Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and.
Speaker 3: This is Joe McCormick. In. Today's film on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema is the cheeky nineteen eighty science fiction adventure Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: allegedly starring Sam J. Jones and Max Foncito, but I
Speaker 3: would say more like starring Brian Blessed and Queen And boy,
Speaker 3: what a film this is, you know. I was just
Speaker 3: thinking about how we cover all kinds of movies on
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema. We do good movies, conventionally, bad movies,
Speaker 3: well known movies, obscure gems, big and small, loud and quiet.
Speaker 3: But lately I think we've kind of been on a streak.
Speaker 3: We have featured a lot of very big, very loud
Speaker 3: type movies extravags, if you will, Specifically movies like this
Speaker 3: from the early nineteen eighties that are kind of a
Speaker 3: weirdness overload. So we did The Apple from the year
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty, we did Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty three, and now we're back with another
Speaker 3: movie of this type yet again from the year nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty and its Flash Gordon. In the tradition of the
Speaker 3: other two I just mentioned, this movie is a lot.
Speaker 3: It is almost overwhelming in its thrilling and hilarious flamboyance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much here. This is a film I've
Speaker 2: seen many times over the years, and yet going into
Speaker 2: it again, you know, watching it maybe for the first
Speaker 2: time in oh maybe ten years, there's so much I'd forgotten.
Speaker 2: So there were the big things that I was eager
Speaker 2: to re experience, and then equally overwhelming things that had
Speaker 2: slipped my mind, and things that were maybe a little
Speaker 2: more subtle that are also just as weird and wonderful.
Speaker 2: So it's quite an experience.
Speaker 3: You know. There are a lot of things I want
Speaker 3: to talk about with this movie, but one thing that
Speaker 3: really struck me about it is that, and of course
Speaker 3: it's not the only movie of this sort, but it
Speaker 3: felt really strong here is that this is a movie
Speaker 3: made with a palpable sense of nostalgia. It feels interesting
Speaker 3: because this now is a movie that's like forty three,
Speaker 3: forty four years old. Probably a lot of current adults
Speaker 3: have nostalgia foreseeing the nineteen eighty Flash Gordon movie as
Speaker 3: a kid. But it's also a project where you can
Speaker 3: feel how the filmmakers were trying to with some ironic distance,
Speaker 3: just like shamelessly indulge in nostalgia for a type of
Speaker 3: storytelling they themselves had loved as children, maybe forty years
Speaker 3: or so before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, getting into Flash Gordon's origins as a Depression
Speaker 2: era comic book. It's passed as a part of these
Speaker 2: various action serials and so forth. It was a very
Speaker 2: influential a series, a very influential fiction on a number
Speaker 2: of future filmmakers, future writers, future comic book authors and illustrators, etc.
Speaker 3: Now, this movie is not overtly a comedy. I guess
Speaker 3: you would say that the genre is science fiction adventure.
Speaker 3: But it is a deeply funny movie. And you could
Speaker 3: look at movies like that that are, you know, not
Speaker 3: overtly comedies but are very funny, as the kind that
Speaker 3: are intentionally funny and the kind that are not so
Speaker 3: intentionally funny, maybe the latter category, you know, ed wood
Speaker 3: films and such. This movie, though, is very intentionally funny,
Speaker 3: even though comedy is not its overt category. One way
Speaker 3: I would describe this is a defining sensation in watching
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon is the thin clacking sound of plastic pieces
Speaker 3: of costume armor hitting one another in the battle scenes.
Speaker 3: Like it feels like a significant choice that there was
Speaker 3: not an attempt to edit out that plastic clacking sound
Speaker 3: or to like folly in a weightier sound. It's just
Speaker 3: part of the magic of Flash Gordon. You are supposed
Speaker 3: to hear the plastic on plastic grind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point about the plastic armor. Gosh,
Speaker 2: there's so much plastic armor. Yeah. It is an extravagant
Speaker 2: campy updating again of this old comic book, this old
Speaker 2: series into a kind of late seventies cinematic vision comes
Speaker 2: out in nineteen eighty, but you know very much the
Speaker 2: late nineteen seventies trajectory getting this film made, and it is,
Speaker 2: without a doubt, yet another sci fi film of this
Speaker 2: era that was chasing the hit that was Star Wars,
Speaker 2: which is ironic, of course, because George Lucas was heavily
Speaker 2: inspired by the old Flash Gordon comic books and actually
Speaker 2: wanted to make a film adaptation at one point, but
Speaker 2: the rights were too expensive, so he began an alternate
Speaker 2: journey that would result in Star Wars and the Star
Speaker 2: Wars franchise that would spill out of it. In the
Speaker 2: wake of the success of Star Wars, however, famed Italian
Speaker 2: producer Dino de Laurentez, who've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 2: picked up the film rights and set out to produce
Speaker 2: the picture.
Speaker 3: That is funny and Yeah, I was wondering about exactly
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, because for a long time I've
Speaker 3: understood that part of the animating spirit behind the creation
Speaker 3: of Star Wars was an excitement for this type of
Speaker 3: storytelling that George Lucas remembered from when he was a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like the adventure serials and stuff, and he wanted to
Speaker 3: recreate that feeling with his own movie. I don't think
Speaker 3: I realized that he directly wanted to do an update
Speaker 3: of the Flash Gordon comics, but that would make a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. Ultimately we got Star Wars, which is
Speaker 3: a more new, original kind of thing, which is wonderful
Speaker 3: in its own right. And then, yeah, like, so you're
Speaker 3: saying that the Star Wars that George Lucas had to
Speaker 3: make because he couldn't make he couldn't get the rights
Speaker 3: to Flash Gordon ultimately inspired them to make a new
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, essentially, Star Wars is an evolution of the
Speaker 2: basic concept. So in a way, what do you know
Speaker 2: Delarentis then sets up to do is kind of it
Speaker 2: almost feels kind of backwards by comparison, Let's go back
Speaker 2: to the thing that inspired the amazing new thing and
Speaker 2: see what we can create. And you know, to their credit,
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel as much in its substance like a
Speaker 2: Star Wars ripoff. It doesn't feel like you're chasing Star
Speaker 2: Wars so much, certainly not as much as other pictures
Speaker 2: we've talked about. But yeah, with this film have come
Speaker 2: into being without Star Wars being the success that it was,
Speaker 2: it can make a strong argument that it would not. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, Dino Delarento's was not going to direct this.
Speaker 2: It's predominantly it's always been a producer, puts the pieces
Speaker 2: together right. At one point he had none other than
Speaker 2: Nicholas Rogue attached, who of course directed The Man Who
Speaker 2: Fell to Earth, which we previously discussed on the podcast.
Speaker 3: I love Flash Gordon the way that it is, but
Speaker 3: I wish we could have seen the Nicholas Rogue version.
Speaker 3: I'm imagining it would be a lot sadder and more
Speaker 3: psychologically complex and would have like fifty times more full
Speaker 3: frontal nudity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's there's actually a whole special feature about
Speaker 2: this project that never came to be on the Arrow
Speaker 2: Blu ray of Flash Gordon, which I watched for this episode,
Speaker 2: rendered from videodrome. Of course, Rogue apparently wanted to make
Speaker 2: a big Hollywood picture, and a lot of work went
Speaker 2: into writing and storyboarding his vision for Flash and they
Speaker 2: point out that Rogue was notoriously protective of his vision
Speaker 2: for a picture. In the end, however, Dino didn't think
Speaker 2: that his vision was fun or funny enough. It was
Speaker 2: apparently like pretty serious and you know, just like you'd imagine,
Speaker 2: it wasn't as campy as what we end up getting.
Speaker 2: And so he know, de Learnce is get ends up
Speaker 2: going in a different direction, someone perhaps more suited in
Speaker 2: his view, you for the vision that he sees for
Speaker 2: Flash Gordon. And also, according to some of the commentators
Speaker 2: that they talked to in this feature atte someone who's
Speaker 2: maybe a little a little more willing to play the
Speaker 2: game with a producer like Dino. MM. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: always fun to imagine, you know, pictures that could have been,
Speaker 2: especially with some of these big, big films like this,
Speaker 2: But you know, it's hard to It's hard to imagine
Speaker 2: another version of Flash Gordon being as fun as this
Speaker 2: one is.
Speaker 3: I think that would fully depend on whether they got
Speaker 3: Brian Blessed or not. And it sounds like the rogue
Speaker 3: version of this film Brian Blessed's presence would not make
Speaker 3: as much sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is the atlas holding up this picture. I
Speaker 2: don't have an elevator pitch for Flash here, Joe, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you if you do it, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's Flash Gordon. What can I tell you?
Speaker 3: Here's the elevator pitch?
Speaker 4: You only have fourteen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, all right. Let's
Speaker 2: listen to the original trailer audio here because and if
Speaker 2: you haven't seen the film, and there's a lot to see,
Speaker 2: but still, the sonic experience of the trailer is pretty convincing. Clites,
Speaker 2: I'm bored. What playing can you offer me today?
Speaker 3: An obscure body in the Escase system of your majesty.
Speaker 3: The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.
Speaker 4: I like to play with things while before annihilation.
Speaker 3: Pathetic Earthlings who can save you now.
Speaker 1: Dange object imaged in the Imperial Vortex.
Speaker 2: Move the Earth Woman. Prepare her for our pleasure.
Speaker 5: Don't kid yet, father, I want him for schools. Can't
Speaker 5: know it was as.
Speaker 4: So far as its.
Speaker 2: Stream all right. Well, if you want to go out
Speaker 2: and watch nineteen eighties Flash and Gordon, there are multiple
Speaker 2: places to see the film these days. Wasn't always the case.
Speaker 2: I remember a period of time when I wanted to
Speaker 2: pick the movie up and I don't think it was
Speaker 2: available on disc gett. But again, I watched it on
Speaker 2: the excellent Arrow Blu ray. That Blu ray also includes
Speaker 2: the full length documentary Life After Flash amid a bunch
Speaker 2: of other extras.
Speaker 3: I just streamed it on one of the major services
Speaker 3: and the quality was good. So yeah, it's out there,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the people involved here, Okay. So the
Speaker 2: director is not Nicholas Road. The director that Dino Dealer
Speaker 2: Netto has ended up going with is Mike Hodges, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty two through twenty twenty two. English director
Speaker 2: and writer whose first big film hit was nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one's Get Carter starring Michael Kine, followed by seventy two's Pulp,
Speaker 2: seventy four as the Terminal Man, and seventy eight's Damien Omen.
Speaker 3: Iwo ah, that's the OMEN movie with the all boys
Speaker 3: Prep school.
Speaker 2: Okay, have you seen that one? I haven't seen that.
Speaker 2: I know you went through a tear with your Omen
Speaker 2: movies a while back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a couple of years ago, or either last year
Speaker 3: or the year. Maybe it's just last year. Rachel and
Speaker 3: I watched all of the Omen movies. We enjoyed the
Speaker 3: second one. I don't know if i'd say it was good,
Speaker 3: but we enjoyed.
Speaker 2: I just Subsequent credits after Flash included eighty five Morons
Speaker 2: from Outer Space, eighty nine's Black Rainbow, and two thousand
Speaker 2: and threes I'll Sleep when I'm Dead. Also, he did
Speaker 2: some TV, including a nineteen eighty six action movie called
Speaker 2: Florida Straits with Raal Julia in the lead role. And
Speaker 2: he also did two music videos for Queen Flash, which
Speaker 2: is of course, is one of them. The songs from
Speaker 2: this film, as well as body language.
Speaker 3: Weird coincidental or I would assume coincidental. Double Panos Cosmados
Speaker 3: overlap This guy is a movie called Black Rainbow, and
Speaker 3: in Flash there's a planet called Arborea, which is the
Speaker 3: name of the center in Beyond the Black Rainbow by
Speaker 3: Penos Cazmonos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, connections are there. One has to believe they have meaning. Now,
Speaker 2: apparently Hodges had the right energy for this project, which,
Speaker 2: according to some of the bits I was watching on
Speaker 2: the Blu ray, involves a lot of sort of going
Speaker 2: with the flow on such a large and at times
Speaker 2: it sounds like maybe slightly chaotic project, you know, because
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of moving pieces, and I think
Speaker 2: there were definitely some places where they say that you know,
Speaker 2: they had to kind of make things up on the
Speaker 2: fly to figure out how to piece everything together.
Speaker 3: I think with one advantage of doing a big extravaganza
Speaker 3: movie like this is that the success of the film
Speaker 3: doesn't hang so much on the on the story being
Speaker 3: executed in a coherent way, so like you can have
Speaker 3: you can have a lot of things kind of like
Speaker 3: get pieces get moved around and things get messed with,
Speaker 3: and still over all the experience will kind of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect with Flashboard,
Speaker 2: which is not to discount of the talent that went
Speaker 2: into this film, Like so much about the just the
Speaker 2: visual flare of the film, and we're not even gonna
Speaker 2: be able to get into all the names involved there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so many pieces do come together perfectly. It's
Speaker 2: just that you can definitely tell their moments where things
Speaker 2: feel like certain scenes have been rushed in terms of
Speaker 2: the overall vision for the picture and the flow of
Speaker 2: the plot. Uh huh, all right. The screenplay credit goes
Speaker 2: to Lorenzo simple Junior I live nineteen twenty three through
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, American writer whose credits include one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty episodes of the original Batman series, which I think
Speaker 2: is telling, but also films like nineteen seventy three's Papillon,
Speaker 2: seventy four's The Parallax View, seventy fives, Three Days of
Speaker 2: the Condor, the nineteen seventy six King Cang movie, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three is Never Say Never Again, and nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four Shena. The other writer that's credited is Michael Allen,
Speaker 2: whose other credits include Enter the Dragon and Also I
Speaker 2: Have Do and other titles, but Flash being the biggest
Speaker 2: by far, and it's where we also should point out
Speaker 2: that the character Flash Gordon was created by Alex Raymond,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh nine through nineteen fifty six, an
Speaker 2: American cartoonist an illustrator who created Flash four King Features
Speaker 2: Syndicate back in nineteen thirty four. And I believe it
Speaker 2: was essentially an attempt to like, like, Okay, the competitor
Speaker 2: has Buck Rogers, we need a Buck Rogers too. Let's
Speaker 2: make him. Okay, what are we gonna call him? Well,
Speaker 2: we can't call him Buck. How about Flash? We can't
Speaker 2: call him Rogers? How about Gordon? There you go, make
Speaker 2: it work. And it grew from that. All right. Now,
Speaker 2: getting into the cast here, I'm gonna try and divide
Speaker 2: it up among like our core factions. You know, it's
Speaker 2: sort of like Game of Thrones here we have different
Speaker 2: factions involved. Yeah, we're gonna start with the Earth Links,
Speaker 2: all right. First up, we have Sam J. Jones as
Speaker 2: Flash Gordon born nineteen fifty four, former US marine model
Speaker 2: and American football player, who was cast in this film
Speaker 2: over various hot commodities in Hollywood due to his debut
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventy nine Blake Edwards ten. His professional
Speaker 2: life after Flash, which again is the subject part of
Speaker 2: the subject of his twenty seventeen documentary, consisted of a
Speaker 2: lot of TV work, as well as films like eighty
Speaker 2: five's Jungle Heat, ninety two's Maximum Force, and a lot
Speaker 2: of just you know, general action television action films, not
Speaker 2: necessarily like the cream of the crop, you know, But
Speaker 2: he worked a lot more recently. He was in both
Speaker 2: Ted and Ted two, and he remains active to this day.
Speaker 3: It's easy to see why he was cast when you
Speaker 3: think about this movie as a comic book adaptation, because
Speaker 3: he has such a comic book illustration look about him,
Speaker 3: more so than most biological humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no denying has a great look. Also no
Speaker 2: denying that he's rather green. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: it's it's almost unfair to compare his acting to other
Speaker 2: actors in the film, because you know, he and also
Speaker 2: is co star Melody Anderson, who will talk about in
Speaker 2: a minute. I mean, they're in there with just an
Speaker 2: international cast that features not only like very tenured actors,
Speaker 2: but also generational talents, and so it's you know, how
Speaker 2: can you compare one to the other. And then also,
Speaker 2: and I think this is more important, he gets there's
Speaker 2: a fair amount of fun that's made at the expense
Speaker 2: of this character and to a certain degree of this performance.
Speaker 2: But I think it's pretty perfect, right, I mean, what
Speaker 2: more do you want from the role of Flash Gordon here?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, come on, let's be nice to Sam J. Jones.
Speaker 3: He does Flash great. You know what, what what would
Speaker 3: you change? What kind of notes are you going to
Speaker 3: give him?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean if we were talking about Nicholas Rogues
Speaker 2: Flash Gordon. Yeah, okay, maybe that's that's a different animal
Speaker 2: we're envisioning. But this vision, this Flash Gordon, I think
Speaker 2: there's nobody else you put in there. I've read that
Speaker 2: people like Arnold and even Kurt Russell who would have
Speaker 2: been interesting in this role, you know, I've heard that
Speaker 2: they were up for it, but it just I can't
Speaker 2: imagine it wouldn't be the same, wouldn't be the same.
Speaker 2: I'd go as far as to say that Arnold, even
Speaker 2: at the time, would have been wrong for this role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm an Arnold defender. You know, a lot of
Speaker 3: people make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting, but I think
Speaker 3: he's actually a better actor in a lot of ways
Speaker 3: than people give him credit for. But I don't know
Speaker 3: if he's who I want is Flash?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm definitely not in nineteen eight now, I
Speaker 2: mentioned Melody Anderson. This is the actress playing Dale Arden.
Speaker 2: This is the other key Earthling. This is his I
Speaker 2: guess it's not his girlfriend at the beginning, but becomes
Speaker 2: essentially the Flash Gordon love interest.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Anderson was born in nineteen fifty five Canadian actress who
Speaker 2: started off on TV with small parts and shows like
Speaker 2: Welcome Back Cotter, the Logan's Run TV series Battlestar Galactica.
Speaker 2: She also had a supporting role in John Carpenter's nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine Elvis TV.
Speaker 3: Movie Oh interesting, Did that have Kurt Russell in it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was Kurt Russell as Elvis.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: She followed up Flash with a nineteen eighty one horror
Speaker 2: movie Dead and Buried nineteen eighty six is Firewalker, and
Speaker 2: various TV shows. She retired from acting in the mid nineties.
Speaker 3: You know, I think Melody Anderson's a lot of fun
Speaker 3: in this. She has the right you could tell she
Speaker 3: has the right sense of humor in approaching this role.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I like her in this role as well.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's two out of three Earthlings. The
Speaker 2: important third is doctor Hans Zarkoff played by Topol Topel
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty five through twenty twenty three Israeli actor, singer,
Speaker 2: and illustrator, best known for his starring role in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one's Fiddler on the Roof and his supporting role
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty one's For Your Eyes Only. It's been
Speaker 2: a while since I've seen For Your Eyes Only. He's
Speaker 2: not the villain in that Bond movie.
Speaker 3: He's like no, he plays like ally. Yeah, he plays
Speaker 3: a criminal that Bond ends up joining forces with to
Speaker 3: to take out the villain in the end. He's he's
Speaker 3: sort of like a lovable rascal smuggler.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Other projects of note include the starring role in
Speaker 2: a in a nineteen seventy five Galileo movie, and he
Speaker 2: also shows up in one episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
Speaker 2: And I have to say it's it's easy to forget
Speaker 2: about this performance in a movie that features both you know,
Speaker 2: Brian Blessed and Max Foncido just aiming for the rafters
Speaker 2: with their performances, but Topaul hits the ground running with
Speaker 2: some just great a ridiculousness just also just really chewing
Speaker 2: up the scenery. Well. Also later on the picture, you know,
Speaker 2: breathing varying degrees of not only ham but also thoughtfulness
Speaker 2: in some of the scenes. So it's he does a
Speaker 2: great job.
Speaker 3: And you know, for this picture, yes, I'm gonna say
Speaker 3: this character and to Paul's performance is all over the map.
Speaker 3: It's inconsistent, but it's mostly very good. Like he's zany
Speaker 3: in some scenes, and he brings a very good, convincing zaniness.
Speaker 3: There is one scene I want to talk about later
Speaker 3: that I think is just wildly tonally inappropriate for the
Speaker 3: movie in that it gets very serious and even emotionally
Speaker 3: moving in a way that does not exactly feel welcome
Speaker 3: in the context. But it's mostly because of him that
Speaker 3: it works out that way, and it's quite powerful. Strangely,
Speaker 3: I think you know what I'm talking about, Like the
Speaker 3: mind conditioning scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that'll be a good one to talk about.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into Ming's court though. This is
Speaker 2: like the centerpiece of the film. And of course, as
Speaker 2: we mentioned already, we have Max Foncito playing Ning the merciless.
Speaker 2: Foncito lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that has not aged well
Speaker 3: about this movie is that I think it's pretty undeniable
Speaker 3: that there are some elements of racial caricature in the
Speaker 3: way Ming the Merciless is imagined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is important to note that the character Ming
Speaker 2: is along with the likes of fictional characters like Fu
Speaker 2: Manchu and more than a couple of characters from like
Speaker 2: Marvel Comics and so forth. There are examples of the
Speaker 2: quote yellow menace trope, and it's also a character here
Speaker 2: that's steeped in orientalism and racial stereotypes. Various later adaptations
Speaker 2: of Flash have sought to distance the character from these origins,
Speaker 2: and I don't know. In this picture we see kind
Speaker 2: of like a mixed approach there where certain things are done,
Speaker 2: but also you could make a strong argument that not
Speaker 2: enough is done, certainly by modern standards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So from what I understand, I'm not deep on
Speaker 3: a Flash Gordon lore. From what I understand, the character
Speaker 3: is an alien, so it's not like he is from
Speaker 3: a country on Earth. But it's just that in the
Speaker 3: way he is depicted, it relies a lot on like
Speaker 3: on visual and thematic cues associated with stereotypical Asian villains,
Speaker 3: mainly Fu Manchu.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, So that's that's undeniable with this particular film.
Speaker 2: For a long time, I always felt like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: Meing here feels more Satanic, he feels more like they
Speaker 2: patterned him after the Church of Satan's founder Anton LaVey.
Speaker 2: But I was looking into that more recently, and I
Speaker 2: saw folks online pointing out that Leavey may have patterned
Speaker 2: his personal look on Ming the Merciless, Oh, because he
Speaker 2: would have grown up with the old flash comics and
Speaker 2: and I assumed the older film adaptations and serials and
Speaker 2: so forth. So on one hand, though, if they did
Speaker 2: do that, if they did say, let's make Meing more
Speaker 2: like Anton LaVey, well, if Anton Lavay was mimicking Ming
Speaker 2: the Merciless from the old comic books, then then what
Speaker 2: do you do? Just going in a circle at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that in this movie some visual
Speaker 3: elements that I think are still being borrowed from the
Speaker 3: racial caricature version of this character are there on the way,
Speaker 3: on the way that Max Fonsido is dressed and stuff,
Speaker 3: But it is not there in Vonsido's performance, Like he's
Speaker 3: not performing a racial caricature, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2: Right, He's not doing a voice, he's playing it and
Speaker 2: he's playing it pretty straight and really he brings a
Speaker 2: certain grandeur to the role, like it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: these issues aside, it's a very fun performance. It's a
Speaker 2: it's a very you know, over the top and entertaining
Speaker 2: villain role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree. So it's just it's just a
Speaker 3: bummer that these elements are still somewhat there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now as for Max Foncito, Yeah, legendary Swedish French actor.
Speaker 2: I think everyone has seen something he was in. If you,
Speaker 2: you know, have have watched then movies at all, you
Speaker 2: stand a really good chance. Because he was active for
Speaker 2: like seventy years, his career span that long. His Swiss
Speaker 2: credits go back to nineteen forty nine. Igmar Bergman's nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seventh film, The Seventh Seal was his real like
Speaker 2: international breakthrough role, expanding his career to include a host
Speaker 2: of European and American films. His many films include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three's The Exorcist, nineteen eighty two's Conan the Barbarian,
Speaker 2: eighty three's Strange Brew just to you know, mix it
Speaker 2: up a little bit, eighty four's Dreamscape, eighty four's Dune.
Speaker 2: He is in Ghostbusters two, he's the uncredited voice of
Speaker 2: Vigo the Carpathian, the real villain of that piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen nineties, Awakenings, nineteen ninety three's Needful Things. He's
Speaker 2: in the ninety five Judge Dread Movie, two thousand and
Speaker 2: two's Minority Report two thousand and nine, Solomon Kane. He late,
Speaker 2: very late in his career. He pops up in twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen Star Wars, The Force Awakens and TV's Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3: Wait, I feel like I see more Dino connections here,
Speaker 3: didn't Dino de la Reenti produced the eighty four Dune,
Speaker 3: directed by David Lynch.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think he must have been a favorite of Dinos. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 2: But he's he's again one of these actors who drop
Speaker 2: him in just about anything, be it something like very
Speaker 2: serious or something more on the campy, you know, or
Speaker 2: even blockbuster scale, and he brings he brings a certain
Speaker 2: grandeur to the role, he brings a certain power in presence.
Speaker 3: He improves anything he's in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So that's Meing the Merciless. But Meing
Speaker 2: has a daughter, and this is Princess Aura, played by
Speaker 2: Ornella Muti born nineteen fifty five. This is the evil princess,
Speaker 2: evil seductive princess, very sort of typical role that you
Speaker 2: might imagine if you haven't seen the film. Muti an Italian,
Speaker 2: is an Italian actress who's who has worked extensively in
Speaker 2: Italian TV and film. So a lot of her credits
Speaker 2: are not things I'm that familiar with, but her early
Speaker 2: credits include Romberto Lindsay's Oasis of Fear that's from nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one. Ray Lovelocke is in that we've touched on
Speaker 2: Ray love Locke before, but she went on to appear
Speaker 2: in such films as Tales of Ordinary Madness in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one and the nineteen seventy nine Russo Italian movie
Speaker 2: Life Is Beautiful.
Speaker 3: She does also some wonderfully comical overacting in this, which
Speaker 3: again I think is intentional, Like the way she's ogling
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon in the first scene where he comes into
Speaker 3: the palace. Throne room is hilarious.
Speaker 2: Now another this is essentially our b villain. This is
Speaker 2: means immediate underling that Lord's over his secret police. This
Speaker 2: is the character Clytis, who is kind of a if
Speaker 2: you're familiar with this character think Doctor Doom except gold Mask,
Speaker 2: and that's essentially who this character is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Great villain, extremely over the top, perfect sardonic vocal performance
Speaker 2: by the actor here, and also a physical performance which
Speaker 2: seems unnecessary given how heavy these costs all apparently work
Speaker 2: like even if they are made of plastic instead of metal,
Speaker 2: these were apparently really weighty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also is just like a comical depiction
Speaker 3: of evil in that he frequently makes statements of disgust
Speaker 3: whenever someone expresses love or selflessness in any way. You know,
Speaker 3: somebody is like flash, I love you, and he's like pathetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fun performance. The actor here is
Speaker 2: Peter Wingard, who lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: British television, stage and film actor, best known without the
Speaker 2: Mask for playing the fictional Jason King and a pair
Speaker 2: of British TV shows. His other credits include sixty one's
Speaker 2: The Innocence and nineteen sixty two's Night of the.
Speaker 3: Eagle Top Shelf hinge Yes.
Speaker 2: Then then there's another hint, and this is kind of
Speaker 2: Clytus's Hinchman or hinchwoman, and that is Kala, played by
Speaker 2: Marian gli Malato, who lived nineteen forty one through twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: an Italian actress whose other credits include nineteen seventy three's
Speaker 2: Love and Anarchy and nineteen seventy four is Swept Away.
Speaker 2: Both of these were directed by Lena Vertmula, And we're
Speaker 2: co starring gian Carlo Janini, who, of course great Italian
Speaker 2: actor who's been in a lot of big international films.
Speaker 3: Yeah she I guess we're gonna have to say this
Speaker 3: about a lot of actors in this movie. But she
Speaker 3: also is doing some very pleasing overacting, just like really
Speaker 3: punctuated over annunciation of her lines, if you know what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. Yeah, it's really good stuff. She has
Speaker 3: a lot of really good lines that get singled out
Speaker 3: and appear in the Queen tracks. I guess we'll get
Speaker 3: to that in a minute. But like when dialogue is
Speaker 3: sampled from the movie, a lot of the dialogue is
Speaker 3: either Brian blessed or her saying lines like what do
Speaker 3: you mean flash Gordon approaching?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's flash of Gordon. Go big or
Speaker 2: go home? Shoot for the rafters. Don't leave your subtle
Speaker 2: acting at home, because that's why what that's not what
Speaker 2: this movie is about.
Speaker 3: And yet the very next actor we're going to talk about,
Speaker 3: I would say gives one of the sort of straightest,
Speaker 3: cleanest performances in the movie. And yet is I would
Speaker 3: say quite good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we're getting into the faction of the Arboians,
Speaker 2: who are I guess you describe him as space elves
Speaker 2: kind of like what if the Ewoks were British dudes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what you have exactly right, Yeah, if the
Speaker 3: Ewoks were just humans dressed like Robin hood.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's space Robin Hoods. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, we
Speaker 2: have Prince Baron is Baron here Baron? They just say Baron, Yeah, Baron.
Speaker 2: Prince Baron played by the great Timothy Dunton.
Speaker 3: In this role. He is handsome, suave, dangerous. He's great
Speaker 3: when he's one of the bad guys, and he's great
Speaker 3: when he's one of the good guys. I really like
Speaker 3: him in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's got that swashbucklan mustache. So it's a
Speaker 2: great look for this film. That is, you know, ultimately
Speaker 2: hinging on a lot of nostalgia for the like old
Speaker 2: action serials and so forth.
Speaker 3: Totally Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, future James Bond here at the time, he
Speaker 2: already had some really impressive credits, including sixty eight's The
Speaker 2: Line in Winter, seventy's Cromwell, a nineteen seventy adaptation of
Speaker 2: Worthering Heights. Of course, he plays the lead in that.
Speaker 2: What's his name not Garfield, the other one Heathcliff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he followed Flash up with a number of period
Speaker 2: pieces for TV before taking up the role of Double
Speaker 2: O seven for nineteen eighty seven's The Living Daylights.
Speaker 3: Funny thinking about Wuthering Heights because Heathcliff is a classic
Speaker 3: byronic hero, and Baron in this movie is kind of
Speaker 3: a byronic hero.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need a character like that in a movie
Speaker 3: where your other like romantic lead guy is just a football.
Speaker 2: Beef man, you know. And I think maybe this comes
Speaker 2: back to his casting in the James Bond franchise. He
Speaker 2: only did the two films, the other one being Licensed
Speaker 2: to Kill from eighty nine the follow up, but he
Speaker 2: was kind of like a pivot to a more dangerous
Speaker 2: Bond right getting away from the Roger Moore series, which
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of love for Roger Moore, but
Speaker 2: I think at the time people had kind of maybe
Speaker 2: had enough of the Hammier comic side of Bond, and
Speaker 2: they wanted something a little harder, which is kind of
Speaker 2: an up and down trajectory you see throughout the entire franchise.
Speaker 3: Roger Moore is a very languid, dry humored Bond. You know,
Speaker 3: he's just he's a very raised eyebrow and quip kind
Speaker 3: of Bond. Timothy Dalton. Yeah, they brought in to be
Speaker 3: a much darker, meaner, more emotional and dangerous feeling James Bond.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of unpleasant Bond, if you will, But.
Speaker 3: In a way that's an interesting place to take the character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I remember I was quite a
Speaker 2: fan of him back in the day because when I
Speaker 2: was a kid during my Key Bond movie appreciation period,
Speaker 2: like he was the new Bond, he was the current Bond,
Speaker 2: and I remember feeling a bit betrayed when we changed
Speaker 2: Bonds after only two films. I was like, no, this
Speaker 2: is You're not supposed to switch out after two You're
Speaker 2: supposed to keep it, keep him going for just years
Speaker 2: and years and years.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I could see what you mean, especially because after
Speaker 3: after him doing two movies, they switched to Pierce Brosnan,
Speaker 3: which was basically a reversion to the Roger Moore bond. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's more again the raised eyebrow and the quip.
Speaker 2: And then going dangerous again with the with the harder bond.
Speaker 2: So I think we're due for a comic bond. I'm
Speaker 2: people keep talking about, Oh, which which which handsome fella
Speaker 2: or or or lady or what have you is gonna
Speaker 2: play bond next? But really the pattern shows we need
Speaker 2: somebody funny, We need somebody with that dry wit.
Speaker 3: And like a bond who doesn't sweat. You know. This
Speaker 3: is the thing about the funnier bonds, like Pierce Brosnan
Speaker 3: and Roger Moore, just seems like they they move less.
Speaker 3: They're more just stationary, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll see what they put together, all right.
Speaker 2: So that's the Prince of the Arboians. They are a
Speaker 2: bunch of Arborians, but the only other one that really
Speaker 2: matters for just our quick discussion here. We may touch
Speaker 2: on some others later on, but we have Richard O'Brien
Speaker 2: playing the character Fikoh. I didn't catch him at first.
Speaker 2: It took me a bit to realize, like, oh wait
Speaker 2: a minute, that bold guy's Richard O'Brien. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Born nineteen forty two, the mastermind behind the Rocky Horror
Speaker 2: Picture Show, in which he also played riff Raff, the
Speaker 2: future Mister Hand in nineteen ninety eight's Dark City. So
Speaker 2: it's a very small role, of fun role. And we'll
Speaker 2: come back to Rich O'Brien another time.
Speaker 3: Are we done with the cast yet?
Speaker 2: No? No, because the next faction, we can't forget the
Speaker 2: hawk Men. Oh yeah, and we cannot, absolutely cannot forget
Speaker 2: the Prince of the Hawkmen, Prince Voltan, played by Brian Blessed.
Speaker 3: Brian Blessed, did you say.
Speaker 2: That's right? Oh my god? This has any actor ever
Speaker 2: made such a feast of his lines as Brian Blessed
Speaker 2: in this film.
Speaker 3: Maybe I've said this before, but he is vomiting digestive
Speaker 3: enzymes all over the scenery so he can slurp it
Speaker 3: up like a spider.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He has like the galactus of consuming the scenery
Speaker 2: for sure. Oh my god. Every moment Brian Blessed is
Speaker 2: unscreen in this is just amazing. Just I mean, a
Speaker 2: booming actor for starters. Even if you didn't see him,
Speaker 2: oh you've only heard him if he were voicing a puppet.
Speaker 2: It would be overpowering, and it's just so intense. But
Speaker 2: on top of that, you get to see him and
Speaker 2: he has this, you know, just intense eyes and a
Speaker 2: laugh that somehow manages to allow you to see all
Speaker 2: of his upper teeth at once.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. One way I was thinking about it was,
Speaker 3: you know, when there's an actor in a movie who
Speaker 3: only has one line, they're like a little bit part.
Speaker 3: They have one line, but they're trying to be really memorable,
Speaker 3: so they go way over the top. He's like that,
Speaker 3: except he has like fifty lines and he treats every
Speaker 3: one of them like that.
Speaker 2: He does Oh my god, like the famous one that
Speaker 2: will come back to being Gordon's alive. Even do it
Speaker 2: the way he does, like the way he says it.
Speaker 2: He just complains, you've heard it. It's just how does
Speaker 2: he do it? I don't know. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: He looks like he has bitten people's fingers off, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and just imagine somebody got too close and he just chomped.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, just amazing physical presence. They would be
Speaker 2: clear the hawkmen as well described, but they are wearing
Speaker 2: like sort of like leather pants and like and belts
Speaker 2: and they have big like helmets on with horns, and
Speaker 2: then they have full sized like eagle wings. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot going on here in the visual presentation of
Speaker 2: Prince Fulton.
Speaker 3: A lot of leather straps and stuff, and they've got
Speaker 3: these clubs that have a hook on the end. It's
Speaker 3: a very nasty looking weapon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, vicious cudgel. And then I think they all have
Speaker 2: spray tand on as well. Yes, all right, so we'll
Speaker 2: keep talking about Brian Blessed, but yeah, he is a
Speaker 2: legendary actor of stage, screen and TV. A lot of
Speaker 2: his early roles were on TV shows, such as the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three Musketeers series, in which he of course
Speaker 2: played Porthos. He was also on The Avengers a few times.
Speaker 2: Other TV roles include I Claudius in seventy six. He
Speaker 2: was on multiple episodes of black Adder in eighty three.
Speaker 2: He was in an eighty three adaptation of the Hound
Speaker 2: of the Baskervilles. He was on Doctor Who in eighty six.
Speaker 2: He was on the series Crossbow in eighty seven, and
Speaker 2: he made a big splash, of course in Henry the
Speaker 2: Fifth in nineteen eighty nine, directed by and starring Kenneth Bronna.
Speaker 3: Oh did he play Exeter?
Speaker 2: I had to look it up, but yes, yes, that
Speaker 2: was the role he played in The Nice Perfect He'd
Speaker 2: ate ultimately appear in four of the five Shakespeare films
Speaker 2: directed by Kenneth Bronna, the others being Much Ado About
Speaker 2: Nothing in ninety three, Hamlet in ninety six, and As
Speaker 2: You Like It in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I can just really imagine him getting mad about tennis balls.
Speaker 2: So really too many things to list here, but we
Speaker 2: do have to mention that he provided the voice of
Speaker 2: Boss n Ass in The Phantom Menace and continues to
Speaker 2: do just a lot of voice work, so he's still
Speaker 2: still active, at least as a voice actor.
Speaker 3: Has anybody ever interviewed him about like what he was
Speaker 3: thinking going into this role? Like what why did he
Speaker 3: choose to act to the level that he did?
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't see anything offhand. I'm sure someone
Speaker 2: has asked him about it, but I mean I don't know.
Speaker 2: I almost like, why would I question the man, Like, Yes,
Speaker 2: he nailed it, you know. I mean this is a
Speaker 2: very like loud, boisterous character and he's just played as
Speaker 2: loudly and boisterously as possible. Okay, all right. Now at
Speaker 2: this point we're gonna we're gonna skip ahead a little
Speaker 2: bit again. I'm skipping over so many talented people involved
Speaker 2: with the visual look of the picture. But we've got
Speaker 2: to get to the music.
Speaker 3: Oh lord, the music. That's one of the real stars
Speaker 3: of the film.
Speaker 2: That's right, because now we have sort of two things
Speaker 2: going on with the music here. We have the more
Speaker 2: traditional swashbuckling orchestra music in this picture, and it's very
Speaker 2: effective and again fitting since you know swashbuckling and so forth.
Speaker 2: But this is the work of Howard Blake born nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight, whose scores include nineteen seventy seven's of the Duellists,
Speaker 2: That's the Ridley Scott Picture eighty three's Amityville three D,
Speaker 2: and he was nominated for a BAFTA for his work
Speaker 2: on this film. But the rest of the music is
Speaker 2: famously the work of the legendary rock band Queen.
Speaker 3: I knew the song the theme song from Flash Gordon
Speaker 3: before I knew there was a movie Flash Gordon, like
Speaker 3: way back when I was letting like middle school. I
Speaker 3: somehow was able to download an MP three of the
Speaker 3: Queen song Flash and not even realize that it was
Speaker 3: connected to a movie. I just leught there were these
Speaker 3: wacky lines people were saying in the song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the track as is featured on the soundtrack
Speaker 2: for the album, which is available you know, anywhere you stream,
Speaker 2: anywhere you find Queen music, you can find this. It
Speaker 2: has all these samples from the picture, which in their
Speaker 2: tremendous samples, like any they managed to fit like so
Speaker 2: many great lines into the track.
Speaker 3: We get Flash gordons alive, we get what do you mean,
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon approaching? We get I think dispatch war rocket
Speaker 3: Ajax to bring back his body.
Speaker 2: Yes, so many great lines. So this movie in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six is Highlander. Are the only films that Queen
Speaker 2: ever really worked on in this sort of exclusive capacity,
Speaker 2: you know, in both cases creating tracks exclusively for these films,
Speaker 2: with Flash being the only film where Queen contributed not
Speaker 2: only to the soundtrack but also to the score. This
Speaker 2: is something I don't think I quite appreciated as much
Speaker 2: until recently. But yeah, some of the most stirring and
Speaker 2: just vibe defining tracks in the score for Flash Gordon
Speaker 2: are Queen compositions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so there is the main theme which we
Speaker 3: can talk about I mean that has like singing in lyrics,
Speaker 3: but there also is a lot of just great sort
Speaker 3: of mood music, you know, setting the scene for things
Speaker 3: happening in the plot. That is part of the Queen score.
Speaker 3: You know, these great these drum tracks when they're like
Speaker 3: approaching the Imperial Vortex and the you know, the the
Speaker 3: pulsing synthesizers and all that that are just doing the
Speaker 3: you know, the regular work that a film score needs
Speaker 3: to do to put you in the in the right
Speaker 3: frame of mind for a scene. But it's it's part
Speaker 3: of what Queen contributed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the writing credits are broken up a bit,
Speaker 2: but Freddie Mercury is credited for Ming's theme. This is
Speaker 2: a blistering synth number that plays whenever, especially the first
Speaker 2: scene when we see Ming, you know, enter the throne room.
Speaker 2: And then Brian May is credited on Flash's theme. John
Speaker 2: Deacon is credited on execution of Flash, and Roger Taylor
Speaker 2: is credited on in the space capsule, the love theme.
Speaker 3: It's amazing how well Queen fits the subject matter. And
Speaker 3: so we were talking about this on chat before we
Speaker 3: came into the to the session here. But I was
Speaker 3: thinking about how part of Brian May's signature guitar sound
Speaker 3: is that like that harmonized double lead thing where he would,
Speaker 3: you know, he would multi track lead guitar lines and
Speaker 3: solos in harmony together, and that it just sounds like
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon. But he was doing this from before the
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon soundtrack. He does that on you know, much
Speaker 3: earlier albums.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, it's I have to have to
Speaker 2: admit with Queen, I've I've been a Queen fan since
Speaker 2: I was a kid, but I've always been a Queen's
Speaker 2: Greatest Hits Queen fan, so like, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of tracks I missed out on and had to like
Speaker 2: re explore later on. And I've never been like like
Speaker 2: super tuned in too, like their trajectory from one album
Speaker 2: to the next. But I was reading an article by
Speaker 2: an author by the name of Ryan Reid. This was
Speaker 2: on Ultimate Classic Rock dot com. It came up in
Speaker 2: search titled how Queen embraced the synthesizer on Play the Game,
Speaker 2: And this article points out that Queen first embraced the
Speaker 2: synth on their nineteen eighty album The Game, just six
Speaker 2: months prior to this film score.
Speaker 3: Mmm, yeah, okay, so they had said, I think on
Speaker 3: earlier albums that they were not really interested in synthesizers
Speaker 3: like that. They even had one album that in the
Speaker 3: liner notes it had a little dig that said something
Speaker 3: like no one on the synthesizer. But then they I
Speaker 3: guess they came around to it and you know what,
Speaker 3: they use it?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, absolutely, Again that Ming track. Ming's theme alone
Speaker 2: is just so great and just sets the tone.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of another non musical movie,
Speaker 3: meaning like a movie where the characters don't sing, that
Speaker 3: has an original soundtrack with music that has lyrics about
Speaker 3: the characters and plot, which the title track here Flash
Speaker 3: does have and doesn't just play in the credits, by
Speaker 3: the way, plays within the movie. There are the parts
Speaker 3: where you hear them singing about Flash. Is there another
Speaker 3: I can't think of another thing like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, it needs to be a film,
Speaker 2: it does it. Not a film that is based on
Speaker 2: a ballad, but a film that has essentially a ballad
Speaker 2: that was created to be the theme song for the
Speaker 2: picture about the main character.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. It'd be like if there was like a
Speaker 3: Captain America movie that had a song that played what
Speaker 3: in a scene in the movie with lyrics about Captain America.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I guess the main example that comes to mind
Speaker 2: is the theme song to Shaft.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, there you go. Or I can't remember. Does
Speaker 3: that only play over the credits or that plays in
Speaker 3: the film as well.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, you know, I don't know that I've
Speaker 2: ever seen Shaft, but I mostly just heard the theme song.
Speaker 3: Okay, we gotta go back and confirm that. Listeners, if
Speaker 3: you can think of examples of songs like this, let
Speaker 3: us know, contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's get into the plot of this baby.
Speaker 2: Because there's a lot of stuff that happens.
Speaker 3: We're not gonna be able to do the entire thing
Speaker 3: in exquisite detail that the kind of detail deserve. We'll
Speaker 3: have to skip over some things, but we'll do our best.
Speaker 3: So it begins with the star field, and we hear
Speaker 3: the humming of the engines of a starship, and then
Speaker 3: we hear the voice of Max Foncido, who's again playing
Speaker 3: the villain Emperor Ming, who says he says, clitis, I bored.
Speaker 3: What plaything can you offer me today? And the voice
Speaker 3: of Clyta says, an obscure body in the s K system,
Speaker 3: Your majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.
Speaker 3: And then we see giant Sci Fi crosshairs zooming in
Speaker 3: on the planet Earth as it rotates in space, and
Speaker 3: Ming says, how peaceful it looks. And then we see
Speaker 3: a close up of a gloved hand with this elaborate
Speaker 3: chunky ring and the ring lights up, seemingly activating some
Speaker 3: kind of machinery. Then we see a console with flashing
Speaker 3: indicators that say things like earthquake, tornado, hot hail, typhoon.
Speaker 3: What is hot hail?
Speaker 2: I don't know, will we find out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then just here laughter, and Clita says most effective,
Speaker 3: your majesty, Will you destroy this Earth? And Ming says later,
Speaker 3: I like to play with things a while before annihilation,
Speaker 3: And then we begin the pulsing of the theme song
Speaker 3: by Queen. The title screen flash Gordon, which is written
Speaker 3: in this great I don't know what you call this
Speaker 3: kind of font, but it's a it's kind of swooping
Speaker 3: script with red and gold letters. And then over the credits,
Speaker 3: we occasionally see television feeds of natural disasters occurring on Earth.
Speaker 3: Intercut with hand drawn imagery from the Flash Gordon comics
Speaker 3: and the sound of Max Foncito laughing again. He's just
Speaker 3: ba They're going, Oh, these tornadoes are hilarious. And after
Speaker 3: the credits finish, we go down to the surface of
Speaker 3: Earth and we are at some deserted rural airfield where
Speaker 3: we meet Flash Gordon. Now you might expect him to
Speaker 3: be doing some heroic or impressive stunt at first encounter,
Speaker 3: but instead he is sitting in a station wagon reading
Speaker 3: a newspaper, listening to football on the radio, and watching
Speaker 3: the hot hail come come down around the car while
Speaker 3: he's waiting for a flight. So maybe he's more active
Speaker 3: when he's not waiting for a flight.
Speaker 2: This whole section of the movie, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 2: interesting to look at because this movie knows it needs
Speaker 2: to get into outer space as soon as possible. It
Speaker 2: knows that any time spent on Earth in a mundane
Speaker 2: setting is wasted time for this film. But they've got
Speaker 2: to do it. They've got to set these characters on
Speaker 2: Earth before you can place them in this other world.
Speaker 2: But the clock is and you got to get them
Speaker 2: there before you lose the audience. And I think it's commendable.
Speaker 2: They try and keep the pace up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it moves right along. By the way, I
Speaker 3: should mention that Flash Gordon is wearing a T shirt
Speaker 3: that says Flash.
Speaker 2: He's got a brand he's got to represent, you know exactly.
Speaker 3: We see another passenger who's going to be on the
Speaker 3: same flight as she arrives in a transport van from
Speaker 3: a local resort. This is Melody Anderson playing Dale Arden,
Speaker 3: who we learn is a travel agent, and they exchange
Speaker 3: a meaningful glance as she passes by his car, and
Speaker 3: then they both get on the airplane. This seems to
Speaker 3: be some kind of private flight. It's not a commercial flight.
Speaker 3: They're like no other passengers, just the two pilots, Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: Dale Arden. So the plane takes off soars into the sky. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the ming induced weather gets worse. We see hot coals
Speaker 3: raining down from the sky and just plunking into bodies
Speaker 3: of water, leaving these trails of steam. And in the airplane,
Speaker 3: the pilots are talking about their famous passenger. One of
Speaker 3: them says, well, I sure ope, Flash Gordon had a
Speaker 3: great vacation. He's going to have to work hard to
Speaker 3: top last season and He's also holding an issue of
Speaker 3: People magazine with Flash Gordon on the cover. So we
Speaker 3: learned Flash Gordon is a famous football player. And I
Speaker 3: was watching this with Rachel and we were wondering, is
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon already known to be some kind of hero
Speaker 3: or savior of the world at the beginning of this movie.
Speaker 3: Is this like another one of his adventures, or at
Speaker 3: this point is he simply a famous football player and
Speaker 3: this movie depicts the first of his world saving adventures.
Speaker 3: I think it is the latter.
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah, I think he's football famous at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the plane starts jerking around in the air and
Speaker 3: we hear Max Foncito just bellowing laughter again, echoing through
Speaker 3: every corner of space time, and the turbulence is clearly
Speaker 3: upsetting Dale, the travel agent because she is afraid of flying.
Speaker 3: The irony of this is noted, and then Flash goes
Speaker 3: up to check with the pilots to see if anything
Speaker 3: is wrong, and he suggests that the air might be
Speaker 3: smoother at a higher altitude. This amazing early example of arrowsplaining.
Speaker 3: I think all flights should allow passengers to come up
Speaker 3: to the cockpit and tell the pilots what they're doing
Speaker 3: wrong anyway, Dale, who appears to be extremely uncomfortable and anxious,
Speaker 3: yells up to Flash to tell him to leave the
Speaker 3: pilots alone. So he comes back, and he starts telling
Speaker 3: her that the plane is bouncing because of turbulence. He's
Speaker 3: like explaining how turbulence works, and they start chatting and
Speaker 3: hitting it off. A Flash confesses that he saw Dale
Speaker 3: at the hotel the night before and ask the matre
Speaker 3: d who she was, because he's clearly he's smitten. He's like,
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe a girl like you was alone, and she's,
Speaker 3: you know, impressed. They're flirting and stuff. Flash talks about
Speaker 3: how he's taking flying lessons, more about how turbulence works,
Speaker 3: and then out of the windows the skies turn red.
Speaker 3: Clouds of blood block out the sun, and somehow, Ming
Speaker 3: the Merciless appears bodily in the form of a giant
Speaker 3: meteor in the sky and abducts the two pilots. I
Speaker 3: didn't quite understand this part. It doesn't seem to fit
Speaker 3: with anything else.
Speaker 2: This is never explained, but this is what appears to happen.
Speaker 3: Yes, but also like Ming seems confused when they show
Speaker 3: up later, so it's not like Ming is trying to
Speaker 3: retrieve the specific plane of Flash Gordon. He doesn't know
Speaker 3: who Flash Gordon is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to be a questionable choice.
Speaker 3: So Flash and Dale they go up to the cockpit
Speaker 3: and pilots are missing, so they try to take over
Speaker 3: flying the plane, but it is clear we are headed
Speaker 3: for a crash landing. Meanwhile, elsewhere, we check in at
Speaker 3: some kind of remote atmospheric monitoring facility where two scientists
Speaker 3: are stationed. One of them is doctor Hans Zarkov played
Speaker 3: by Topol, and we learn from TV reports he is
Speaker 3: a researcher formerly affiliated with NASA who has been ridiculed
Speaker 3: and dismissed by the scientific establishment for basically suggest that
Speaker 3: all the bad weather is being caused by alien intervention
Speaker 3: instead of regular physical forces. Zarkov's partner gets woken up
Speaker 3: when flaming rocks crashed through the skylight and set his
Speaker 3: blankets on fire. He wakes up Zarkov. They look at
Speaker 3: their feeds and stuff and figure out what's going on,
Speaker 3: and the scientists observe that the sun is blotted out
Speaker 3: due to an unscheduled eclipse. H that's not supposed to happen.
Speaker 3: The moon has been spiraling into the Earth, and a
Speaker 3: Zarkov takes stock of the situation. He concludes, this is it.
Speaker 3: This is the alien attack. It's begun. All my fringe
Speaker 3: theories are finally vindicated. So he's got some kind of
Speaker 3: scheme where he has constructed a secret rocket ship that
Speaker 3: will be used to fly up into space and counter
Speaker 3: attack the evil that is causing the moon to spiral
Speaker 3: into the Earth. But the rocket ship needs at least
Speaker 3: two people to operate it. I don't know why he
Speaker 3: built it that way, but that's what he did. Zarkov
Speaker 3: tries to get his partner, Munson, into the ship, but
Speaker 3: Munson doesn't want to do this. He freaks out and
Speaker 3: runs away. Zarkov tries to appeal to his spirit of humanity.
Speaker 3: He's like, yes, they will probably die on this mission,
Speaker 3: but they alone have a chance to save the human
Speaker 3: race anyway. This conflict is interrupted by a plane crash,
Speaker 3: flash and dale. Their plane crashes into Zarkov's laboratory. Does
Speaker 3: the plane crash kill Munson? Unclear? We just never see
Speaker 3: him again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I took it to mean that Munson had just
Speaker 2: taken off.
Speaker 3: But oh, okay, so unclear, but Flash and Dale survive
Speaker 3: the landing. They're fine. They climb out of the plane
Speaker 3: and meet Zarkov and they're like, can we use your phone?
Speaker 3: And Zarkov is like, oh, yes, yeah, good to see you.
Speaker 3: You're well, Yeah, the phone is right here inside this
Speaker 3: rocket ship. So they go and they go inside, and
Speaker 3: then Zarkov confronts them with a revolver, explains his plan,
Speaker 3: locks them inside, and they blast off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Zarkof is just in full mad scientist mode of
Speaker 2: this whole this whole initial meeting, Like we were saying earlier,
Speaker 2: this performance, this character is all over the place. But
Speaker 2: that's where we are now with him.
Speaker 3: He is a mad scientist, but he's like a benevolent
Speaker 3: mad scientist. He's very committed to like sacrificing his life
Speaker 3: to save the planet Earth.
Speaker 2: Yes, and his and his plan to save the planet Earth.
Speaker 2: As we'll find out, he's basically go into space with
Speaker 2: a pistol and take out who's responsible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, confront the leader of whatever aliens are causing the
Speaker 3: hot hail, and just and and shoot them, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the rocket launches into space and our heroes
Speaker 3: pass out from the g forces. That we see Dale
Speaker 3: and Flash join hands as they lose consciousness, so they
Speaker 3: are quickly like they're they're basically already in love there,
Speaker 3: you know, love story are complete at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're finally like rid of the Earth at
Speaker 2: this point, we are successfully in space. We don't have
Speaker 2: to worry about the real world anymore. It's just gonna
Speaker 2: be aliens and craziness from here on out.
Speaker 3: Disgusting Earth, Get it out of here. There's a shot
Speaker 3: where they're in Earth orbit and we could see like
Speaker 3: a dozen planets hanging in the background. What what are
Speaker 3: all these extra planets? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Everything's been thrown into disarray.
Speaker 3: So our heroes are unconscious and we see their space
Speaker 3: capsule drift through space towards this vast spiraling portal. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like a whirlpool of color in the void.
Speaker 3: And then we see a close up of some alien
Speaker 3: creature in like a command room somewhere. It's a humanoid face,
Speaker 3: pale skin, bald head, cold voice, with computerized goggles over
Speaker 3: his eyes that have all these creepy gold displays on them,
Speaker 3: and the alien says strange object imaged in the Imperial Vortex.
Speaker 3: One thing.
Speaker 2: I noticed.
Speaker 3: It's out of frame in the screenshot I have for
Speaker 3: you to look at, Rob, But did you notice the
Speaker 3: little hood ornament on the top of their goggles has
Speaker 3: a Freemason symbol on it. It's got the little square encompass.
Speaker 2: I didn't notice it much here, but I think Clydus
Speaker 2: perhaps has some symbolisms on him that look like Freemason imagery.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know what to make of that.
Speaker 3: Somebody snucks someone in there. Maybe it's a coincidence, but
Speaker 3: it seems like they're suggesting that the aliens are Freemasons. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the spaceship tumbles into the vortex, and this part I
Speaker 3: thought was just awesome, Like the feeling it creates is
Speaker 3: so exciting. The score is heavy with synth, bass and drums,
Speaker 3: and I like the sound of the drums. It's like
Speaker 3: a very cool, like dry tom sound with this marching,
Speaker 3: galloping beat. And in the background, space is represented as
Speaker 3: this chaotic fusion of colors, like different shades of paint
Speaker 3: or spilled together and mixing on panes of glass. It's
Speaker 3: very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a psychedelic liquid light show, like a
Speaker 2: Joshua light show. Thing going on, like, that's this movie's
Speaker 2: vision for what space is, and I have to say
Speaker 2: I really like it. One of the things that I've
Speaker 2: liked about the Spacier Marvel Cinematic Universe movies is that
Speaker 2: they two varying degrees embrace this kind of like a
Speaker 2: colorful fantasy space setting for their pictures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. I mean it's not like your movie
Speaker 3: needs to be realistic anyway. It's unrealistic in other ways,
Speaker 3: so why not make it beautiful?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this goes even beyond anything. If you've seen
Speaker 2: MCU films and you haven't seen Flash Gordon, like in this,
Speaker 2: like you don't even see any darkness of space. There
Speaker 2: is no darkness in space. Everything is colors and psychedelic intensity.
Speaker 3: Right. So we hear Alien mission control talking about this
Speaker 3: object with clitis. They are instructed to bring the craft
Speaker 3: through the Sea of Fire and land it safely at
Speaker 3: the Palace and the effect shots here involve a lot
Speaker 3: of miniature models and sets. As we see the ship
Speaker 3: approaching on the ming planet. I think it's the planet
Speaker 3: called Mango.
Speaker 2: I believe so. Or that's the city I can't remember
Speaker 2: as the planet or the city.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or They also say Mingo about something I don't know.
Speaker 3: So they're moving through these little models sets and miniature sets,
Speaker 3: and it's great, stuffed to some degree, intentionally corny looking,
Speaker 3: I think, trying to invoke a nostalgia for earlier films
Speaker 3: and serials with corny special effects, but at the same
Speaker 3: time a spellbinding pleasure for the eyes. It is equal
Speaker 3: parts corny self parody and genuine finesse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of like have excellent craft went
Speaker 2: into creating these models and sets and effects for sure.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. So flash Dale and Zarkov they crash land,
Speaker 3: they're taken prisoner by the Emperor Ming's evil guards, and
Speaker 3: they are escorted to the heart of the palace and
Speaker 3: there's like a giant state room that they passed through
Speaker 3: that has this red and gold motif with these giant
Speaker 3: statues of Ming's head. Some of the soldiers are covered
Speaker 3: in gold armor that seems slightly Samurai inspired. Others look
Speaker 3: like old school sardok car and they've got like red
Speaker 3: robes with hoods with the faces completely hidden behind gas masks.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the gas masky guys that we see. They
Speaker 2: also have kind of a mobious look to them and
Speaker 2: remind me of it. They also look like something that
Speaker 2: could be a villain from like Super Mario Brothers too.
Speaker 3: They look like they may well be following the smoke
Speaker 3: to the rift filled land. Yeah. So, as the heroes
Speaker 3: are walking through the middle of this massive room full
Speaker 3: of alien soldiers, Flash and Dale comment that this place
Speaker 3: looks like quote, a police state, and Zarkov says that
Speaker 3: that could be to their advantage because it will mean
Speaker 3: they can easily find allies. Zarkov says, look at them,
Speaker 3: the poor wretches are just waiting for someone to lead
Speaker 3: them in revolt. And Dale is like, will you stop
Speaker 3: talking about revolts? I just want to go home. Oh,
Speaker 3: another thing we should mention here is this flying robot
Speaker 3: that occasionally vaporizes people. I think this is called the
Speaker 3: Imperial Globe. It's like this floating gold thing that has
Speaker 3: spikes on it, and sometimes it shoots people with lasers.
Speaker 3: The Globe commands the prisoners to follow it, and on
Speaker 3: the way to meet with the Emperor, the Globe executes
Speaker 3: another escaping prisoner, a lizard man, and it removes the
Speaker 3: revolver from Zarkov's pocket. Also, should we take a minute
Speaker 3: to mention the lizard man in this movie. They are
Speaker 3: a sort of unexplained faction. But they've got like they're
Speaker 3: like snakeheads with open mouths that have fangs and their
Speaker 3: faces are inside the snake mouth.
Speaker 2: It's incredible, like it it's not a situation. Oh, it's complex,
Speaker 2: Like it works on several different levels, because it's sort
Speaker 2: of like you have a crappy costume of a lizard
Speaker 2: in which the person's face is in the mouth, but
Speaker 2: then they've taken that concept and evolved it to wear No,
Speaker 2: there's like red flesh inside the lizard's mouth and it
Speaker 2: has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: so weird.
Speaker 3: So it's not like a person's face hiding. There's like
Speaker 3: a face represented in the mouth as part of the costume.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, and it's it's equal parts goofy, but also
Speaker 2: like it gets here, your wheels turning, Like, what's going
Speaker 2: on here? Did these things like manifest the mouth? Is
Speaker 2: this just for communicating with the humanoid world? Like, what's
Speaker 2: going on? It's so weird?
Speaker 3: No idea. Anyway, they move on. The Zarkov says here
Speaker 3: that he's going to sacrifice himself to kill They haven't
Speaker 3: met ming yet, so he doesn't even know who ming is.
Speaker 3: I guess whoever the boss is of the bad guys.
Speaker 3: He's going to do it. He says, it's a quote,
Speaker 3: it's a rational transaction, one life for billions. But the
Speaker 3: globe overhears this and destroys Zarkov's gun.
Speaker 2: Oops, now we're back to square one.
Speaker 3: The globe is a real tattle tale. This will come
Speaker 3: up again in the next scene. So we pass on
Speaker 3: to the Throne Room, which is just an avalanche of
Speaker 3: all these different like characters and aliens, costumes, designs. One
Speaker 3: type of character in that stands out to me are
Speaker 3: these guys in red hoods who have the golden skull masks,
Speaker 3: but they look like sad skulls, so like, you know,
Speaker 3: the eyebrow ridges of the gold skulls are sloped downward,
Speaker 3: as they received from the bridge of the nose, which
Speaker 3: you know, when the eyebrows are tilted that way, we
Speaker 3: naturally interpret that as a sad face. So for some reason,
Speaker 3: these rigid gold masks are sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of like sad muppet skulls, but made
Speaker 2: of gold.
Speaker 3: Interest weird choice, I don't know. And there's so many
Speaker 3: other types of aliens assembled here. They're like these people
Speaker 3: who are like they have like black and white motifs
Speaker 3: split down the middle of their costume. There seem to
Speaker 3: be like delegations from the many different planets that are
Speaker 3: subjugated by the Emperor here. But the Emperor demands fealty,
Speaker 3: and one thing that's for sure is everybody's got to
Speaker 3: show that they're loyal to him. So when Emperor Ming
Speaker 3: shows up, everybody starts screaming his glory. They say, Hail Ming,
Speaker 3: Hail Emperor of the galaxy. And here finally we see
Speaker 3: Max Foncido as Emperor Ming. He emerges from red fog
Speaker 3: as if he were the Devil incarnate, and he's bald,
Speaker 3: he has a goatee, he's very arched eyebrows, and he's
Speaker 3: wearing this big like red robe with a high collar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that the Queen music that SYNTHESIZERR track
Speaker 2: is just blaring and it's fabulous.
Speaker 3: Here we also meet Ornella Mooti as Princess Aura, the
Speaker 3: daughter of Ming. And when we first meet her, she
Speaker 3: looks like a walking jewelry display case. It's just like
Speaker 3: a bikini made of gold and diamonds and this like
Speaker 3: crown on the head that's sparkling from the moment the
Speaker 3: Earthlings enter the room. She's ogling Flash Gordon, So I
Speaker 3: think we know what's going to happen here. She wants
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things about all of the especially
Speaker 2: like Ming's Court, there are places where they reference the
Speaker 2: idea that the human mind is more limited, it doesn't
Speaker 2: have the same capacity for thought that these other alien
Speaker 2: characters have. But these other alien characters, for the most part,
Speaker 2: don't seem to be displaying like heightened awareness and heightened cognition,
Speaker 2: Like they're just focused on pursuits like romantic pursuits and
Speaker 2: pursuits of the flesh and so forth, as opposed to
Speaker 2: any other kind of like higher functioning that I guess
Speaker 2: they're supposed to be doing here. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe they have extremely standard carnal desires basically all the
Speaker 3: aliens do. None of them are really shown to be, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, considering the philosophy of deep space or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, maybe they're doing all that in the background,
Speaker 2: and that's why everything else is dumped down a bit.
Speaker 3: In this scene, we also meet Peter Wingard as Clytis.
Speaker 3: This is the figure in the black hood with the
Speaker 3: spiked shoulder pads, also wearing a rigid gold mask. This
Speaker 3: mask does not look sad. Instead, it looks kind of
Speaker 3: coldly curious.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is total like vibes of Doctor Doom
Speaker 2: of Death from g I Joe, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Great presentation here, a golden death.
Speaker 3: You know, I was waiting for his big unmasking scene,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it ever comes, or if it did,
Speaker 3: I must have missed it was there. Any time we
Speaker 3: see him without the mask.
Speaker 2: We see some stuff leak out of the mask.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it, all right. We're not done meeting characters
Speaker 3: in the scene. We meet a couple of princes. We
Speaker 3: meet Brian Blessed as Voltan, the Prince of the Hawkman.
Speaker 3: We meet Timothy Dalton as Baron, the Prince of the Arboreans.
Speaker 3: I think the tree people, yep. And when we first
Speaker 3: meet these two, they are fighting with each other. They're
Speaker 3: arguing about who gets to present the fabled ice Jewel
Speaker 3: of Phrygia to Emperor Ming as a tribute. Voltan tries
Speaker 3: to present it first, but then Barn comes into the
Speaker 3: room and says, ah, you stole that from me. I
Speaker 3: unearthed it to give to Ming as a tribute. I
Speaker 3: saw it first, but then Voltan stole it and they
Speaker 3: get mad at each other. They're about to duel, but
Speaker 3: then Clytas shuts it down. He says, no one in
Speaker 3: the palace dies without a command from the Emperor. And
Speaker 3: oh boy, Brian Blessed looks so eager to fight. He also,
Speaker 3: his beard looks so wild. It's very like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's very like not smoothed out. It has the look
Speaker 3: of like when a cartoon character gets gets like electrified
Speaker 3: and like their hair stands on end.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's rare to see a picture of
Speaker 2: him without a full glorious beard, but this one I
Speaker 2: feel like, yeah, they made it more bushy than usual. Here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now we gotta have a scene here in this
Speaker 3: big gathering where we witness Ming's cruelty. So we see
Speaker 3: the prince of one of the assembled people's here, the
Speaker 3: prince of Ardentia named Thun, and he's dressed in sparkling gold,
Speaker 3: and he approaches. He's called up before Ming, and he's like,
Speaker 3: we have suffered greatly since you blasted our kingdom. He says,
Speaker 3: they don't have any riches to offer, but the Ardentians
Speaker 3: can offer their loyalty.
Speaker 2: You pointed out that I'd forgotten to mention them in
Speaker 2: the I mean, there are a lot of actors in
Speaker 2: this film. We can't mention them all. But this is
Speaker 2: George Harris playing thun Born nineteen forty nine. Fans will
Speaker 2: definitely recognize him as Katanga in Raiders of the Lost
Speaker 2: Art small part, but a memorable one, and he also
Speaker 2: played Kingsley shackle Bolt in the Harry Potter films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Prince, he goes up before Ming and he's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we can offer you loyalty. That's all we got after
Speaker 3: you attacked us, and Ming commands him to show his
Speaker 3: loyalty by falling on his sword. So Prince he tries
Speaker 3: to do a smart double cross, like he tries to
Speaker 3: look like he's going to fall on his sword but
Speaker 3: then strike out and kill Ming, but the globe robot
Speaker 3: gets in the way. It freezes him in place before
Speaker 3: he can do it, and then Ming kills him with
Speaker 3: his own sword.
Speaker 2: Purple blood right or blue blood, I can't remember, but
Speaker 2: some sort of crazy alien colored blood.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the aliens in this movie have many different
Speaker 3: colors of blood, except for Timothy Dalton, who appears to
Speaker 3: have regular He's got like red blood, which makes you wonder,
Speaker 3: is Timothy Dalton just an Earthling who has been transplanted
Speaker 3: to Arborea? Don't know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think they would have green blood, because it's
Speaker 2: just you have aliens with all different colored bloods, and
Speaker 2: I guess you probably have that whole situation going on
Speaker 2: here where sensors famously are okay with blood if it's
Speaker 2: not red, you can have as much as possible if
Speaker 2: it's green, but if it's red, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: it's too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, So our Earthlings watch Ming just murder this guy,
Speaker 3: and then Flash mutters to Dale, this Ming's a psycho.
Speaker 3: Then the globe robot overhears him in tattles It like
Speaker 3: blares out on speakers, this Ming is a psycho, And
Speaker 3: they're like, who said that? And now all eyes are
Speaker 3: on the Earthlings, including Princess Aarrah, who is still aggressively
Speaker 3: ogling Flash Gordon from Afar. Gordon does notice this, and
Speaker 3: he like looks back at her, and Dale gets jealous.
Speaker 3: Oh also, they've never explained this, really, but Princess Aura
Speaker 3: just has like a guy on a leash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure this is Deep Roy, an
Speaker 2: actor who's come up on the show before. Again, very
Speaker 2: very deep gast on this picture. Among other things, Robbie
Speaker 2: Coltrane shows up at the airport scene early on in
Speaker 2: the picture. It hits a blink and you miss it situation,
Speaker 2: But there's Robbie Coltran.
Speaker 3: I didn't even notice anyway. So the humans come forward
Speaker 3: and Ming is like, who are you? Flash says Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: quarterback New York Jets. I didn't expect we were going
Speaker 3: to get a specific team mentioned Dale says Dale, Arden
Speaker 3: your Highness live and let live. That's my motto. And
Speaker 3: then Zarkov says, my name is Hans Zarkov. I am
Speaker 3: a scientist. I kidnapped them here in an effort to
Speaker 3: save our planet Earth. And Zarkov goes on to say,
Speaker 3: you know, we're interested only in friendship. Why did you
Speaker 3: attack our planet? And the Emperor Ming explains his mindset.
Speaker 3: He says, this is a quote, why not pathetic Earthlings
Speaker 3: hurling your bodies out into the void without the slightest
Speaker 3: inkling of who or what is out here? If you
Speaker 3: had known anything about the true nature of the universe
Speaker 3: anything at all he would have hidden from it in terror.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a kind of I didn't expect it to
Speaker 3: go in that direction, but that's that's kind of creepy.
Speaker 3: It has some cosmic horror going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, there are moments like this in the picture
Speaker 2: where yeah, it'll get really serious and like, oh man,
Speaker 2: this being is terrifying, and then you know, a football
Speaker 2: game may break out.
Speaker 3: That's right. So well, first, Ming, like he looks at
Speaker 3: Dale Arden and he is suddenly filled with lust and
Speaker 3: he's like, ah, yes, you are my new imperial concubine now,
Speaker 3: and he hypnotizes her with his ring and like makes
Speaker 3: her do this weird slow dance. It is an unusual
Speaker 3: vibe and Ming, I guess he's happy with what he
Speaker 3: sees and he's like, okay, she's mine now sees her
Speaker 3: and Flash Gordon says, forget it being DALs with me,
Speaker 3: and then we commenced the football fight. This had to
Speaker 3: be one of my favorite moments of the movie, where
Speaker 3: the fight breaks out and the form the fight takes
Speaker 3: is football more so than you're probably imagining here. So like,
Speaker 3: at first, there, Flash Gordon starts fighting the soldiers and
Speaker 3: he's having trouble defeating them until Zarkov snatches like an
Speaker 3: egg from one of the aliens in the room, and
Speaker 3: the egg is basically football shaped and he throws it
Speaker 3: to Flash Gordon and then this apparently activates his football
Speaker 3: brain so he can tackle the bad guys. Rob. I
Speaker 3: don't know what you want to say about the scene.
Speaker 3: There is a lot going on and it is really funny.
Speaker 2: Your note on it being more football theme than you
Speaker 2: can possibly imagine if you haven't seen the film is
Speaker 2: totally on point, because, yeah, it is like a straight
Speaker 2: up football game that breaks out to the point where
Speaker 2: there's a there's this one moment where Clyde has like
Speaker 2: gets some of the cronies and again these are okay
Speaker 2: two things. First of all, the aliens who are engaging
Speaker 2: in the football fight are of like a different type.
Speaker 2: They have different armor that strongly resembles like football padding.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're dressed up like football players.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then when they when they're getting their butts
Speaker 2: kicked by Flash, Clydus jumps in and he's like, all right,
Speaker 2: huddle up. He like does like a football coaching thing
Speaker 2: where it's like you need to do like this, do
Speaker 2: this play and they go out and try it again,
Speaker 2: and it is. It is tremendous fun. It is just
Speaker 2: absolutely goofy, and it can come as a shock, Like
Speaker 2: I say, if you kind of like we're buying into
Speaker 2: Ming a few seconds earlier and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 2: this this bad guy's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 3: We go from cosmic horror to football fight in like
Speaker 3: eighty seconds. And also in this fight, Dale is doing
Speaker 3: cheerleader cheers. She's like, go Flash, Go Flash. Also, Brian
Speaker 3: Blessed likes watching. He keeps just like watching the fight
Speaker 3: and grinning, gigantic toothy grin, casually intervening here and there
Speaker 3: to help out Flash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tripping a few aliens us. I think he uses
Speaker 2: the cudgel on him a little bit too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's doing it like on the Sly. I
Speaker 3: guess he didn't get caught. But unfortunately this fight ends
Speaker 3: with Flash getting knocked unconscious. I think Zarkov like screws
Speaker 3: up and it's his fault. And so Ming is victorious
Speaker 3: over the Earthlings, and Aura goes up to Ming and
Speaker 3: she begs him to give Flash to her, even though
Speaker 3: she's already engaged to be married to Prince Baron Timothy Dalton.
Speaker 3: She's like, no, give me this other husband as well.
Speaker 3: I will marry both of them. But Ming refuses, So
Speaker 3: Zarkov is taken away by Cleitis to be conditioned for
Speaker 3: the Imperial Secret Police. Flash is to face public execution
Speaker 3: later that night for his defiance of Ming.
Speaker 2: The football rebellion is over.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so yeah, they're in prison and condemned. So
Speaker 3: we get one scene that comes up soon is this
Speaker 3: little well. First, there's a there's a moment with Prince
Speaker 3: Baron and Princess Ara where he says he doesn't trust her,
Speaker 3: but she convinces him to go back to Arboria tonight
Speaker 3: and she will come and meet him there with a surprise.
Speaker 3: And then we see Flash in prison in Ming's dungeon
Speaker 3: here wearing one of the best helmet mask things I've
Speaker 3: ever seen. It looks like a like a giant die
Speaker 3: of some kind, and it's got spikes shooting out of
Speaker 3: it where his face would be. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's like to prevent anybody from getting close to his face,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Or maybe it's because if he runs away, he'll like
Speaker 2: stick into the wall and then he can't move. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: It looks impressive though, So as a final request before
Speaker 3: his execution, he tells Clydas that he wants to see Dale,
Speaker 3: and they're given a moment together, and Clydas, of course
Speaker 3: regards it as pathetic that they are in love. And
Speaker 3: Dale comes in in her emperor's concubine uniform and the
Speaker 3: first thing Flash Gordon says when he sees her is
Speaker 3: you look great. That about at us rolling on the floor,
Speaker 3: You look great. Anyway. They say that they hope this
Speaker 3: is only a bad dream. You know, soon they'll wake up,
Speaker 3: and Flash tells her, you know, after he's dead, she's
Speaker 3: gonna have to meet up with Zarkov to find a
Speaker 3: way to save the earth. So we go to the
Speaker 3: execution and it's going to take place in this chamber
Speaker 3: that's like a hat, it's like a glass hemisphere with
Speaker 3: this chair where this like yellow smoke comes out that
Speaker 3: is apparently some kind of poison that will kill Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3: The execution scene set is actually gorgeous, with these clouds
Speaker 3: blooming in the sky and all these bizarre costumes. It's
Speaker 3: really again one of the many feast for the eyes
Speaker 3: scenes here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a cross between church and a gas
Speaker 2: chamber exactly.
Speaker 3: And the Imperial Surgeon is a character we meet in
Speaker 3: this scene. He's dressed in like white robes, looks very
Speaker 3: boring compared to everybody else around him. He's like he's
Speaker 3: like the square in Ming's palace. And we see him
Speaker 3: slip Flash Gordon some kind of secret medicine before the execution.
Speaker 3: There's a great moment in the scene where I think
Speaker 3: we see Dale and Zarkov and they're watching Flash Gordon
Speaker 3: be prepared for execution and they're they're crying, and Princess
Speaker 3: Ara says to Ming, look, water is leaking from her eyes,
Speaker 3: and Ming says, it's what they call tears. It is
Speaker 3: a sign of their weakness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I mean, ultimately, an important theme in
Speaker 2: the film is that what humanity offers is compassion and
Speaker 2: reason and that's what that's what's ultimately going to win
Speaker 2: the day. And that's that's ultimately what Flash has. That
Speaker 2: is his superpower. But it's not helping him out a
Speaker 2: lot right now.
Speaker 3: Right well, No, in fact, what helps him out right
Speaker 3: now is that he is good looking, and Aura is
Speaker 3: obsessed with him because she in fact has gotten the
Speaker 3: the Imperial Surgeon to give him an antidote that will
Speaker 3: protect him from this yellow smoke that is supposed to
Speaker 3: poison him. So he just like gets knocked out by it,
Speaker 3: and we come back to him later in this room
Speaker 3: where his coffin is laid out next to like a
Speaker 3: stylized custom tombstone that says Flash Gordon Earthling executed by Ming.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's so good. It's likes branded.
Speaker 3: So they wake him up and the Imperial Surgeon is like,
Speaker 3: I'm a fool doing everything you ask for Aura, and
Speaker 3: she kisses him and she's like, Yep, you're a fool.
Speaker 3: You're gonna do everything I say, and so he scurries
Speaker 3: off and Flash awakens wearing weird plastic underwear, and Aura
Speaker 3: kisses him and tells him she has revived him with magic,
Speaker 3: and she's like, quick, put on this uniform before the
Speaker 3: lizard men arrive to bury you.
Speaker 2: Everyone is if you're executed by Ming, you are buried
Speaker 2: in hotpants. That's that seems to be the tradition.
Speaker 3: Yes, and as oh by the way, I mentioned this
Speaker 3: scene coming up. As Aura and Flash are escaping the palace,
Speaker 3: they pass by a room where doctor Zarkov is strapped
Speaker 3: to a table with some giant beam emitter aimed at
Speaker 3: his head. And as she's like, oh, it's only conditioning,
Speaker 3: come on, and so they leave, Aura and Flash leave
Speaker 3: the palace. But then we zoom in on this room
Speaker 3: where Ming and doctor Zarkov are talking, and Ming explains
Speaker 3: his whole plot. He says, quote, every thousand years, I
Speaker 3: test each life system in the universe. I visit it
Speaker 3: with mysteries, earthquakes, unpredicted eclipses, strange craters in the wilderness.
Speaker 3: If these are taken as natural, I judge that system
Speaker 3: ignorant and harmless. I spare it. But if the hand
Speaker 3: of Ming is recognized in these events, I judge that
Speaker 3: system dangerous to us. I call upon the great God Diezan,
Speaker 3: and for his greater glory and for our mutual pleasure,
Speaker 3: I destroy it utterly. And so Zarkov realizes. He says,
Speaker 3: you're saying it's my fault. The earth is being droid
Speaker 3: and Imperming says, precisely, it's a real bad twist. But
Speaker 3: then they explain, Okay, they're gonna empty his memory as
Speaker 3: we might empty your pockets. They're gonna steal all his
Speaker 3: memories out of his mind, and then we get this
Speaker 3: brain wiping scene where we see, like, as this beam
Speaker 3: is beaming at his head, we see on a television
Speaker 3: screen Zarkov's whole life playing like in super speed in reverse.
Speaker 3: We see all these formative memories, personal tragedies, family struggles.
Speaker 3: So in the middle of this goofy movie, this sequence
Speaker 3: is strangely powerful, mostly because of the way Topaul performs it.
Speaker 3: We see him like losing his wife in a horrible accident,
Speaker 3: we see his family suffering under the Nazis, and finally
Speaker 3: he regresses to being a baby, and he just says, Papa, Papa.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to make of this. I would
Speaker 3: say it is wildly tonally inappropriate for the film, but
Speaker 3: it's also quite strong. It's strangely moving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is exactly how I've always felt about that,
Speaker 2: or that's the way I feel about it now. I
Speaker 2: remember seeing this when I was a kid, and this
Speaker 2: scene was was like kind of disturbing, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's it's you're used to seeing characters vaporized by lasers.
Speaker 2: We've seen it already in this picture, you know, run
Speaker 2: through with swords, but this is just this is this
Speaker 2: is rather poignant and disturbing. And and yeah, we just
Speaker 2: had a football fight, now we're having this. So it
Speaker 2: seems like something that maybe should have been cut or
Speaker 2: maybe should have been saved for another movie. But again,
Speaker 2: the performance is so solid. What can you do? And
Speaker 2: and and the way they the images are cut together
Speaker 2: with other like random images of like cats and faces,
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's quite troubling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's like really good, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't belong here.
Speaker 2: It's so weird, like this belongs in the Nicholas Rogue
Speaker 2: movie that we didn't get. This needs to be in
Speaker 2: that alternate reality.
Speaker 3: So back to the goofy stuff. We see Flash on
Speaker 3: Aura's rocket ship. They're going to our Borea, and this
Speaker 3: is the scene where he like, you know, he'd like
Speaker 3: endangers the ship in order to convince her to allow
Speaker 3: him to use the Thought Amplifier, which is like a
Speaker 3: telepathic communicator machine to contact Dale telepathically and let her
Speaker 3: know he is still alive. She's hanging out with I
Speaker 3: guess Ming's other concubines, and she's just like she thinks
Speaker 3: he's dead, but this conversation lets her know that he's alive,
Speaker 3: and she sort of gets the idea, Okay, I got
Speaker 3: to escape here and do something now, Flash and Aura.
Speaker 3: They go to this place, Arborea. This is like a
Speaker 3: moon or a planet characterized mainly by trees. It's sort
Speaker 3: of an Ewok village, as we were saying, but full
Speaker 3: of people, including Timothy Dalton and Richard O'Brien, and we
Speaker 3: witness this interesting ritual when they first arrived there where
Speaker 3: like a young man, he says, I am now of age, greenfather,
Speaker 3: I ask for the test of manhood, and this ritual
Speaker 3: commences where he has to go around this like tree
Speaker 3: root and reach into one of many holes in it.
Speaker 3: If he reaches into the wrong hole, he will be
Speaker 3: stung by this weird tree beast. It's like a scorpion
Speaker 3: inside the tree that has a venom that tortures people
Speaker 3: with madness until they die. And he does get stung.
Speaker 3: So this kid is like Timothy Dalton, you must you
Speaker 3: must end it now, and Timothy Dalton Mercy kills him.
Speaker 3: And this is apparently they're they're very harsh initiation into
Speaker 3: adulthood and their society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tree beast sequences are very memorable. In fact,
Speaker 2: I was watching this with my wife last night. She'd
Speaker 2: seen it before, and I was at one point we
Speaker 2: reached we reached a point in watching the film where
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, do you want to go to
Speaker 2: bed and I can finish it in the morning, And
Speaker 2: she's like, no, I need to stay up at least
Speaker 2: until the tree beast scene happens. At least until we
Speaker 2: start sticking their arms into the big stump. So we
Speaker 2: ended up watching the whole thing. But that was nice,
Speaker 2: one of her favorite scenes.
Speaker 3: It is quite me They are actually a couple of
Speaker 3: these scenes. We see this other guy fail to test
Speaker 3: early on and then Aura dumps dumps flash on this planet.
Speaker 3: He's like, Barn, take care of him. I've got to
Speaker 3: go back and do other things. I'll be back and
Speaker 3: Barn does he like this? Of course not. This is
Speaker 3: like my fiance's other boyfriend just has to hang out
Speaker 3: with me now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's gonna instantly orchestrate his death.
Speaker 3: Right, So they like put him into this cage that
Speaker 3: gets lowered into the green swamp below the trees, and
Speaker 3: he's there with these other prisoners. Oh, it's a very
Speaker 3: it's a very unpleasant set piece. They're like up to
Speaker 3: their shoulders, just barely trying to keep their heads above water. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: there's a there's a great escape scene where Dale she's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I gotta get out of here. So she orchestrates an
Speaker 3: escape where she they bring her this kind of like drug,
Speaker 3: this like drugged beverage, and they're like, take it, you know,
Speaker 3: it makes everything feel good, and so she's she gets
Speaker 3: the servants to drink it instead, they fall unconscious. She
Speaker 3: swaps uniforms with them, escapes the escapes the palace by
Speaker 3: like doing some real moves. I didn't expect Dale to
Speaker 3: become such an action hero in the movie, but she's
Speaker 3: like running around beaten up and blasting a bunch of
Speaker 3: the soldiers on her way out.
Speaker 2: No explanation whatsoever for it but that it's fun.
Speaker 3: Great. Yeah, it's like halfway through the movie they just decided, wait,
Speaker 3: what is she not just a damsel in distress? Like
Speaker 3: she you know, she's kicking butt too. As you said,
Speaker 3: it is not explained, but okay, great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it's because she drank a little bit of
Speaker 2: that potion from the Galaxy of Pleasure or wherever they
Speaker 2: said it was from, and so she drank just enough
Speaker 2: to give her like super combat the skills, and that's
Speaker 2: what we see.
Speaker 3: Here, that's right. Yeah. So she meets up on her
Speaker 3: way out of the palace with Zarkov again, which at
Speaker 3: first we worry is agent Zarkov and apparently brainwashed drone
Speaker 3: form Ming and Ming thinks this guy is working as
Speaker 3: a double agent. But once they're out of the palace,
Speaker 3: Zarkov has this moment where he reveals he is still
Speaker 3: himself and he still has all his memories. He I
Speaker 3: couldn't fully understand it, but he says like he was
Speaker 3: able to resist the brainwashing by holding onto memories including
Speaker 3: I think, the theories of Einstein, bits of the Talmud,
Speaker 3: and songs by the Beatles, and then he says that,
Speaker 3: like spoke, focusing on these specific memories allowed him to
Speaker 3: keep all of his memory and knowledge. He says, it's
Speaker 3: you can't conquer the human spirit.
Speaker 2: The performance sells it, but it is a complete turnaround
Speaker 2: because it's just like, oh yeah, all that you thought happening, No,
Speaker 2: not happening. I'm fine, disregarded, I'm good.
Speaker 3: So, like Ming, Calla and Clytas learned that Flash Gordon
Speaker 3: is still alive, they're very unhappy about this, and they
Speaker 3: learn he's still alive due to the intervention of a trader,
Speaker 3: and Ming authorizes Clytis to discover who the trader is,
Speaker 3: no matter, no matter where the trail leads, by any
Speaker 3: means necessary. So this leads to the torture scene of
Speaker 3: Princess Aura. Clydis has her like chained up and they're
Speaker 3: torturing her for information. They're like, where is Flash Gordon?
Speaker 3: Where did you take him? Clydus seems to be kind
Speaker 3: of enjoying this because he's he's portrayed to be somewhat
Speaker 3: of a creep when it comes to Aur and uh
Speaker 3: then it Oh, there's the part. It gets to where
Speaker 3: he's like, bring me the bore worms and she goes, no,
Speaker 3: not the bore worms. Ara has has multiple lines where
Speaker 3: she just has to make very very straight reference to
Speaker 3: the horror of the boar worms. It'll come up again.
Speaker 2: It works, I mean, you're it builds up a sense
Speaker 2: of fear of these worms that we will never see,
Speaker 2: never see. Yeah, I mean maybe Dino came in. He's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: look I gave you the cage lowered into the swamp.
Speaker 2: I gave you the tree Beast, but we can't have
Speaker 2: bore worms where we're at the very limit of the
Speaker 2: budget right now.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the swamp, there's like an escape scene where
Speaker 3: they get Gordon out of the cage in the swamp,
Speaker 3: but then Timothy Dalton confronts him and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna make you do the tree Beast test, and
Speaker 3: he does pretty well, but eventually this escalates to a
Speaker 3: fight and Flash Gordon has to like pull a sword
Speaker 3: on Timothy Dalton and try to escape, but then he
Speaker 3: gets caught in the swamp by some kind of giant
Speaker 3: monster that's like gobbling him up, and barn I don't
Speaker 3: know how to even describe this thing. It's like a
Speaker 3: big sack that has bamboo legs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's monstrous and it doesn't make a lot of sense,
Speaker 2: but it's a monster. It's a space monster. It's not
Speaker 2: supposed to So.
Speaker 3: Timothy Dalton comes it, kills the monster, and then you
Speaker 3: think he's about to kill Flash Gordon. But then I
Speaker 3: don't even remember what happens here. Is it that the
Speaker 3: Hawkmen show up and stop him from killing him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Hawkmen come at that point because they're here
Speaker 2: for Flash and the hawk Men are still trying to
Speaker 2: play right by Ming. They're not an all open rebellion.
Speaker 2: This is all heading to, of course, open rebellion, but
Speaker 2: right now there's still division between these factions that will
Speaker 2: eventually rise up together against me.
Speaker 3: Our Earthlings are constantly trying to appeal to the factions
Speaker 3: to band together and fight against Ming instead of being
Speaker 3: loyal to Ming and fighting each other. Right, and they
Speaker 3: are eventually able to convince them, But before that we
Speaker 3: get to the trial by combat scene, which is another
Speaker 3: one of the best scenes in the movie. Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3: I've said this before on the show that a lot
Speaker 3: of times action scenes are boring because a lot of
Speaker 3: times they are it's just you know, like close ups
Speaker 3: of people shooting and things exploding, the lax drama. Flash
Speaker 3: Gordon is not like that. The fight scenes are some
Speaker 3: of the best stuff in the movies. The fight scenes
Speaker 3: are so fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one especially. So it's going to be
Speaker 2: trial by combat in the Hawkman floating city. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: there are a few steps to get where we're going
Speaker 2: to go with this, but it's like Barren is going
Speaker 2: to be tried and executed, but it's got to be
Speaker 2: trial by combat. Who's he gonna fight. Seems like he's
Speaker 2: gonna probably fit. He's gonna probably pick Brian Blessed, right,
Speaker 2: he's there, he has his cudgel, he's eager for it,
Speaker 2: but no, he chooses Flash Courton. He's like, I will
Speaker 2: fight him.
Speaker 3: So they put them out on this disc in the
Speaker 3: middle of a void, and so the Hawkman Palace is
Speaker 3: like up at the air, so he's like, they at
Speaker 3: the moon door basically, and they're on this disc there
Speaker 3: and while and they're fighting with whips. Flashboard and then
Speaker 3: Timothy Dalton are whipping each other on this disc and
Speaker 3: then Brian Blessed gets this remote control that allows him
Speaker 3: to tilt the disc around and make spikes come up
Speaker 3: out of the bottom of it. So it's just it's
Speaker 3: extremely chaotic and it's very very fun. And the fight
Speaker 3: ends with a I think a super well earned reconciliation.
Speaker 3: So Timothy Dalton is defeated at the end of the fight.
Speaker 3: He's like about to fall off, but Flash goes to
Speaker 3: save him. He's like, we can be friends, we can
Speaker 3: work together, and you know what, bye Gollia there. I
Speaker 3: think this this friendship arc has been earned.
Speaker 2: It really was earned here in this scene, great fight
Speaker 2: with whips of all things. Even going back into this,
Speaker 2: when I saw the whips come out, I'm like, oh lord,
Speaker 2: you know, not swords but whips. But it works. They
Speaker 2: make it work. It's well choreographed, the pail feels real,
Speaker 2: and then yeah, it's earned. It's a whole it's a
Speaker 2: wee can live moment. To call back to robot jocks.
Speaker 3: My god, you're exactly right, except instead of saying no,
Speaker 3: we are dead, we are robot jocks, he says, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: we can live.
Speaker 2: We can do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is also the scene where in the middle they're
Speaker 3: like fighting and Dale Arden yells of flash, I love you.
Speaker 3: But we only have fourteen hours to save the earth
Speaker 3: because oh, I haven't even mentioned this, but the moon
Speaker 3: is spiraling into the Earth and Zarkov determines that they
Speaker 3: only have fourteen hours before it cannot be stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he set a timer earlier, or he
Speaker 2: will set a timer in a bit so that we'll
Speaker 2: stay on top of this whole Moon Earth situation.
Speaker 3: So I think we got to go a little bit
Speaker 3: more lightly over what happens from here, because I know
Speaker 3: we're running up on time. But oh my lord, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of a finale, a lot of final conflict here.
Speaker 3: So like Ming's forces come to attack the Hawkman Palace,
Speaker 3: and one of the things that happens here is that mingko,
Speaker 3: oh well we do we do get the death of Clytus.
Speaker 3: How does that happen?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Oh, well, he shows up. He's upset about this whole
Speaker 2: scenario with these warning factions suddenly joining forces. He gets
Speaker 2: thrown out. There's like a double team, and he eventually
Speaker 2: gets thrown out onto the spike platform run through, and
Speaker 2: we do get that scene of his mask doesn't come off,
Speaker 2: but we see like his eyes and his tongue like
Speaker 2: melting out through the mask. Yeah. Gross, ending, But this
Speaker 2: is an evil dude, so you know, yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 3: And then Ming is like, Flash Gordon, everybody else can leave,
Speaker 3: you know, take the prisoners back to my palace, Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: I would like a word with you, And then he
Speaker 3: offers Flash Gordon to be the Prince of Earth.
Speaker 2: The last temptation of Flah.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. He's like, how about how about this. I
Speaker 3: make you the Prince of Earth, and all of the
Speaker 3: people of Earth must serve you, and be your slaves
Speaker 3: and you you just must be loyal to me? How
Speaker 3: about that? And Flash is like, no, I won't do it.
Speaker 2: It's a creepy scene because uh Ming is saying things like, oh,
Speaker 2: they'll be different once I'm done with them, they'll be
Speaker 2: easier to manage, yeah and uh and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Flash is our hero. He doesn't want any part of that,
Speaker 2: he says, No.
Speaker 3: I think Ming says that he will condition the people
Speaker 3: of Earth to be satisfied with less.
Speaker 2: A yeah, that's what he says.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, Flash would never do that.
Speaker 2: All right. So Flash is left on the Hawkman floating
Speaker 2: castle thing and they're gonna blow up, and Ming's force
Speaker 2: to start blowing it up. But fortunately he finds a
Speaker 2: rocket slab, which is kind of like he finds a
Speaker 2: jet ski. It's a jet ski. It's a space jet ski.
Speaker 2: I don't know why the hawk Men need a jet ski.
Speaker 2: They have wings that allow them to fly through space,
Speaker 2: but it's it's fortunate for our friend Flash here, who
Speaker 2: has no wings.
Speaker 3: And ultimately this all culminates in like the factions are
Speaker 3: going to band together. He Flash convinces Brian Blessed and
Speaker 3: the Hawkman to like all work together to go oppose Ming.
Speaker 2: That's right, just as Ming is about to get married
Speaker 2: to our heroine. So you know a lot of things
Speaker 2: predictably coming to a hat here.
Speaker 3: That's right. So several things are happening here somehow. I
Speaker 3: think the Zarkov and Timothy Dalton are in the dungeon
Speaker 3: together in the palace, and we come in on them,
Speaker 3: and Timothy Dalton's like, tell me again about this Houdini man,
Speaker 3: and but they get what happens?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 3: They get rescued by Princess.
Speaker 2: Aura, I believe so, Yeah, she completely turns face at
Speaker 2: this point, and she's working for the good guys.
Speaker 3: We've been told that she's going to be punished for
Speaker 3: her treachery by like being sent to a planet where
Speaker 3: she will she will like freeze and suffer, and I
Speaker 3: guess this will purge her mind of all disloyalty. But
Speaker 3: before that happens, I don't know. She's just wandering around
Speaker 3: and she Yeah, she rescues them, and then they go
Speaker 3: and do some fighting inside the palace to like sabotage
Speaker 3: Ming's defenses and General Kala and all the guys with
Speaker 3: goggles on their eyes, and there's a great moment where
Speaker 3: a guy gets the goggles pulled off of his head
Speaker 3: and we find he has no eyes underneath. It's just
Speaker 3: like sockets full of wires.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and they're all interconnected, so they all short
Speaker 2: out and die.
Speaker 3: So the Hawkman and Flasher are attacking first the ship
Speaker 3: that's out there, General Kala's ship, and then they're attacking
Speaker 3: the palace while this wedding is happening. And I noticed
Speaker 3: something about the wedding. The sniveling, obsequious priest performing the
Speaker 3: marriage ceremony, he seemed familiar to me, and I was like,
Speaker 3: wait a second, is that Delbert Grady from The Shining
Speaker 3: And yep, that's right. It is Philip Stone, British character
Speaker 3: actor who was also in a couple of other Kubrick movie.
Speaker 3: He was in a Clockwork Orange and he was in
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. He's like the
Speaker 3: British army officer. But I caught that I caught something
Speaker 3: about his voice and his eyes there good eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's a very small role, but it's also
Speaker 2: very fun. This is a kind of predictable comedy here
Speaker 2: with your tyrannical ruler going through some vowels with his
Speaker 2: soon to be forced wife.
Speaker 3: Yes. The priest is like, do you Ming, the merciless
Speaker 3: ruler of the universe, take this earthling dale Arden to
Speaker 3: be your impress of the hour? And Ming says of
Speaker 3: the hour? Yes, And the priest is like, you promise
Speaker 3: not to blast her into space? And then Ming like
Speaker 3: glares angrily at him, and he's like it tills such
Speaker 3: time as you grow weary of her and promises I
Speaker 3: do another great scene this in this whole like assault
Speaker 3: on the Palace at the end is the like the
Speaker 3: codes have changed and so have we moments.
Speaker 2: Oh god, this is my favorite favorite, one of my
Speaker 2: favorite moments. Upon this rewatch, like it's not effects, it's
Speaker 2: it's just like really weird writing. And this this feels
Speaker 2: very improvisational, like they realized they needed something to get
Speaker 2: him from point A to or point are to point
Speaker 2: s wherever we are in the transition here. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, well we got to open this lock.
Speaker 2: The locks have changed. And then they're like, oh, well
Speaker 2: you know I've changed too, how about you? Yes, I've changed.
Speaker 2: It's like this moment where they're using a change in
Speaker 2: passcodes to quickly comment on their own capacity for change
Speaker 2: as human beings. It's just so dumb.
Speaker 3: I love it that that scene is between Princess Ara
Speaker 3: and Prince Baron. I guess it's like their sort of reconciliation.
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile, Zarkov is in the back, like trying
Speaker 3: to hack the terminal here, and he's like, I haven't changed.
Speaker 2: So I don't know what was going on with this scene,
Speaker 2: if this was there's something, if this was improv or
Speaker 2: there was something lost in translation. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: it's great.
Speaker 3: The way that Ming is defeated in the end is
Speaker 3: so good. It is that the ship crashes into the
Speaker 3: wedding ceremony and the ship has like now that it
Speaker 3: has been taken over by the Hawkman and Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: and it's got like a big prong on the front
Speaker 3: of it, and it just like stabs Ming through the stomach,
Speaker 3: like the spaceship skewers him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like upper like not quite through the heart, like
Speaker 2: he's a vampire, like a little lower than that, but
Speaker 2: still vampire slaying esque. So it's right as he's turning
Speaker 2: away from it. So it's a pretty great villain skewering scene.
Speaker 2: And then there's the you know the sixth scene where
Speaker 2: he like pulls himself off of the impalement and I
Speaker 2: forget what is it? Purple blood it's one of the
Speaker 2: alien colored bloods, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he tries to use his his chunky
Speaker 3: magic ring to to fight back against Flash Gordon, but no,
Speaker 3: he can't win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's weakening, and then he just kind of blinks
Speaker 2: out and the ring falls to the floor.
Speaker 3: So it's a happy ending, it seems a Flash Gordon
Speaker 3: is is he like declared the new emperor or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he would take the job, but.
Speaker 2: Now I think Timothy Dalton is the new Emperor, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then Brian Blessed is the new General.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine anything going wrong with this scenario, but
Speaker 2: for the moment, things are united and peaceful.
Speaker 3: But we get the end question mark with just like
Speaker 3: ming laughter echoing into eternity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get to close up with that ring and
Speaker 2: some dust being blown away. So yep, it looks like
Speaker 2: there's gonna be a sequel, except there was never a sequel. Ah.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I'm glad you suggested Flash Gordon this week.
Speaker 3: This one was was such a delight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. I feel like
Speaker 2: listeners have have requested this one in the past as well.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty pretty obvious picture to hit on the
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema journey, and I'm glad we did it. Agreed,
Speaker 2: all right, We'll go ahead and close out here, but
Speaker 2: as always, we invite you to write in. We'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from you about your experience with this film,
Speaker 2: your thoughts on the film, your history with the film,
Speaker 2: and so forth. A reminder that Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursday's been on Fridays. We set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete
Speaker 2: list of all the movies we've covered so far, you
Speaker 2: can go to letterbox dot com. That's l E T
Speaker 2: T E R b oo xd dot com and you
Speaker 2: can find us there a we are Weird House that's
Speaker 2: our user handle there, and we have a list of
Speaker 2: all the movies we've covered, and you can toy around
Speaker 2: with that, you know, separate them by genre and so forth,
Speaker 2: and see what we've been up to. And sometimes there's
Speaker 2: a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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