Just a Flash in the pan - I think not (Flash Gordon (DVD))

Member Name: Suzela

Product:	Flash Gordon (DVD)
Date:	29/04/08 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just fun

Disadvantages: Some pretty bad acting

There are some guilty pleasures that I would like to keep to myself but recently the SciFi channel have been showing quite a lot of one of my all time "I really shouldn't love this but I do" films. And that film is Flash Gordon (1980) directed by Mike Hodges (who is probably best known for directing Get Carter - the original and better version with Michael Caine) and produced by Dino de Laurentiis (he has produced the likes of Manhunter, Hannibal, Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising to name a few).

Why I should love this film so much is more deeply rooted by circumstance than anything else. I loved it before I even saw it in full. My parents are big Queen fans so naturally I heard the soundtrack, the film was released when I was at the impressionable age of 6 and children's programmes like Screen Test showed clips of it frequently. Everything looks cool when you're 6 and there was also the phenomenon of black and white television programmes on Saturday mornings and school holidays which showed the original Flash Gordon series which tweaked my interest. So when I realised there was a film not only did I want to go and see it (only to be told no by my parents) but I also collected all the picture discs for my Viewmaster (you know the chunky red devices that allowed you to view pictures on paper discs with film in) from cereal packets that I could find. I collected stickers for my sticker album so I knew all the characters and I sang along to the soundtrack without having seen the film. So I was over the moon sometime around my 11th birthday I finally got to see this film which I had been so desperate to see.

So at 11 this film was spectacular with brilliant music, brilliant characters and fabulous sets. It was different from Star Wars and Star Trek - it was fun and it had everything a budding sci-fi/comic book fan would want - a brave but reluctant hero, ray guns, rockets, strange beasts and strange women (this wasn't my thing but my husband was particularly enamoured!), different races and worlds and some pretty evil sorts - oh and it had the ultimate title song that any pre-teen (and people a little older) can belt out in the bedroom (come on admit it we all sang along to "Flash ah-ah" jumping off our bed and pretending to shoot stuff with a hairdryer - or was that just me?). As an 11 year old I couldn't have asked for any more from a film.

Fast forward a few years and after a rather large gap of not seeing the film, I decided to sit down and watch it. This fabulous film was now acted by pieces of wood, had B movie dialogue and had terrible special effects, characters with a penchant for S&M and the soundtrack and costumes were camper than a campsite. But so what? This film is a movie version of a comic strip and it captured the essence of it brilliantly. All it needed was the "POW" captions you see in comics and it would be perfect. Essentially the film has an outlandish but simple plot. Ming the Merciless is a ruthless intergalactic dictator that enjoys torturing and destroying planets. His latest play thing is Earth. A "mad" scientist - Hans Zarkov foresees this kind of event and builds a rocket to try and prevent this but as scripts would have it, our hero, Flash Gordon (a famous quarterback) and his recently acquired travelling companion Dale Arden (a travel agent) end up in this rocket with him on their way to Mongo - Ming's home world. Realising the tyranny that the kingdoms of Mongo live under, Flash ends up as a figure head in leading the fight against Ming in an attempt to save the earth.

But what makes this film so watchable is that it immediately drags you in as a comic book series would. You could take this film in storyboard form and understand it all perfectly. The actors could just as well have been animated and as a cartoon it would be amazing too. So the acting does let it down I grant you in places but it doesn't detract from what's going on - it is almost so bad you would think they were directed to be that bad. Put that together with the static backdrops of the "Mongonian" worlds and you are enveloped in a camped up, tacky, wooden and yet strangely warm and fuzzy feeling.

What is interesting about the cast is that you have a few big names in there. Ming the Merciless is brilliantly portrayed by Max von Sydow. He's evil, he's moody and imperious and he wears very dodgy red outfits and yet you get that glint in the eye that gives the impression that the actor is really enjoying himself. The award for show stealer goes to Brian Blessed as Vultan, leader of the Hawkmen, Timothy Dalton plays Baron, Prince of Arboria as Timothy Dalton plays any character ie moody, Peter Wyngarde plays the sadistic and smarmy Klytus perfectly and Topol is suitably strange as Dr Zarkov. And dotted around in the smallest of parts/extras are Robbie Coltrane, Richard O'brien and Peter Duncan (he of Blue Peter fame). I think what shines through though in all of these performances was that most of the actors saw this as a diversion from other more serious parts and you felt that they had fun doing it.

So where does the bad acting come in? Well in reality the bad acting is really due to the B movie dialogue. Ornella Muti's (an Italian actress who I have never seen in anything else) portrayal of the sultry daughter of Ming, Princess Aura, is only really memorable for the outfits she wore (my husband still fancies her in the pvc red catsuit) but the winners of the cardboard cut out awards for acting go to Sam J. Jones as Flash and Melody Anderson as Dale Arden. Jones looks perfect as Flash. He's blonde, handsome and athletic and can deliver classic lines such as "This Ming's a psycho" with all the gravitas of a wannabe thespian but in reality a cardboard cut out would deliver more soul to the role. Melody Anderson's Dale Arden, a younger and prettier Lois Lane lookalike, is incredibly whiny and doesn't quite manage to carry off the vulnerable yet spunky heroine. If the film just had to rely on these two performances then no one in their right mind would ever watch this film again but thankfully there are far more redeeming qualities to this film.

One of the finest things in this film is the soundtrack. The original score and arranging were by Howard Blake but nothing sings like Brian May's guitar and Freddie Mercury. With Queen pumping out throughout it really adds another dimension to the film. Yes it all does sound a bit camp but whether you like Queen or not the music is perfect for this film and although it is mainly instrumental as opposed to their Highlander soundtrack, their quite unique sound permeates through with a sense of fun as well as adding the appropriate emotion to the scenes (which unfortunately our lead actors weren't really able to give).

The sets and models are relatively simple, whereas the costumes (which are so camp its untrue - look out for our hero in pvc hotpants!) were relatively elaborate but all were colourful and each help you differentiate between the worlds. The painted swirling backgrounds representing the atmospheres of Mongo might not be up there in the blue/green screen stakes but they do add to the comic book appeal of the film making it all larger than life. It might look cheap compared to the special effects that were beginning to sweep across Hollywood after Star Wars but this film wasn't trying to compete with that. The ray guns and laser canon effects did look like they were drawn in a comic book and yes you can see black lines around the characters in front of the painted screens. And yes you can see that any external shots of buildings are models - I'm certainly not denying that this film has its flaws,should no way have been considered for an Oscar and has all the relevance of a chocolate teapot to the real world. But if you can get past wanting realistic special effects or a meaningful morality tale and see this as a representation of a comic book series which exudes fun then you should really enjoy all 111 minutes of this film (just don't admit it to too many people!)

Summary: Good fun despite the bad acting!