confront the leader of whatever aliens are caused the
hot hail and just and shoot them. I guess.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
So anyway, the rocket launches into space and our heroes
pass out from the g forces that we see Dale
and Flash join hands as they lose consciousness, so they
are quickly like they're they're basically already in love there,
you know, love story are complete at this point.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Yeah, and we're finally like rid of the Earth. At
this point, we are successfully in space. We don't have
to worry about the real world anymore. It's just going
to be aliens and craziness from here on out.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Disgusting Earth, get it out of here. There's a shot
where they're in Earth orbit and we could see like
a dozen planets hanging in the background. What what are
all these extra planets? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Everything's been thrown into disarray.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
So our heroes are unconscious and we see their space
capsule drift through space towards this vast spiraling portal. It's
kind of like a whirlpool of color in the void,
and then we see a close up of some alien
creature in like a command room somewhere. Humanoid face, pale skin,
bald head, cold voice, with computerized goggles over his eyes

(56:06):
that have all these creepy gold displays on them, and
the aliens has strange object imaged in the Imperial Vortex.
One thing I noticed. It's out of frame in the
screenshot I have for you to look at, Rob, but
did you notice the little hood ornament on the top
of their goggles has a free Mason symbol on it.
It's got the little square encompass.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I didn't notice it as much here, but I think
Clydus perhaps has some symbolisms on him that look like
Freemason imagery.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
So yeah, I don't know what to make of that.
Somebody snucks them in there. Maybe it's a coincidence, but
it seems like they're suggesting that the aliens are Freemasons. Anyway,
the spaceship tumbles into the vortex, and this part I
thought was just awesome, Like the feeling it creates is
so exciting. The score is heavy with synth, bass and drums,

(56:56):
and I like the sound of the drums. It's like
a very cool like dry top sound with this marching,
galloping beat, and in the background, space is represented as
this chaotic fusion of colors, like different shades of paint
or spilled together and mixing on panes of glass. It's
very cool.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Yeah, it's like a psychedelic liquid light show, like a
Joshua light show thing going on. Like that's this movie's
vision for what space is. And I have to say
I really like it. One of the things that I've
liked about like the Spacier Marvel Cinematic Universe movies is
that they two varying degrees embrace this kind of like

(57:36):
a colorful fantasy space setting for their pictures.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Yeah, that's great. I mean it's not like your movie
needs to be realistic anyway. It's unrealistic in other ways,
so why not make it beautiful?

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Yeah, but this goes even beyond anything. If you've seen
MCU films and you haven't seen Flash Gordon like in this,
like you don't even see any darkness of space. There
is no darkness in space. Everything is colors and psychedelic intensity. Right.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
So we hear Alien Mission Control talking about this object
with Clytis. They are instructed to bring the craft through
the sea of fire and land it safely at the palace,
and the effect shots here involve a lot of miniature
models and sets. As we see the ship approaching on
the Ming planet, I think it is the planet called Mango.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
I think I believe so. Or that's the city I
can't remember as the planet or the city.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Yeah, or they also say Mingo about something I don't know.
So they're moving through these little models sets and miniature
sets and it's great, stuffed to some degree, intentionally corny looking,
I think, trying to invoke a nostalgia for earlier films
and serials with corny special effects, but at the same

(58:47):
time a spell binding pleasure for the eyes. It is
equal parts corny self parody and genuine finesse.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, and a lot of like have excellent craft went
into creating these models and sets, for sure.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Absolutely. Yeah. So flash Dale and Zarkov they crash land,
they're taken prisoner by the Emperor Ming's evil guards, and
they are escorted to the heart of the palace and
there's like a giant state room that they pass through
that has this red and gold motif with these giant
statues of Ming's head Some of the soldiers are covered

(59:22):
in gold armor that seems slightly Samurai inspired. Others look
like old school sardok car and they've got like red
robes with hoods with the faces completely hidden behind gas masks.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Oh yeah, the gas masky guys that we see. They
also have kind of a mobious look to them and
remind me of They also look like something that could
be a villain from like Super Mario Brothers too.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
They look like they may well be following the smoke
to the rift filled land.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
So, as the heroes are walking through the middle of
this massive room full of alien soldiers, Flash and Dale
comment that this place looks like quote a police date,
and Zarkov says that that could be to their advantage
because it will mean they can easily find allies. Zarkov says,
look at them, the poor wretches are just waiting for

(01:00:10):
someone to lead them in revolt. And Dale is like,
will you stop talking about revolts? I just want to
go home.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Another thing we should mention here is this flying robot
that occasionally vaporizes people. I think this is called the
Imperial Globe. It's like this floating gold thing that has
spikes on it, and sometimes it it shoots people with lasers.
The globe commands the prisoners to follow it, and on
the way to meet with the Emperor, the globe executes
another escaping prisoner, a lizard man, and it removes the

(01:00:41):
revolver from Zarkov's pocket. Also, should we take a minute
to mention the lizard man in this movie. They are
a sort of unexplained faction. But they've got like they're
like snakeheads with open mouths that have fangs and their
faces are inside the snake mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
It's incredible, like it it's not situation. Oh, it's complex,
like it works on several different levels because it's sort
of like you have a crappy costume of a lizard
in which the person's face is in the mouth, but
then they've taken that concept and evolved it to where no,
there's like red flesh inside the lizard's mouth and it

(01:01:18):
has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Yeah, it's
so weird.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
So it's not like a person's face hiding back there.
There's like a face represented in the mouth as part
of the costume.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah. So, and it's it's equal parts goofy but also
like it gets here, your wheels turning, Like, what's going
on here? Do these things like manifest the mouth? Is
this just for communicating with the humanoid world? Like, what's
going on? It's so weird?

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
No idea. Anyway, they move on. The Zarkov says here
that he's going to sacrifice himself to kill They haven't
met Ming yet, so he doesn't even know who Ming is.
I guess whoever the boss is of the bad guys.
He's gonna do it. He says, it's a quote, it's
a rational transaction, one life for billions. But the globe
overhears this and destroys Zarkov's gun.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Oops, now we're back to square one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
The globe is a real tattletale. This will come up
again in the next scene. So we pass on to
the Throne room, which is just an avalanche of all
these different like characters and aliens, costumes, designs. One type
of character in that stands out to me are these
guys in red hoods who have the golden skull masks,

(01:02:33):
but they look like sad skulls, so like you know,
the eyebrow ridges of the gold skulls are sloped downward
as they received from the bridge of the nose, which
you know, when the eyebrows are tilted that way, we
naturally interpret that as a sad face. So for some reason,
these rigid gold masks are sad.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yeah, they're kind of like sad muppet skulls, but made
of gold.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Interest weird choice, I don't know. And there's so many
other types of aliens assembled here. They're like these people
who are like they have like black and white motifs
split down the middle of their costume. There seem to
be like delegations from the many different planets that are
subjugated by the emperor here. But the Emperor demands fealty,

(01:03:18):
and one thing that's for sure is everybody's got to
show that they're loyal to him. So when Emperor Ming
shows up, everybody starts screaming his glory. They say, Hail Ming,
Hail Emperor of the galaxy. And here finally we see
Max Foncido as Emperor Ming. He emerges from red fog
as if he were the Devil incarnate, and he's bald,

(01:03:39):
he has a goatee, he's very arched eyebrows, and he's
wearing this big like red robe with a high collar.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Yeah, and again that the queen music that synthesize their
track is just blaring and it's fabulous.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Here we also meet Ornella Mooti as Princess Aura, the
daughter of Ming, and when we first meet her, she
looks like a walking jewelry display case. It's just like
a bikini made of gold and diamonds, and this like
crown on the head that's sparkling. From the moment the
Earthlings enter the room, she's ogling Flash Gordon. So I
think we know what's going to happen here. She wants

(01:04:16):
Flash Gordon.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
One of the interesting things about all of the especially
like Ning's Court, there are places where they reference the
idea that the human mind is much more limited, it
doesn't have the same capacity for thought that these other
alien characters have. But these other alien characters, for the
most part, don't seem to be displaying like heightened awareness

(01:04:41):
and heightened cognition, Like they're just focused on pursuits like
romantic pursuits and pursuits of the flesh and so forth,
as opposed to any other kind of like higher functioning
that I guess they're supposed to be doing here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
I don't know, maybe they have extremely standard carnal desires.
Basically all the aliens do. None of them are really
shown to be, like, I don't know, considering the philosophy
of deep space or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Yeah, I mean, maybe they're doing all that in the background,
and that's why everything else is dumped down a bit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
In this scene, we also meet Peter Wingard as Clytas.
This is the figure in the black hood with the
spiked shoulder pads, also wearing a rigid gold mask. This
mask does not look sad. Instead, it looks kind of
coldly curious.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it's his total like vibes of doctor Doom,
of destro from g I Joe, that sort of thing.
Great presentation here, a golden death.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
You know, I was waiting for his big unmasking scene,
but I don't think it ever comes, or if it did,
I must have missed it was there. Any time we
see him without the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Mask, we see some stuff leak out of the mask.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Yeah, that's it, all right. We're not done meeting characters.
In the scene. We meet a couple of princes. We
meet Brian Blessed as Voltan, the Prince of the Hawkmen.
We meet Timothy Dalton as Baron, the prince of the Arboreans,
I think the tree.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
People, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
And when we first meet these to they are fighting
with each other. They're arguing about who gets to present
the fabled ice Jewel of Phrygia to Emperor Ming as
a tribute. Voltan tries to present it first, but then
Barn comes into the room and says, you stole that
from me. I unearthed it to give to Ming as
a tribute. I saw it first, but then Voltan stole

(01:06:19):
it and they get mad at each other. They're about
to duel, but then Clydas shuts it down. He says,
no one in the palace dies without a command from
the Emperor. And oh boy, Brian Blessed looks so eager
to fight. He also, his beard looks so wild. It's
very like, I don't know, it's very like not smoothed out.

(01:06:40):
It has the look of like when a cartoon character
gets like electrified and like their hair stands on end.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Yeah. I mean, it's rare to see a picture of
him without a full glorious beard, but this one I
feel like, Yeah, they made it more bushy than usual. Here.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Yeah, now we gotta have a scene here in this
big gathering where we witness Ming's cruelty. So we see
the prince of one of the assembled peoples here, the
Prince of Ardentia named Thun and he's dressed in sparkling gold,
and he approached it. He's called up before Ming and
he's like, we have suffered greatly since you blasted our kingdom.

(01:07:18):
He says, they don't have any riches to offer, but
the Ardentians can offer their loyalty.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
You pointed out that I'd forgotten to mention them in
the crew. I mean, there are a lot of actors
in this film. We can't mention them all. But this
is George Harris playing Thun Born nineteen forty nine. Fans
will definitely recognize him as Katanga in Raiders of the
Lost Art small part, but a memorable one, and he
also played Kingsley shackle Bolt in the Harry Potter films.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Yeah, so Prince, he goes up before Ming and he's like, okay,
we can offer you loyalty. That's all we got after
you attacked us. And Ming commands him to show his
loyalty by falling on his sword. So Prince he tries
to do it, do a smart double cross, Like he
tries to look like he's gonna fall on the sword
but then strike out and kill Ming, but the globe

(01:08:07):
robot gets in the way. It like freezes him in
place before he can do it, and then Ming kills
him with his own sword.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Purple blood right or blue blood? I can't remember, but
some sort of crazy alien colored blood.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
Oh yeah, The aliens in this movie have many different
colors of blood, except for Timothy Dalton, who appears to
have regular He's got like red blood, which makes you wonder,
is Timothy Dalton just an Earthling who has been transplanted
to Arborea? Don't know?

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Yeah, you think they would have green blood because it's
just you have aliens with all different colored bloods, and
I guess you probably have that whole situation going on
here where sensors famously are okay with blood if it's
not red, you can have as much as possible if
it's green, but if it's red and they're like, okay,
it's too much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Yeah anyway, So our Earthlings watch Ming just murder this guy,
and then Flash mutters to Dale, this Ming's a psycho.
Then the glow robot overhears him in tattles. It like
blares out on the speakers. This Ming is a psycho
and they're like, who said that? And now all eyes

(01:09:10):
are on the Earthlings, including Princess Aarra, who is still
aggressively ogling Flash Gordon from afar. Gordon does notice this,
and he like looks back at her and Dale gets jealous.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
Also, they've never explained this really, but Princess Aura just
has like a guy on a leash.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure this is Deep Roy, an
actor who's come up on the show before. Again, very
very deep Gast on this picture. Among other things, Robbie
Coltrane shows up at the airport scene early on in
the picture. Hits a blink and you miss it situation,
But there's Robbie Coltrane.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
I didn't even notice anyway. So the humans come forward
and Ming is like, who are you? Flash says Flash Gordon,
quarterback New York Jets. I didn't expect we were going
to get a specific team, mentioned, Dale says, Dale, Arden

(01:10:08):
your Highness live and let live. That's my motto. And
then Zarkov says, my name is Hans Zarkov. I am
a scientist. I kidnapped them here in an effort to
save our planet Earth, and Zarkov goes on to say,
you know, we're interested only in friendship. Why did you
attack our planet? And the Emperor Ming explains his mindset.
He says, this is a quote why not pathetic Earthlings

(01:10:30):
hurling your bodies out into the void without the slightest
inkling of who or what is out here? If you
had known anything about the true nature of the universe,
anything at all, you would have hidden from it in terror.
Oh that's a kind of I didn't expect it to
go in that direction, but that's that's kind of creepy.
It has some cosmic horror going on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Yeah. Absolutely, there are moments like this in the picture
where yeah, it'll get really serious and like, oh man,
this meaning is terrifying, and then you know a football
game may break out.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
That's right. So well, first, Ming like he looks at
Dale Arden and he is suddenly filled with lust and
he's like, ah, yes, you are my new imperial concubine now,
and he hypnotizes her with his ring and like makes
her do this weird slow dance. It is an unusual
vibe and Ming, I guess he's happy with what he

(01:11:25):
sees and he's like, okay, she's mine. Now sees her
and Flash Gordon says forget it, ming Dale's with me,
and then we commenced the football fight. This had to
be one of my favorite moments of the movie, where
the fight breaks out and the form the fight takes
is football more so than you're probably imagining here. So like,

(01:11:46):
at first there, Flash Gordon starts fighting the soldiers and
he's having trouble defeating them until Zarkov snatches like an
egg from one of the aliens in the room and
the egg is basically football shaped and he throws it
to Flash Gordon and then this apparently like activates his

(01:12:07):
football brain so he can tackle the bad guys. Rob,
I don't know what you want to say about the scene.
There is a lot going on and it is really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Your note on it being more football theme than you
can possibly imagine if you haven't seen the film is
totally on point, because yeah, it is like a straight
up football game that breaks out to the point where
there's a There's this one moment where Clyde has like
gets some of the cronies and again these are okay,
two things. First of all, The aliens who are engaging

(01:12:37):
in the football fight are of like a different type.
They have different armor that strongly resembles like football padding.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
Yes, they're dressed up like football players.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Yeah. And then when they when they're getting their butts
kicked by Flash, Clydus jumps in and he's like, all right,
huddle up. He like does like a football coaching thing
where it's like you need to do like this, do
this play. And they go out and try it, and
it is. It is tremendous fun. It is just absolutely goofy,
and it can come as a shock, Like I say,
if you kind of like we're buying into ming a

(01:13:09):
few seconds earlier and you're like, oh man, this bad
guy's pretty terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
We go from cosmic horror to football fight in like
eighty seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Yea.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
And also in this fight, Dale is doing cheerleader cheers.
She's like, go Flash, Go Flash. Also, Brian Blessed likes
what he's seeing. He keeps just like watching the fight
and grinning gigantic toothy grin, casually intervening here and there
to help out Flash.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Yeah, tripping a few aliens us, I think he uses
the cudgel on them. A little bit too.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
Yeah, but he's doing it like on the sly. I
guess they didn't get caught. But unfortunately this fight ends
with Flash getting knocked unconscious. I think Zarkov like screws
up and it's his fault. And so Ming is victorious
over the Earthlings. And Aura goes up to Ming and
she begs him to give Flash to her, even though
she's already engaged to be married to Prince Baron Timothy Dalton.

(01:14:04):
She's like, no, give me this other husband as well.
I will marry both of them. But Ming refuses. So
Zarkov is taken away by Clytis to be conditioned for
the Imperial Secret Police. Flash is to face public execution
later that night for his defiance of Ming.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
The football rebellion is over.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Oh yeah, so yeah, they're they're imprisoned and condemned. So
we get one. One scene that comes up soon is
this little well. First, there's a there's a moment with
Prince Prince Baron and Princess Ara where he says he
doesn't trust her, but she convinces him to go back
to Arboria tonight and she will come and meet him
there with a surprise and then we see Flash in

(01:14:45):
prison in Ming's dungeon here wearing one of the best
helmet mask things I've ever seen. It looks like a
like a giant die of some kind, and it's got
spikes shooting out of it where his face would be.
I don't is if that's like to prevent anybody from
getting close to his face. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Or maybe it's because if he runs away, he'll like
stick into the wall and then he can't move. I
don't know. It looks impressive, though.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
So as a final request before his execution, he tells
Clydas that he wants to see Dale, and they're given
a moment together, and Clydas, of course regards it as
pathetic that they are in love. And Dale comes in
in her emperor's concubine uniform and the first thing Flash
Gordon says when he sees her is you look great?

(01:15:34):
That about adis rolling on the floor. You look great anyway.
They say that they hope this is only a bad dream.
You know, soon they'll wake up, and Flash tells her,
you know, after he's dead, she's gonna have to meet
up with Zarkov to find a way to save the earth.
So we go to the execution and it's going to
take place in this chamber that's like a hat. It's

(01:15:55):
like a glass hemisphere with this chair where this like
yellow smoke comes out out that is apparently some kind
of poison that will kill Flash Gordon. The execution scene
set is actually gorgeous, with these clouds blooming in the
sky and all these bizarre costumes. It's really again one
of the many feast for the eyes scenes here.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Yeah, it's like a cross between church and a gas
chamber exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
And the Imperial Surgeon is a character we meet in
this scene. He's dressed in like white robes. He looks
very boring compared to everybody else around him. He's like
the square in Ming's palace. And we see him slip
Flash Gordon some kind of secret medicine before the execution.
And there's a great moment in the scene where I
think we see Dale and Zarkov and they're watching Flash

(01:16:43):
Gordon be prepared for execution and they're crying, and Princess
Ara says to Ming, look, water is leaking from her eyes.
In Ming says it's what they call tears. It is
a sign of their weakness.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
Yeah, this is I mean ultimately an important theme in
the film is that what humanity offers is is compassion
and reason and that's what that's what's ultimately going to
win the day, and that's that's ultimately what Flash has.
That is his superpower, but it's not helping him out
a lot right now.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
Right well, No, in fact, what helps him out right
now is that he is good looking, and Aura is
obsessed with him because she, in fact has gotten the
Imperial Surgeon to give him an antidote that will protect
him from this yellow smoke that is supposed to poison him.
So he just like gets knocked out by it, and
we come back to him later in this room where

(01:17:39):
his coffin is laid out next to like a stylized
custom tombstone that says Flash Gordon Earthling executed by.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Ming oh man. That's so good it's its branded.

Speaker 3 (01:17:52):
So they wake him up and the Imperial Surgeon is like,
I'm a fool doing everything you ask for Aura, and
she kisses him and she's like, Yep, you're a fool.
You're gonna do everything I say, and so he scurries
off and Flash awakens wearing weird plastic underwear, and Aura
kisses him and tells him she has revived him with magic,
and she's like, quick, put on this uniform before the

(01:18:14):
lizard men arrive to bury you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Everyone is if you're executed by Ming, you are buried
in hotpants. That seems to be the tradition.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
Yes, and as oh, by the way, I mentioned this
scene coming up. As Aura and Flash are escaping the palace,
they pass by a room where doctor Zarkov is strapped
to a table with some giant beam emitter aimed at
his head and she's like, oh, it's only conditioning, come on,
And so they leave. Aura and Flash leave the palace,

(01:18:42):
but then we zoom in on this room where Ming
and doctor Zarkov are talking, and Ming explains his whole plot.
He says, quote, every thousand years, I test each life
system in the universe. I visit it with mysteries, earthquakes,
unpredicted eclipses, strange in the wilderness. If these are taken

(01:19:02):
as natural, I judge that system ignorant and harmless. I
spare it. But if the hand of Ming is recognized
in these events, I judge that system dangerous to us.
I call upon the Great God Diezan and for his
greater glory and for our mutual pleasure, I destroy it utterly,
and so Zarkov realizes. He says, you're saying it's my fault.

(01:19:26):
The earth is being destroyed, and Imperi Ming says, precisely,
it's a real bad twist. But then they explain, okay,
they're going to empty his memory as we might empty
your pockets. They're going to steal all his memories out
of his mind. And then we get this brain wiping
scene where we see, like, as this beam is beaming

(01:19:47):
at his head, we see on a television screen Zarkov's
whole life playing like in super speed in reverse. We
see all these formative memories, personal tragedies, family struggles. So
in the middle of this goofy movie, this sequence is
strangely powerful, mostly because of the way Topaul performs it.

(01:20:08):
We see him like losing his wife in a horrible accident,
we see his family suffering under the Nazis, and finally
he regresses to being a baby and he just says, Papa, Papa.
I don't know what to make of this. I would
say it is wildly tonally inappropriate for the for the film,
but it's also quite strong. It's strangely moving.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
Yeah, this is exactly how I've always felt about this,
or that's the way I feel about it now. I
remember seeing this when I was a kid, and this
scene was like kind of disturbing, you know, because it's
it's you're used to seeing characters vaporized by lasers. We've
seen it already in this picture, you know, run through
with swords. But this is just this is this is

(01:20:52):
rather poignant and disturbing. And yeah, we just had a
football fight, now we're having this. So it seems like
something that maybe he should have been cut or maybe
should have been saved for another movie. But again, the
performance is so solid. What can you do? And and
and the way they the images are cut together with
other like random images of like cats and faces, it's yeah,

(01:21:13):
it's quite troubling.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
Yeah, I would say it's like really good, but it
doesn't belong here.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
It's so weird, like this belongs in the Nicholas Rogue
movie that he didn't get. This needs to be in
that alternate reality.

Speaker 3 (01:21:27):
So back to the goofy stuff. We see Flash on
Aura's rocket ship. They're going to ar Borea, and this
is the scene where he like, you know, he'd like
endangers the ship in order to convince her to allow
him to use the thought Amplifier, which is like a
telepathic communicator machine, to contact Dale telepathically and let her

(01:21:47):
know he is still alive. She's hanging out with I
guess Ming's other concubines, and she she's just like she
thinks he's dead, but this conversation lets her know that
he's alive, and she she sort of gets the idea, Okay,
I got to escape here and do something now, Flash
and Aura. They go to this place ar Borea. This
is like a moon or a planet characterized mainly by trees.

(01:22:10):
It's sort of an Ewok village, as we were saying,
but full of people, including Timothy Dalton and Richard O'Brien,
and we witness this interesting ritual when they first arrived
there where like a young man, he says, I am
now of age, greenfather, I ask for the test of manhood,
and this ritual commences where he has to go around
this like tree root and reach into one of many

(01:22:31):
holes in it. If he reaches into the wrong hole,
he will be stung by this weird tree beast. It's
like a scorpion inside the tree that has a venom
that tortures people with madness until they die, and he
does get stung. So this kid is like Timothy Dalton,
you must end it now, and Timothy Dalton Mercy kills him.
And this is apparently they're they're very harsh initiation into

(01:22:53):
adulthood and their society.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
Yeah, the tree Beast sequences are very memorable. In fact,
I was watching this with my wife last night. She'd
seen it before, and I was at one point we
reached we reached a point in watching the film where
I was like, Okay, do you want to go to
bed and I can finish it in the morning, And
she's like, no, I need to stay up at least
until the tree Beast scene happens, at least until they
started sticking their arms into the big stump. So we

(01:23:20):
ended up watching the whole thing. But that was nice,
one of her favorite scenes.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
It is quite mean. They're actually a couple of these scenes.
So we see this other guy failed to test early on,
and then Aura dumps dumps flash on this planet. He's like, Barn,
take care of him. I've got to go back and
do other things. I'll be back and Barron does he
like this? Of course not. This is like my fiance's
other boyfriend just has to hang out with me. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Yeah, so he's gonna instantly orchestrate his death.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
Right, So they like put him into this cage that
gets lowered into the green swamp below the trees, and
he's there with these other prisoners. Oh, it's a very
it's a very unpleasant set piece. They're like up to
their shoulders just barely trying to keep their heads above water. Meanwhile,
there's a there's a great escape scene where Dale she's like, Okay,

(01:24:08):
I gotta get out of here. So she orchestrates an
escape where she they bring her this kind of like drug,
this like drugged beverage, and they're like take it, you know,
it makes everything feel good, And so she's she gets
the servants to drink it instead, they fall unconscious. She
swaps uniforms with them, escapes the escapes the palace by

(01:24:31):
like doing some real moves. I didn't expect Dale to
become such an action hero in the movie, but she's
like running around beaten up and blasting a bunch of
the soldiers on her way out.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
No explanation whatsoever for it, but that it's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:24:44):
Great. Yeah, it's like halfway through the movie they just decided, wait,
what is she not just a damsel in distress like
she you know, she she's kicking butt too. As you said,
it is not explained, but okay, great, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
Maybe it's because she drank a little bit of that
potion from the Galaxy Pleasure or wherever they said it
was from, and so she drank just enough to give
her like super combat the skills, and that's what we
see here.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
That's right. Yeah. So she meets up on her way
out of the palace with Zarkov again, which at first
we worry is agent Zarkov an apparently brainwashed drone form
Ming and Ming thinks this guy is working as a
double agent. But once they're out of the palace, Zarkov
has this moment where he reveals he is still himself
and he still has all his memories. He I couldn't

(01:25:29):
fully understand it, but he says like he was able
to resist the brainwashing by holding onto memories including I think,
the theories of Einstein, bits of the Talmud, and songs
by the Beatles. And then he says that like spoke
focusing on these specific memories allowed him to keep all
of his memory and knowledge. He says, it's you can't

(01:25:50):
conquer the human spirit.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
The performance sells it, yeah, but it is a complete
turnaround because it's just like, oh, yeah, all that you
thought happening not happening. Fine, disregard it. I'm good.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
So, like Ming, Calla and Clydis learned that Flash Gordon
is still alive. They're very unhappy about this, and they
learn he's still alive due to the intervention of a trader,
and Ming authorizes Clydis to discover who the trader is
no matter where the trail leads, by any means necessary.
So this leads to the torture scene of Princess Ara.

(01:26:32):
Clydas has her like chained up and they're torturing her
for information. They're like, where is Flash Gordon? Where did
you take him? Clydus seems to be kind of enjoying
this because he's he's portrayed to be somewhat of a
creep when it comes to aur and uh, then it oh,
there's the part it gets to where he's like, bring
me the bore worms and she goes, no, not the

(01:26:55):
bore worms. Ara has has multiple lines where she just
has to make very very straight reference to the horror
of the boar worms. It'll come up again.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
It works. I mean, it builds up a sense of
fear of these worms that we will never see, never see. Yeah,
I mean, maybe Dino came in. He's like, Okay, look,
I gave you the cage lowered into the swamp. I
gave you the tree beast, but we can't have bore worms.
We're at the very limit of the budget right now.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
Speaking of the swamp, there's like an escape scene where
they get Gordon out of the cage in the swamp,
but then Timothy Dalton confronts him and they're like, okay,
we're gonna make you do the tree beast test, and
he does pretty well, but eventually this escalates to a
fight and flash Gordon has to like pull a sword
on Timothy Dalton and try to escape, but then he

(01:27:47):
gets caught in the swamp by some kind of giant
monster that's like gobbling him up. And Barren, I don't
know how to even describe this thing. It's like a
big sack that has bamboo legs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
Yeah, it's monstrous and it doesn't make a lot of sense,
but it's a monster, it's a space monster. It's not
supposed to do.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):
So Timothy Dalton comes it kills the monster, and then
you think he's about to kill Flash Gordon. But then
I don't even remember what happens here. Is it that
the Hawkmen show up and stop him from killing him?

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Yeah, the hawk Men come at that point because they're
here for Flash, and the hawk Men are still trying
to play right by Ming. They're not an all open rebellion.
This is all heading to, of course, open rebellion, but
right now there's still division between these factions that will
eventually rise up together against me.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
Our Earthlings are constantly trying to appeal to the factions
to band together and fight against Ming instead of being
loyal to Ming and fighting each other right, and they
are eventually able to convince them, But before that we
get to the trial by combat scene, which is another
one of the best scenes in the movie Flash Gordon.
I've said this before on the show that a lot

(01:28:55):
of times action scenes are boring because a lot of
times they are it's just you know, like close ups
of people shooting and things exploding, the lax drama. Flash
Gordon is not like that. The fight scenes are some
of the best stuff in the movies. The fight scenes
are so fun.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Yeah, yeah, this one especially. So it's gonna be trial
by combat in the Hawkman floating city. Yeah, and there
are a few steps to get get where we're gonna
go with this, but it's like Barren is going to
be tried and executed, but it's going to be trial
by combat. Who's he gonna fight. Seems like he's gonna

(01:29:31):
probably fit. Uh, he's gonna probably pick Brian Blessed. Right,
he's there, he has his cudgel, he's eager for it,
but no, he chooses Flash Gorton. He's like, I will
fight him.

Speaker 3 (01:29:41):
So they put them out on this disc in the
middle of a void, and so the Hawkman Palace is
like up at the air, so it's like they got
the moon door basically, and they're on this disc there
and while and they're fighting with whips, Flashboard and then
Timothy Dalton are whipping each other on this disc and
then Brian Blessed it's this remote control that allows him

(01:30:02):
to tilt the disc around and make spikes come up
out of the bottom of it. So it's just it's
extremely chaotic and it's very very fun, and the fight
ends with a I think a super well earned reconciliation.
So Timothy Dalton is defeated at the end of the fight.
He's like about to fall off, but Flash goes to
save him. He's like, we can be friends, we can

(01:30:23):
work together, and you know what, bye, Gollia. I'm there.
I think this this friendship arc has been earned.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
It really was earned here in this scene. Great fight
with whips of all things. Even going back into this,
when I saw the whips come out, I'm like, oh lord,
you know, not swords but whips. But it works. They
make it work. It's well choreographed. The pail feels real,
and then yeah, it's earned. It's a whole it's a
we can live moment. To call back to robot jocks.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
My god, you're exactly right, except instead of saying no,
we are dead, we are robot jocks, he says, okay, yeah,
we can live, we can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
This is also the scene where in the middle they're
like fighting and Dale Arden yells a Flash, I love you,
but we only have fourteen hours to save the earth.
Because oh, I haven't even mentioned this but the moon
is spiraling into the Earth, and Zarkov determines that they
only have fourteen hours before it cannot be stopped.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Yeah, I think he set a timer earlier, or he
will set a timer in a bit so that we'll
stay on top of this whole Moon Earth situation.

Speaker 3 (01:31:24):
So I think we got to go a little bit
more lightly over what happens from here, because I know
we're running up on time. But oh my lord, there's
a lot of a finale, a lot of final conflict here.
So like Ming's forces come to attack the Hawkman Palace,
and one of the things that happens here is that mingko.
Oh well, we do get the death of Clytis. How

(01:31:45):
does that happen?

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
Oh well, he shows up, he's upset about this whole
scenario with these warning factions suddenly joining forces. He gets
thrown out. There's like a double team, and he eventually
gets thrown out onto the spy platform run through, and
we do get that scene of his mask doesn't come off,
but we see like his eyes and his tongue like

(01:32:06):
melting out through the mask. Yeah. Gross ending, But this
is an evil dude, so you know, yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:32:14):
And then Ming is like, Flash Gordon, everybody else can leave,
you know, take the prisoners back to my palace. Flash Gordon,
I would like a word with you. And then he
offers Flash Gordon to be the Prince of Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
The last temptation of Flash.

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):
Yeah, exactly. He's like, how about this. I make you
the Prince of Earth, and all of the people of
Earth must serve you and be your slaves, and you
you just must be loyal to me? How about that?
And Flash is like, no, I won't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
It's a creepy scene because Ming is saying things like, oh,
they'll be different once I'm done with them, They'll be
easier to manage, yeah and all that. Yeah, Flash is
our hero. He doesn't want any part of that, he says.

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
No, I think Ming says that he will condition the
people of Earth to be satisfied with less.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
Yeah, that's what he says.

Speaker 3 (01:33:04):
Yeah, but no, Flash would never do that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
All right. So Flash is left on the Hawkmen floating
castle thing and they're gonna blow up, and Ming's force
to start blowing it up. But fortunately he finds a
rocket slid, which is kind of like he finds a
jet ski. It's a jet ski. It's a space jet ski.
I don't know why the hawk Men need a jet ski.
They have wings that allow them to fly through space,
but it's it's fortunate for our friend Flash here, who

(01:33:30):
has no wings.

Speaker 3 (01:33:31):
And ultimately this all culminates in like the factions are
going to band together. He Flash convinces Brian Blessed and
the Hawkmen to like all work together to go oppose Ming.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
That's right, just as Ming is about to get married
to our heroin. So you know, a lot of things
predictably coming to a head.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
Here, that's right. So several things are happening here somehow.
I think the Zarkov and Timothy Dlta are in the
dungeon together in the palace, and we come in on them,
and Timothy Dalton's like, tell me again about this Houdini man,
And but they get what happens?

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Do?

Speaker 3 (01:34:13):
They get rescued by Princess Aura?

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
I believe? So, yeah, she completely turns face at this point,
and she's working for the good guys.

Speaker 3 (01:34:21):
We've been told that she's gonna be punished for her
treachery by like being sent to a planet where she
will she will like freeze and suffer, and I guess
this will like purge her mind of all disloyalty. But
before that happens, I don't know, She's just wandering around
and she yeah, she rescues them, and then they go
and do some fighting inside the palace to like sabotage

(01:34:43):
Ming's defenses and General Kala and all the guys with
goggles on their eyes, and there's a great moment where
a guy gets the goggles pulled off of his head
and we find he has no eyes underneath. It's just
like sockets full of wires.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Oh yeah, and they're all interconnected, so they all short
out and die.

Speaker 3 (01:34:58):
So the Hawkman and Flash or attacking first the ship
that's out there, General Kalo's ship, and then they're attacking
the palace while this wedding is happening. And I noticed
something about the wedding. The sniveling, obsequious priest performing the
marriage ceremony, he seemed familiar to me, and I was like,
wait a second, is that Delbert Grady from The Shining

(01:35:20):
And yep, that's right, it is Philip Stone, British character
actor who was also in a couple of other Kubrick movies.
He was in a Clockwork Orange and he was in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He's like the
British Army officer, but I caught that I caught something
about his voice and his eyes there good eye.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
Yeah, and it's a very small role, but it's also
very fun. This is a kind of predictable comedy here
with your tyrannical ruler going through some vowels with his
soon to be forced wife.

Speaker 3 (01:35:50):
Yes. The priest is like, do you Ming, the merciless
ruler of the universe, take this earthling dale Arden to
be your impress of the hour? And Ming says of
the hour? Yes, And the priest is like, you promise
not to blast her into space? And then Ming like
glares angrily at him, and he's like it untils such

(01:36:11):
time as you grow weary of her and promises I
do another great scene in this in this whole like
assault on the palace at the end is the like
the codes have changed and so have we moments.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Oh god, this is my favorite, favorite, one of my
favorite moments. Upon this rewatch Like it's not effects, it's
it's just like really weird writing. And this this feels
very improvisational, like they realized they needed something to get
him from point A to or point are to point
as wherever we are in the transition here. But yeah,

(01:36:46):
they're like, oh, well we got to open this lock
that the locks have changed. And then they're like, oh,
well you know I've changed too, how about you? Yes,
I've changed. It's like this moment where they're using a
change in passcodes to quickly comment on their own capacity
for change as human beings. It's just so dumb.

Speaker 3 (01:37:04):
I love it that that scene is between Princess Ara
and Prince Baron. I guess it's like their sort of reconciliation.
And then meanwhile Zarkov is in the back like trying
to hack the terminal here, and he's like, I haven't changed.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
So I don't know what was going on with the
scene this was there's something If this was improved or
there was something lost in translation, I don't know, but
it's great.

Speaker 3 (01:37:30):
The way that Ming is defeated in the end is
so good. It is that the ship crashes into the
wedding ceremony and the ship has like now that it
has been taken over by the Hawkman and Flash Gordon,
and it's got like a big prong on the front
of it, and it just like stabs ming through the

(01:37:51):
stomach like the spaceship skewers him.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Yeah, like upper like not quite through the heart, like
he's a vampire, like a little lower than that, but
still vampire slaying esque. So it's uh right as he's
turning away from it. So it's a pretty great villain
skewering scene. And then there's the you know, the sixth
scene where he like pulls himself off of the impalement
and I forget what color is it? Purple blood? It's

(01:38:16):
one of the alien colored bloods, I believe.

Speaker 3 (01:38:18):
Yeah, yeah, And then he tries to use his his
chunky magic ring to to fight back against Flash Gordon,
but no, he can't win.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Yeah, he's weakening, and then he just kind of blinks
out and the ring falls to the floor.

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
So it's a happy ending. It seems a Flash Gordon,
isn't Is he like declared the new emperor or something.
I don't know if he would take the job.

Speaker 1 (01:38:40):
But now I think Timothy Dubbon is the new emperor, right,
and then Brian Blessed is the new general. Yes, I
can't imagine anything going wrong with this scenario, but for
the moment things are united and peaceful.

Speaker 3 (01:38:54):
But we get the end question mark with just like
ming laughter echoing into eternity.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
Yeah, we get the close up with that ring and
some dust being blown away. So yep, it looks like
there's gonna be a sequel, except there was never a sequel.

Speaker 3 (01:39:09):
Ah. Well, Rob, I'm glad you suggested Flash Gordon this week.
This one was was such a delight.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I feel like
listeners have have requested this one in the past as well.
It's a pretty pretty obvious picture to hit on the
Weird House Cinema journey, and I'm glad we did it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:27):
Agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
All right, we'll go ahead and close out here, but
as always we invite you to write in. We'd love
to hear from you about your experience with this film,
your your thoughts on the film, your history with the film,
and so forth. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursday's been on Fridays. We set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on

(01:39:49):
Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete
list of all the movies we've covered so far. You
can go to letterbox dot com. That's L E T
T E R box d dot com and you can
find us there a weird Weird House that's our user
handle there, and we have a list of all the
movies we've covered and you can toy around with that.
You separate them, buy genre and so forth, and see
what we've been up to, and sometimes there's a peek

(01:40:09):
ahead at what's coming up next.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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