Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have a
Speaker 1: fun one here for you today. This episode originally published
Speaker 1: two sixteen, twenty twenty four. It is our episode on
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Flash Gordon. This movie is an extravaganza, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna dive right in, listen to a little Queen
Speaker 1: and rock out with its cosmic Shenanigans.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and.
Speaker 3: This is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In.
Speaker 3: Today's film on Weird House Cinema is the cheeky nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty science fiction adventure Flash Gordon, allegedly starring Sam J.
Speaker 3: Jones and Max Foncito. But I would say more more
Speaker 3: like arring Brian Blessed and Queen, and boy, what a
Speaker 3: film this is, you know. I was just thinking about
Speaker 3: how we cover all kinds of movies on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: We do good movies, conventionally bad movies, well known movies,
Speaker 3: obscure gems, big and small, loud and quiet. But lately
Speaker 3: I think we've kind of been on a streak. We
Speaker 3: have featured a lot of very big, very loud type
Speaker 3: movies extravaganzas, if you will, specifically movies like this from
Speaker 3: the early nineteen eighties that are kind of a weirdness overload.
Speaker 3: So we did The Apple from the year nineteen eighty,
Speaker 3: we did Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three, and now we're back with another movie of
Speaker 3: this type yet again from the year nineteen eighty and
Speaker 3: its Flash Gordon. In the tradition of the other two
Speaker 3: I just mentioned, this movie is a lot. It is
Speaker 3: almost overwhelming in its thrilling and hilarious flamboyance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so much here. This is the film seen
Speaker 1: many times over the years, and yet going into it again,
Speaker 1: you know, watching it maybe for the first time in
Speaker 1: oh maybe ten years, there's so much I'd forgotten. So
Speaker 1: there were the big things that I was eager to
Speaker 1: re experience, and then equally overwhelming things that had slipped
Speaker 1: my mind, and things that were maybe a little more
Speaker 1: subtle that are also just as weird and wonderful. So
Speaker 1: it's quite an experience. You know.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of things I want to talk
Speaker 3: about with this movie, but one thing that really struck
Speaker 3: me about it is that, and of course it's not
Speaker 3: the only movie of this sort, but it felt really
Speaker 3: strong here is that this is a movie made with
Speaker 3: a palpable sense of nostalgia. It feels interesting because this
Speaker 3: now is a movie that's like forty three, forty four
Speaker 3: years old. Probably a lot of current adults have nostalgia
Speaker 3: foreseeing the nineteen eighty Flash Gordon movie as a kid.
Speaker 3: But it's also a project where you can feel how
Speaker 3: the filmmakers were trying to with some ironic distance, just
Speaker 3: like shamelessly indulge in nostalgia for a type of storytelling
Speaker 3: they themselves had loved as children, maybe forty years or
Speaker 3: so before that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, getting into Flash Gordon's origins as a Depression
Speaker 1: era comic book, it's passed as a part of these
Speaker 1: various action serials and so forth. It was a very
Speaker 1: influential series, a very influential fiction on a number of
Speaker 1: 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 such this movie, though, is very intentionally funny, even
Speaker 3: though comedy is not its overt category. One way I
Speaker 3: would describe this is a defining sensation in watching Flash
Speaker 3: Gordon is the thin clacking sound of plastic pieces of
Speaker 3: costume armor hitting one another in the battle scenes. Like
Speaker 3: it feels like a significant choice that there was not
Speaker 3: an attempt to edit out that plastic clacking sound or
Speaker 3: to like folly in a weightier sound. It's just part
Speaker 3: of the magic of Flash Gordon. You are supposed to
Speaker 3: hear the plastic on plastic grind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point about that. The plastic armor. Gosh,
Speaker 1: there's so much plastic armor. Yeah. It is an extravagant
Speaker 1: campy updating again of this old comic book, this old
Speaker 1: series into a kind of late seventies cinematic vision comes
Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty, but you know very much the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies trajectory getting this film made and it
Speaker 1: is out it out yet another sci fi film of
Speaker 1: this era that was chasing the hit that was Star
Speaker 1: Wars MM, which is ironic, of course, because George Lucas
Speaker 1: was heavily inspired by the old Flash Gordon comic books
Speaker 1: and actually wanted to make a film adaptation at one point,
Speaker 1: but the rights were too expensive, so he began an
Speaker 1: alternate journey that would result in Star Wars and the
Speaker 1: Star Wars franchise that would spill out of it. In
Speaker 1: the wake of the success of Star Wars, however, famed
Speaker 1: Italian producer Dino de Larentz, who've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before, picked up the film rights and set out
Speaker 1: to produce 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 but that would make
Speaker 3: a lot of sense. Ultimately we got Star Wars, which
Speaker 3: is a you know, more new, original kind of thing,
Speaker 3: which is wonderful in its own right. And then yeah,
Speaker 3: like so you're saying that the Star Wars that George
Speaker 3: Lucas had to make because he couldn't make he couldn't
Speaker 3: get the rights to Flash Gordon ultimately inspired them to
Speaker 3: make a new Flash Gordon movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Essentially, Star Wars is an evolution of the
Speaker 1: basic concept. So in a way, what you know, Dealer
Speaker 1: Interesting sets up to do is kind of it almost
Speaker 1: feels kind of backwards by comparison, Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the thing that inspired the amazing new thing and see
Speaker 1: what we can create. And you know, to their credit,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel as much in its substance like a
Speaker 1: Star Wars ripoff. It doesn't feel like you're chasing Star
Speaker 1: Wars so much, certainly not as much as other pictures
Speaker 1: we've talked about. But yeah, with this film have come
Speaker 1: into being without Star War being the success that it was,
Speaker 1: he can make a strong argument that it would not. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, Dino de Lorento's was not going to direct this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a predominantly, it's always been a producer
Speaker 1: puts the pieces together right. At one point he had
Speaker 1: none other than Nicholas Rogue attached, who of course directed
Speaker 1: The Man Who Fell to Earth, which we previously discussed
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, there's there's actually a whole special feature about
Speaker 1: this project that never came to be on the Arrow
Speaker 1: Blu ray of Flash Gordon, which I watch for this
Speaker 1: this episode rendered from videodrome. Of course, Rogue apparently wanted
Speaker 1: to make a big Hollywood picture, and a lot of
Speaker 1: work went into writing and storyboarding his vision for Flash,
Speaker 1: and they point out that Rogue was notoriously protective of
Speaker 1: his vision for a picture. In the end, however, Dino
Speaker 1: didn't think that his vision was fun or funny enough.
Speaker 1: It was apparently like pretty serious and you know, just
Speaker 1: like you'd imagine, it wasn't as campy as what we
Speaker 1: end up getting, and so he Dino de Lerence is
Speaker 1: get ends up going in a different direction, someone perhaps
Speaker 1: more suited in his view for the vision that he
Speaker 1: sees for Flash Gordon. And also, according to some of
Speaker 1: the commentators that they talked to in this feature, atte
Speaker 1: someone who's maybe a little a little more willing to
Speaker 1: play the game with a producer like Dino. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always fun to imagine, you know, pictures that could
Speaker 1: have been, especially with some of these big, big films
Speaker 1: like this. But you know, it's hard. It's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine another version of Flash Gordon being as fun as
Speaker 1: this one is.
Speaker 3: I think that would fully depend on whether they got
Speaker 3: Brian Blessed or not. And it's sounds like the rogue
Speaker 3: version of this film, Brian Blessed's presence would not make
Speaker 3: as much sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is the atlas holding up this picture. I
Speaker 1: don't have an elevator pitch for Flash here, Joe, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you if you do it, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's Slash Gordon. What can I tell you?
Speaker 3: Here's the elevator pitch.
Speaker 1: I love you, but we only have fourteen hours.
Speaker 3: To say the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, all right. Let's
Speaker 1: listen to the original trailer audio here because and if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen the film, and there's a lot to see,
Speaker 1: but still the sonic experience of the trailer is pretty convincing. Clides,
Speaker 1: I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?
Speaker 3: An obscure body in the SKA system of your majesty.
Speaker 3: The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.
Speaker 1: I like to play with things. While before annihilation pathetic earthly?
Speaker 3: Who can save you?
Speaker 1: Now? Drange object imaged in the Imperial Botic?
Speaker 3: He said, who.
Speaker 1: The art woman? They paid half for a pleasure? Don't
Speaker 1: killing yet? Father? I want him to flesh to.
Speaker 3: F can out.
Speaker 1: Side. All right, Well, if you want to go out
Speaker 1: and watch nineteen eighties Flash and Gordon, there are multiple
Speaker 1: places to see the film these days. It wasn't always
Speaker 1: the case. I remember a period of time when I
Speaker 1: wanted to pick the movie up and I don't think
Speaker 1: it was available on disc gett. But again, I watched
Speaker 1: it on the excellent Arrow Blu ray. That Blu ray
Speaker 1: also includes the full length documentary Life After Flash, amid
Speaker 1: a bunch 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, all.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about the people involved here. Okay. So
Speaker 1: the director ist Nicholas Rode. The director that Dino Dealer
Speaker 1: NTO has ended up going with is Mike Hodges, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty two through twenty twenty two. English director
Speaker 1: and writer, whose first big film hit was nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one's Get Carter starring Michael Kine, followed by seventy two's Pulp,
Speaker 1: seventy four as the Terminal Man, and seventy eight's Damien
Speaker 1: Omen two.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's the Omen movie with the like the all
Speaker 3: Boys Prep School. Okay, have you seen that one?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that. I know you went through a
Speaker 1: tear with your Omen movies a while back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a couple of years ago, or either last year
Speaker 3: or the year. Maybe it was just last year. Rachel
Speaker 3: and I watched all of the Omen movies. We enjoyed
Speaker 3: the second one. I don't know if i'd say it
Speaker 3: was good, but we enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I just subsequent credits after Flash included eighty five Morons
Speaker 1: from Outer Space, eighty nine's Black Rainbow, and two thousand
Speaker 1: and threes I'll Sleep when I'm Dead. Also, he did
Speaker 1: some TV, including a nineteen eighty six action movie called
Speaker 1: Florida Straits with Roald Yulia in the lead role. And
Speaker 1: he also did two music videos for Queen Flash, which
Speaker 1: is of course is one of them. The songs from
Speaker 1: this film as well as body language.
Speaker 3: Weird coincidental or I would assume coincidental double Panos Cosmatos
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: Panos Casmonos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those connections are there. I one has to believe
Speaker 1: they have meaning. Now, apparently Hodges had the right energy
Speaker 1: for this project, which, according to some of the bits
Speaker 1: I was watching on the Blu ray, involves a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of going with the flow on such a
Speaker 1: large and at times it sounds like maybe slightly chaotic project,
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, a lot of moving pieces,
Speaker 1: and I think there were definitely some places where they
Speaker 1: say that, you know, they had to kind of make
Speaker 1: things up on the fly to figure out how to
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect with Flashboard,
Speaker 1: which is not to discount the talent that went into
Speaker 1: this film, like so much about the the just the
Speaker 1: visual flare of the film, and we're not even gonna
Speaker 1: be able to get into all the names involved there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so many pieces do come together perfectly. It's
Speaker 1: just that you can definitely tell there moments where things
Speaker 1: feel like certain scenes have been rushed in terms of
Speaker 1: the overall vision for the picture and the flow of
Speaker 1: the plot. Uh huh, all right. The screenplay credit goes
Speaker 1: to Lorenzo Simple Junior Live nineteen twenty three through twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: American writer whose credits include one hundred and twenty episodes
Speaker 1: of the original Batman series, which I think is telling,
Speaker 1: but also films like nineteen seventy three's Papillon, seventy four's
Speaker 1: The Parallax View, seventy fives, Three Days of the Condor,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy six, King Calling Movie, nineteen eighty three's
Speaker 1: Never Say Never Again, and nineteen eighty four Shena. The
Speaker 1: other writer that's credited is Michael Allen, whose other credits
Speaker 1: include Enter the Dragon and also a half dozen other titles,
Speaker 1: but Flash being the biggest by far, and it's where
Speaker 1: we also should point out that the character Flash Gordon
Speaker 1: was created by Alex Raymond, who lived nineteen oh nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen fifty six, an American cartoonist an illustrator who
Speaker 1: created Flash for King Features Syndicate back in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: And I believe it was essentially an attempt to like, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the competitor has Buck Rogers, we need a Buck Rogers too.
Speaker 1: Let's make him. Okay, what are we gonna call him? Well,
Speaker 1: we can't call him Buck. How about Flash? We can't
Speaker 1: call him Rodgers? How about Gordon? There you go make
Speaker 1: it work. And it grew from that. All right. Now,
Speaker 1: getting into the cast here, I'm gonna try and divide
Speaker 1: it up among our core factions. You know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like Game of Thrones here, we have different factions involved.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with the Earth Links, all right. First up,
Speaker 1: we have Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, former US marine model and American football player,
Speaker 1: who was cast in this film over various hot commodities
Speaker 1: in Hollywood due to his debut in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine Blake Edwards ten. His professional life after Flash, which
Speaker 1: is again is the subject part of the subject of
Speaker 1: his twenty seventeen documentary, consisted of a lot of TV
Speaker 1: work as well as films like eighty five's Jungle Heat,
Speaker 1: ninety two's Maximum Force, and a lot of just you know,
Speaker 1: general action television action films not necessary like The Cream
Speaker 1: of the Crop, you know. But he worked a lot
Speaker 1: more recently. He was in both Ted and Ted two,
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, there's no denying has a great look. Also no
Speaker 1: denying that he's rather green. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's it's almost unfair to compare his acting to other
Speaker 1: actors in the film, because you know he and also
Speaker 1: is co star Melody Anderson, who will talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute. I mean, they're in there with just an
Speaker 1: international cast that features not only like very tenured actors,
Speaker 1: but also generational talents, and so it's you know, how
Speaker 1: can you compare one to the other. And then also,
Speaker 1: and I think this is more important he gets there's
Speaker 1: a fair amount of fun that's made at the expense
Speaker 1: of this character and to a certain degree of this performance.
Speaker 1: But I think it's pretty perfect, right, I mean, what
Speaker 1: 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 would you change?
Speaker 3: What kind of notes are you going to give him?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean if we were talking about Nicholas Rogues
Speaker 1: flash Gordon, yeah, okay, maybe that's a different animal we're envisioning.
Speaker 1: But this vision, this Flash Gordon, I think there's nobody
Speaker 1: else you put in there. I've read that people like
Speaker 1: Arnold and even Kurt Russell, who would have been interesting
Speaker 1: in this role. You know that they were up for it,
Speaker 1: but it just I can't imagine it wouldn't be the same,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the same. I'd go as far as to
Speaker 1: say that Arnold even at the time, would have been
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and I'm definitely not In nineteen eight Now I
Speaker 1: mentioned Melody Anderson. This is the actress playing Dale Arden.
Speaker 1: This is the other key Earthling. This is his I
Speaker 1: guess it's not his girlfriend at the beginning, but becomes
Speaker 1: essentially the Flash Gordon love interest.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Anderson was born in nineteen fifty five Canadian actress who
Speaker 1: started off on TV with small parts and shows like
Speaker 1: Welcome Back Catter, the Logan's Run TV series Battlestar Galactica.
Speaker 1: She also had a supporting role in John Carpenter's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine Elvis TV movie.
Speaker 3: Oh Interesting, Did that have Kurt Russell in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was Kurt Russell as Elvis.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: She followed up Flash with a nineteen eighty one horror
Speaker 1: movie Dead and Buried nineteen eighty six is Firewalker, and
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I like her in this role as well.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's two out of three Earthlings. The
Speaker 1: important third is doctor Hans Zarkoff played by Topol Topel
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty five through twenty twenty three Israeli actor, singer,
Speaker 1: and illustrator, best known for his starring role in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one's Fiddler on the Roof and his supporting role
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one's For Your Eyes Only. It's been
Speaker 1: a while since I've seen For Your Eyes Only. He's
Speaker 1: not the villain in that Bond movie.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, he plays ally. Yeah, he plays a
Speaker 3: criminal that Bond ends up joining forces with to take
Speaker 3: out the villain in the end. He's sort of like
Speaker 3: a lovable rascal smuggler.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Other projects of note include the starring role in
Speaker 1: a nineteen seventy five Galileo movie, and he also shows
Speaker 1: up in one episode of Tales of the Unexpected. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, it's easy to forget about this
Speaker 1: performance in a movie that features both you know, Brian
Speaker 1: Blessed and Max Foncido just aim for the rafters with
Speaker 1: their performances, but Topaul hits the ground running with some
Speaker 1: just great a ridiculousness, just also just really chewing up
Speaker 1: the scenery well also later on the picture, you know,
Speaker 1: breathing varying degrees of not only ham but also thoughtfulness
Speaker 1: in some of the scenes. So it's he does a
Speaker 1: great job.
Speaker 3: And you know, for this picture, Yes, I'm gonna say
Speaker 3: this character in Topoul'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 1: Yeah, yeah, that'll be a good one to talk about,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get into Ming's court though, this is
Speaker 1: like the centerpiece of the film. And of course, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned already, we have Max Foncido playing Ming the Merciless.
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, it is important to note that the character Ming
Speaker 1: is along with the likes of fictional characters like Fu
Speaker 1: Manchu and more than a couple of characters from like
Speaker 1: Marvel Comics and so forth. There are examples of the
Speaker 1: quote yellow menace trope, and it's also a character here
Speaker 1: that's steeped in orientalism and racial stereotypes. Various later adaptations
Speaker 1: of Flash have sought to distance the character from these origins,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. In this picture we see kind
Speaker 1: of like a mixed approach there where certain things are done,
Speaker 1: but also you could make a strong argument that not
Speaker 1: 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 is an alien, so it's not like he is
Speaker 3: from a country on Earth. But it's just that in
Speaker 3: the way he is depicted, it relies a lot on
Speaker 3: like on visual and thematic cues associated with stereotypical Asian villains,
Speaker 3: mainly Fu Manchu.
Speaker 1: Right right, So that's that's undeniable with this particular film.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I always felt like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: Meeing here feels more Satanic. He feels more like they
Speaker 1: patterned him after the Church of Satan's founder Anton Leavy.
Speaker 1: But I was looking into that more recently, and I
Speaker 1: saw folks online pointing out that Leavey may have patterned
Speaker 1: his personal look on Ming the Merciless, Oh, because he
Speaker 1: would have grown up with the old flash comics and
Speaker 1: and I assume the older film adaptations and serials and
Speaker 1: so forth. So on one hand, though, if they did
Speaker 1: do that, if they did say, let's make Meing more
Speaker 1: like Anton Lavay, well, if Anton Lavay was mimicking Ming
Speaker 1: the Merciless from the old comic books, then then what
Speaker 1: are you doing? 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
Speaker 3: way on the way that Max Foncido 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 1: Right, He's not doing a voice. He's playing it and
Speaker 1: he's playing it pretty straight, and really he brings a
Speaker 1: certain grandeur to the role, like it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: these issues aside, it's a very fun performance. It's a
Speaker 1: very you know, over the top and entertaining 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 1: Yeah. Now, as for Max foncidoa legendary Swedish French actor,
Speaker 1: I think everyone has seen something he was in. If
Speaker 1: you have watched these movies at all, you stand a
Speaker 1: really good chance because he was active for like seventy years,
Speaker 1: as his career spanned that long. His Swiss credits go
Speaker 1: back to nineteen forty nine. Igmar Bergman's nineteen fifty seventh
Speaker 1: film The Seventh Seal was his real like international breakthrough role,
Speaker 1: expanding his career to include a host of European and
Speaker 1: American films. His many films include nineteen seventy three is
Speaker 1: the Exorcist, nineteen eighty two's Conan the Barbarian, eighty three's
Speaker 1: Strange Brew just to you know, mix it up a
Speaker 1: little bit, eighty four's Dreamscape, eighty four's Dune. He is
Speaker 1: in Ghostbusters too. He's the uncredited voice of Vigo the Carpathian,
Speaker 1: the real villain of that piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nineteen nineties Awakenings, nineteen ninety three's Needful Things. He's
Speaker 1: in the ninety five Judge Dread Movie, two thousand and
Speaker 1: two's Minority Report two thousand and nine, Solomon Kane. He late,
Speaker 1: very late in his career. He pops up in twenty
Speaker 1: 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 Laurentis produce the eighty four Dune directed
Speaker 3: by David Lynch.
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think he must have been a favorite, uh
Speaker 1: of Dinos? Yeah? Interesting, but it's he's he's again one
Speaker 1: of these actors who drop him in just about anything.
Speaker 1: Be it something like very serious or something more on
Speaker 1: the campy, you know, or even blockbuster scale, and he
Speaker 1: brings he brings a certain grandeur to the role. He
Speaker 1: brings a certain power in presence.
Speaker 3: He improves anything he's in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so that's Meing the merciless. But Meing
Speaker 1: has a daughter, and this is Princess r played by
Speaker 1: Ornella Muti born nineteen fifty five. This is the evil princess,
Speaker 1: evil seductive princess, very sort of typical role that you
Speaker 1: might imagine if you haven't seen the film. Muti is
Speaker 1: an Italian actress's who has worked extensively in Italian TV
Speaker 1: and film, so a lot of her credits are not
Speaker 1: things I'm not familiar with, but her early credits include
Speaker 1: Romberto Lindsay's Oasis of Fear that's from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: Ray Lovelocke is in that We've touched on Ray love
Speaker 1: Locke before, but she went on to appear in such
Speaker 1: films as Tales of Ordinary Madness in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: and the nineteen seventy nine Russo Italian movie 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 1: Now, an, this is essentially our b villain. This is
Speaker 1: a mean, immediate underling that like Lord's over his secret Police.
Speaker 1: This is the character Clytis, who is kind of a
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with this character, think Doctor Doom except
Speaker 1: gold Mask, and that's essentially who this character is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great villain, extremely over the top, perfect sardonic vocal performance
Speaker 1: by the actor here, and also a physical performance which
Speaker 1: seems unnecessary given how heavy these costumes all apparently were. Like,
Speaker 1: even if they are made of plastic instead of metal,
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a fun performance. The actor here is Peter Wingard,
Speaker 3: who of nineteen twenty seven through twenty eighteen British television,
Speaker 3: stage and film actor, best known without the mask for
Speaker 3: playing the fictional Jason King and a pair of British
Speaker 3: TV shows.
Speaker 1: His other credits include sixty ones The Innocence and nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two's Night.
Speaker 3: Of the Eagle Top Shelf hinge Yes.
Speaker 1: But then there's another hint, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: Clytus's Hinchman or hinchwoman, and that is Kala played by
Speaker 1: Marian Glimlato, who lived nineteen forty one through twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: an Italian actress whose other credits include nineteen seventy three's
Speaker 1: Love and Anarchy and nineteen seventy four Swept Away. Both
Speaker 1: of these were directed by Lena Vertmula. And we're co
Speaker 1: starring gian Carlo Janini, who, of course great Italian actor
Speaker 1: 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, uh, it's it's really good stuff.
Speaker 3: She has a lot of really good lines that get
Speaker 3: singled out and appear in the Queen tracks. I guess
Speaker 3: we'll get to that in a minute. But like when
Speaker 3: dialogue is sampled from the movie. A lot of the
Speaker 3: dialogue is either Brian Blessed or her saying lines like
Speaker 3: what do you mean flash Gordon approaching?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's Flash of Gordon. Go big or
Speaker 1: go home? Shoot for the rafters. Don't leave your subtle
Speaker 1: acting at home, because that's whatnot that's what That's not
Speaker 1: what 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 say,
Speaker 3: quite good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we're getting into the faction of the Arboians,
Speaker 1: who are I guess you describe them as space elves
Speaker 1: kind of like what if the Ewoks were British dudes?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly right, Yeah, if the Ewoks were just humans
Speaker 3: dressed like Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's space Robin Hood's yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: have Prince Baron. Is Baron here Baron? They just say Baron, Yeah, Baron.
Speaker 1: Prince Baron played by the great Timothy Dalton.
Speaker 3: In this role, he is handsome, swave, 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 1: Yeah, and he's got that swashbucklan mustache. So it's a
Speaker 1: great look for this film that is ultimately hinging on
Speaker 1: a lot of nostalgia for the like old action serials
Speaker 1: and so forth. Totally yeah, so yeah, future James Bond here.
Speaker 1: At the time, he already had some really impressive credits,
Speaker 1: including sixty eight's The Line in Winter, seventies Cromwell, a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy adaptation of Worthering Heights. Of course, he plays
Speaker 1: the lead in that. What's his name not Garfield, the
Speaker 1: other one Heathcliff. Yeah, and he followed Flash up with
Speaker 1: a number of period pieces for TV before taking up
Speaker 1: the role of Double O seven for nineteen eighty seven's
Speaker 1: 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 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need a character like that in a movie
Speaker 3: where your other like romantic lead lead guy is just
Speaker 3: a football beef.
Speaker 1: Man, you know. And I think maybe this comes back
Speaker 1: to his casting in the James Bond franchise. He only
Speaker 1: did the two films, the other one being Licensed to
Speaker 1: Kill from eighty nine the follow up. But he was
Speaker 1: kind of like a pivot to a more dangerous Bond,
Speaker 1: right getting away from the Roger Moore series, which I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of love for Roger Moore, but I
Speaker 1: think at the time people had kind of maybe had
Speaker 1: enough of the hammier comic side of Bond, and they
Speaker 1: wanted something a little harder, which is kind of an
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, kind of unpleasant Bond, if you will.
Speaker 3: But in a way that's an interesting place to take
Speaker 3: the character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And and I remember I was quite
Speaker 1: a fan of him back in the day because when
Speaker 1: I was a kid during like my Key Bond movie
Speaker 1: appreciation period, like he was the new Bond, he was
Speaker 1: the current Bond, and I remember feeling a bit betrayed
Speaker 1: when we changed bonds after only two films. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: this is not You're not supposed to switch out after
Speaker 1: two You're supposed to keep it, keep him going for
Speaker 1: just years 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 Brosden,
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 1: And then going dangerous again with the with the harder bond.
Speaker 1: So I think we're due for a comic bond. I'm
Speaker 1: people keep talking about, Oh, which which, which handsome fella
Speaker 1: or or or lady or what have you is gonna
Speaker 1: play bond next? But really the pattern shows we need
Speaker 1: somebody funny. We need somebody with that dry wit and.
Speaker 3: Like a bond who doesn't sweat.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: This is the thing about the funnier bonds, like Pierce
Speaker 3: Brosnan and Roger Moore just seems like they move less.
Speaker 3: They're more just stationary, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we'll see what they put together, all right.
Speaker 1: So that's the Prince of the Arborians. They are a
Speaker 1: bunch of Arborians. But the only other one that really
Speaker 1: matters for just our quick discussion here. We may touch
Speaker 1: on some others later on, but we have Richard O'Brien
Speaker 1: playing the character Fikoh.
Speaker 3: I didn't catch him at first. It took me a
Speaker 3: bit to realize, like, well, wait a minute, that bold
Speaker 3: guy's Richard O'Brien.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Born nineteen forty two, the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he also played
Speaker 1: riff Raff, the future Mister Hand in nineteen ninety eight's
Speaker 1: Dark City. So it's a very small role, of fun role,
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to rich O'Brien another time.
Speaker 3: Are we done with the cast yet?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, because the next faction we can't forget the Hawkmen.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we cannot, absolutely cannot forget the Prince
Speaker 1: of the Hawkmen, Prince Voltan, played by Brian Blessed.
Speaker 3: Brian Blessed, did you say.
Speaker 1: That's right? Oh my god? This has any actor ever
Speaker 1: made such a feast of his lines as Brian Blessed
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, he is like the galactus of consuming the scenery
Speaker 1: for sure. Oh my god, every moment Brian Blessed is
Speaker 1: on screening, this is just amazing, just I mean, a
Speaker 1: booming actor for starters. Even if you didn't see him,
Speaker 1: if oh, you've only heard him, if he were voicing
Speaker 1: a puppet, it would be overpowering. And it's just so intense.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, you get to see him
Speaker 1: and he has this, you know, just intense eyes and
Speaker 1: a laugh that somehow manages to allow you to see
Speaker 1: all 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 and 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 1: He does Oh my god, like the famous one that
Speaker 1: will come back to being Gordon's alive. I can't even
Speaker 1: do it the way he does, like the way he
Speaker 1: says it. He just complains, you've heard it. It's just
Speaker 1: how does 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 1: Yeah, I mean, just amazing physical presence that would be clear.
Speaker 1: The Hawkmen is well described. But they are wearing like
Speaker 1: sort of like leather pants and like and belts, and
Speaker 1: they have big like helmets on with horns, and then
Speaker 1: they have full sized like eagle wings. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on here in the visual presentation of 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 1: Yeah, some sort a vicious cudgel. And then I think
Speaker 1: they all have spraytn on as well. Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: so we'll keep talking about Brian Blessed. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: is a legendary actor of stage, screen and TV. A
Speaker 1: lot of his early roles were on TV shows, such
Speaker 1: as the nineteen sixty three Musketeers series, in which he
Speaker 1: of course played Porthos. He was also on The Avengers
Speaker 1: a few times. Other TV roles include I Claudius in
Speaker 1: seventy six. He was on multiple episodes of black Adder
Speaker 1: in eighty three. He was in an eighty three adaptation
Speaker 1: of the Hound of the Baskervilles. He was on Doctor
Speaker 1: Who in eighty six. He was on the series Crossbow
Speaker 1: in eighty seven, and he made a big splash of course,
Speaker 1: Henry the Fifth in nineteen eighty nine, directed by and
Speaker 1: starring Kenneth Brona.
Speaker 3: Oh did he play Exeter.
Speaker 1: I had to look it up, but yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: was the role he played in The Nice Perfect He'd
Speaker 1: ultimately appear in four of the five Shakespeare films directed
Speaker 1: by Kenneth Brona, the others being Much Ado About Nothing
Speaker 1: in ninety three, Hamlet in ninety six, and As You
Speaker 1: Like It in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I can just really imagine him getting mad about tennis balls.
Speaker 1: So really too many things to list here, but we
Speaker 1: do have to mention that he provided the voice of
Speaker 1: Boss Nass in The Phantom Menace and continues to do
Speaker 1: just a lot of voice work, So he's still still active,
Speaker 1: 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 1: You know, I didn't see anything offhand. I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: has asked him about it, but I mean I don't know.
Speaker 1: I almost like, why would I question the man? Like, yes,
Speaker 1: he nailed it, you know. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: very like loud, boisterous character, and he's just played as
Speaker 1: loudly and boisterously as possible. Okay, all right, now at
Speaker 1: this point we're we're gonna skip ahead a little bit again.
Speaker 1: I'm skipping over so many talented people involved with the
Speaker 1: visual look of the picture. But we've got to get
Speaker 1: to the music.
Speaker 3: Oh lord, the music. That's one of the real stars
Speaker 3: of the film.
Speaker 1: That's right, because now we have sort of two things
Speaker 1: going on with the music here. We have the more
Speaker 1: traditional swashbuckling orchestra music in this picture, and it's very
Speaker 1: effective and again fitting since you know, swashbuckling and so forth.
Speaker 1: But this is the work of Howard Blake born nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight, whose scores include nineteen seventy Seven's of the Duellists,
Speaker 1: That's the Ridley Scott picture, eighty three's Amityville three D.
Speaker 1: And he was nominated for a BAFTA for his work
Speaker 1: on this film. But the rest of the music is
Speaker 1: 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 thought there were these
Speaker 3: wacky lines people were saying in the song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the track as is featured on the soundtrack
Speaker 1: for the album, which is available you know, anywhere you stream,
Speaker 1: anywhere you find Queen music, you can find this. It
Speaker 1: has all these samples from the picture, which in their
Speaker 1: tremendous samples, like any they managed to fit like so
Speaker 1: 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, Dispatch, war Rocket,
Speaker 3: Ajax to bring back his body.
Speaker 1: Yes, so many great lines. So this movie in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six is Highlander. Are the only films that Queen
Speaker 1: ever really worked on in this sort of exclusive capacity,
Speaker 1: you know, in both cases creating tracks exclusively for these films,
Speaker 1: with Flash being the only film where Queen contributed not
Speaker 1: only to the soundtrack but also to the score. This
Speaker 1: is something I don't think I quite appreciated as much
Speaker 1: until recently. But yeah, some of the most stirring and
Speaker 1: just vibe defining tracks in the score for Flash Gordon
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the writing credits are broken up a bit,
Speaker 1: but Freddie Mercury is credited for Ming's theme. This is
Speaker 1: a blistering synth number that plays whenever, especially the first
Speaker 1: scene when we see Ming, you know, enter the throne room.
Speaker 1: And then Brian May is credited on Flash's theme, John
Speaker 1: Deacon is credited on execution of Flash, and Roger Taylor
Speaker 1: 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 1: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, it's I have to have to
Speaker 1: admit with Queen, I've I've been a Queen fan since
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I've always been a Queen's
Speaker 1: Greatest Hits Queen fan, So like, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of tracks I missed out on and had to like
Speaker 1: re explore later on. And I've never been like like
Speaker 1: super tuned into like their trajectory from one album to
Speaker 1: the next. But I was reading an article by an
Speaker 1: author by the name of Ryan Reid. This was on
Speaker 1: Ultimate Classic Rock dot com. It came up in search
Speaker 1: titled how Queen embraced the synthesizer on Play the Game,
Speaker 1: and this article points out that Queen first embraced the
Speaker 1: synth on their nineteen eighty album The Game, just six
Speaker 1: 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 they
Speaker 3: use it. Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely Again, that ming track Meing's theme alone is
Speaker 1: 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 that,
Speaker 3: by the way, plays within the movie. There are the
Speaker 3: parts where you hear them singing about Flash. Is there
Speaker 3: another I can't think of another thing like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to be clear. It needs to be a film.
Speaker 1: It doesn't not a film that is based on a ballad,
Speaker 1: but a film that has essentially a ballad that was
Speaker 1: created to be the theme song for the picture about
Speaker 1: 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 1: Who? I guess the main example that comes to mind
Speaker 1: 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 1: I don't remember, you know, I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: 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 a stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into the plot of this baby.
Speaker 1: 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 the kind of detail deserve. We'll have
Speaker 3: 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'm 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? I don't know?
Speaker 1: Will we find out ya?
Speaker 3: 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 back.
Speaker 3: They're going, Oh, these tornadoes are hilarious. And after the
Speaker 3: credits finish, we go down to the surface of Earth
Speaker 3: and we are at some deserted rural airfield where we
Speaker 3: meet Flash Gordon. Now you might expect him to be
Speaker 3: doing some heroic or impressive stunt at first encounter, but
Speaker 3: instead he is sitting in a station wagon reading a newspaper,
Speaker 3: listening to football on the radio, and watching the hot
Speaker 3: hail come come down around the car while he's waiting
Speaker 3: for a flight. So maybe he's more active when he's
Speaker 3: not waiting for a flight.
Speaker 1: This whole section of the movie, it's it's interesting to
Speaker 1: look at because this movie knows it needs to get
Speaker 1: into outer space as soon as possible. It knows that
Speaker 1: any time spent on Earth in a mundane setting is
Speaker 1: wasted time for this film. But they've got to do it.
Speaker 1: They've got to set these characters on Earth before you
Speaker 1: can place them in this other world. But the clock
Speaker 1: is ticking and you got to get them there before
Speaker 1: you lose the audience. And I think it's commendable. They
Speaker 1: try and keep the pace up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it moves right along. By the way, I
Speaker 3: shouldn't mention that Flash Gordon is wearing a T shirt
Speaker 3: that says Flash.
Speaker 1: 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. It 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 what. In
Speaker 3: the airplane, the pilots are talking about their famous passenger.
Speaker 3: One of them says, well, I sure hope Flash Gordon
Speaker 3: had a great vacation. He's going to have to work
Speaker 3: hard to top last season. And he's also holding an
Speaker 3: issue of People magazine with Flash Gordon on the cover.
Speaker 3: So we learned that Flash Gordon is a famous football player.
Speaker 3: And I was watching this with Rachel and we were wondering,
Speaker 3: is Flash Gordon already known to be some kind of
Speaker 3: hero or savior of the world at the beginning of
Speaker 3: this movie. Is this like another one of his adventures,
Speaker 3: or at this point is he simply a famous football
Speaker 3: player and this movie depicts the first of his world
Speaker 3: saving adventures. I think it is the latter.
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, I think he's football famous at
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 3: flying the irony of this is noted, and then Flash
Speaker 3: goes up to check with the pilots to see if
Speaker 3: anything is wrong, and he suggests that the air might
Speaker 3: be smoother at a higher altitude. This amazing early example
Speaker 3: of arrowsplaning. I think all flights should allow passengers to
Speaker 3: come up to the cockpit and tell the pilots what
Speaker 3: they're doing wrong. Anyway, Dale, who appears to be extremely
Speaker 3: uncomfortable and anxious, yells up to Flash to tell him
Speaker 3: to leave the pilots alone. So he comes back, and
Speaker 3: he starts telling her that the plane is bouncing because
Speaker 3: of turbulence. He's like explaining how turbulence works, and they
Speaker 3: start chatting and hitting it off. A Flash confesses that
Speaker 3: he saw Dale at the hotel the night before and
Speaker 3: ask the matre d who she was, because he was.
Speaker 3: He's clearly he's smitten. He's like, I couldn't believe a
Speaker 3: girl like you was alone, and she's, you know, impressed.
Speaker 3: They're flirting and stuff. Flash talks about how he's taking
Speaker 3: flying lessons, more about how turbulence works, and then out
Speaker 3: of the windows the skies turn red clouds of blood
Speaker 3: block out the sun and somehow ming the merciless appears
Speaker 3: bodily in the form of a giant meteor in the
Speaker 3: sky and abducts the two pilots. I didn't quite understand
Speaker 3: this part. It doesn't seem to fit with anything else.
Speaker 1: 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 1: 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 takeover flying
Speaker 3: the plane, but it is clear we are headed for
Speaker 3: a crash landing. Meanwhile, elsewhere, we check in at some
Speaker 3: kind of remote atmospheric monitoring facility where two scientists are stationed.
Speaker 3: One of them is doctor Hans Zarkov played by Topol,
Speaker 3: and we learn from TV reports he is a researcher
Speaker 3: formerly affiliated with NASA who has been ridiculed and dismissed
Speaker 3: by the scientific establishment for basically suggesting that all the
Speaker 3: bad weather is being caused by alien intervention instead of
Speaker 3: regular physical forces. Zarkov's partner gets woken up when flaming
Speaker 3: rocks crashed through the skylight and set his blankets on fire.
Speaker 3: He wakes up Zarkov. They look at their feeds and
Speaker 3: stuff and figure out what's going on, and the scientists
Speaker 3: observe that the sun is blotted out due to an
Speaker 3: unscheduled eclipse. H that's not supposed to happen. The Moon
Speaker 3: has been spiraling into the Earth, and Zarkov takes of
Speaker 3: this situation. He concludes, this is it. This is the
Speaker 3: alien attack. It's begun. All my fringe theories are finally vindicated.
Speaker 3: So he's got some kind of scheme where he has
Speaker 3: constructed a secret rocket ship that will be used to
Speaker 3: fly up into space and counterattack the evil that is
Speaker 3: causing the moon to spiral into the Earth. But the
Speaker 3: rocket ship needs at least two people to operate it.
Speaker 3: I don't know why he built it that way, but
Speaker 3: that's what he did. Zarkov tries to get his partner, Munson,
Speaker 3: into the ship, but Munson doesn't want to do this.
Speaker 3: He freaks out and runs away. Zarkov tries to appeal
Speaker 3: to his spirit of humanity. He's like, yes, they will
Speaker 3: probably die on this mission, but they alone have a
Speaker 3: chance to save the human race. Anyway, this conflict is
Speaker 3: interrupted by a plane crash. Flash and Dale, their plane
Speaker 3: crashes into Zarkov's laboratory. Does the plane crash kill Munson? Unclear?
Speaker 3: We just never see him again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I took it to mean that Munson had just
Speaker 1: taken it off, but oh, Okay's unclear.
Speaker 3: But Flash and Dale survived the landing. They're fine. They
Speaker 3: climb out of the plane and meet Zarkov and they're like,
Speaker 3: can we use your phone? And Zarkov is like, oh, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: good to see you. You're well, yeah, the phone is
Speaker 3: right here inside this rocket ship. So they go and
Speaker 3: they go inside and then Zarkov confronts them with a revolver,
Speaker 3: explains his plan, locks them inside, and they blast off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Zarkov is just in full mad scientist mode of
Speaker 1: this whole this whole initial meeting, Like we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: this performance, this character is all over the place. But
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yes, and his and his plan to save the planet Earth.
Speaker 1: As we'll find out, he's basically go into space with
Speaker 1: a pistol and take out who's responsible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, confront the leader of whatever aliens are caused the
Speaker 3: hot hail and just and shoot them. I guess.
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and we're finally like rid of the Earth. At
Speaker 1: this point, we are successfully in space. We don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the real world anymore. It's just going
Speaker 1: to 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 1: 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. Humanoid face, pale skin,
Speaker 3: bald head, cold voice, with computerized goggles over his eyes
Speaker 3: that have all these creepy gold displays on them, and
Speaker 3: the aliens has strange object imaged in the Imperial Vortex.
Speaker 3: One thing I noticed. It's out of frame in the
Speaker 3: screenshot I have for you to look at, Rob, but
Speaker 3: did you notice the little hood ornament on the top
Speaker 3: of their goggles has a free Mason symbol on it.
Speaker 3: It's got the little square encompass.
Speaker 1: I didn't notice it as much here, but I think
Speaker 1: Clydus perhaps has some symbolisms on him that look like
Speaker 1: Freemason imagery.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know what to make of that.
Speaker 3: Somebody snucks them 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 top 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 1: Yeah, it's like a psychedelic liquid light show, like a
Speaker 1: Joshua light show thing going on. Like that's this movie's
Speaker 1: vision for what space is. And I have to say
Speaker 1: I really like it. One of the things that I've
Speaker 1: liked about like the Spacier Marvel Cinematic Universe movies is
Speaker 1: that they two varying degrees embrace this kind of like
Speaker 1: a 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 1: Yeah, but this goes even beyond anything. If you've seen
Speaker 1: MCU films and you haven't seen Flash Gordon like in this,
Speaker 1: like you don't even see any darkness of space. There
Speaker 1: is no darkness in space. Everything is colors and psychedelic intensity. Right.
Speaker 3: So we hear Alien Mission Control talking about this object
Speaker 3: with Clytis. They are instructed to bring the craft through
Speaker 3: the sea of fire and land it safely at the palace,
Speaker 3: and the effect shots here involve a lot of miniature
Speaker 3: models and sets. As we see the ship approaching on
Speaker 3: the Ming planet, I think it is the planet called Mango.
Speaker 1: I think I believe so. Or that's the city I
Speaker 1: can't remember 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
Speaker 3: sets 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 spell binding pleasure for the eyes. It is
Speaker 3: equal parts corny self parody and genuine finesse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of like have excellent craft went
Speaker 1: into creating these models and sets, 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 pass 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 1: Oh yeah, the gas masky guys that we see. They
Speaker 1: also have kind of a mobious look to them and
Speaker 1: remind me of They also look like something that could
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, as the heroes are walking through the middle of
Speaker 3: this massive room full of alien soldiers, Flash and Dale
Speaker 3: comment that this place looks like quote a police date,
Speaker 3: and Zarkov says that that could be to their advantage
Speaker 3: because it will mean they can easily find allies. Zarkov says,
Speaker 3: look at them, the poor wretches are just waiting for
Speaker 3: someone to lead them in revolt. And Dale is like,
Speaker 3: will you stop talking about revolts? I just want to
Speaker 3: go home.
Speaker 1: 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 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 1: It's incredible, like it it's not situation. Oh, it's complex,
Speaker 1: like it works on several different levels because it's sort
Speaker 1: of like you have a crappy costume of a lizard
Speaker 1: in which the person's face is in the mouth, but
Speaker 1: then they've taken that concept and evolved it to where no,
Speaker 1: there's like red flesh inside the lizard's mouth and it
Speaker 1: has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so weird.
Speaker 3: So it's not like a person's face hiding back there.
Speaker 3: There's like a face represented in the mouth as part
Speaker 3: of the costume.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, and it's it's equal parts goofy but also
Speaker 1: like it gets here, your wheels turning, Like, what's going
Speaker 1: on here? Do these things like manifest the mouth? Is
Speaker 1: this just for communicating with the humanoid world? Like, what's
Speaker 1: 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 gonna do it. He says, it's a quote, it's
Speaker 3: a rational transaction, one life for billions. But the globe
Speaker 3: overhears this and destroys Zarkov's gun.
Speaker 1: Oops, now we're back to square one.
Speaker 3: The globe is a real tattletale. This will come up
Speaker 3: again in the next scene. So we pass on to
Speaker 3: the Throne room, which is just an avalanche of all
Speaker 3: these different like characters and aliens, costumes, designs. One type
Speaker 3: of character in that stands out to me are these
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, they're kind of like sad muppet skulls, but made
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and again that the queen music that synthesize their
Speaker 1: track 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 1: One of the interesting things about all of the especially
Speaker 1: like Ning's Court, there are places where they reference the
Speaker 1: idea that the human mind is much more limited, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same capacity for thought that these other
Speaker 1: alien characters have. But these other alien characters, for the
Speaker 1: most part, don't seem to be displaying like heightened awareness
Speaker 1: and heightened cognition, Like they're just focused on pursuits like
Speaker 1: romantic pursuits and pursuits of the flesh and so forth,
Speaker 1: as opposed to any other kind of like higher functioning
Speaker 1: that I guess they're supposed to be doing here.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe they have extremely standard carnal desires.
Speaker 3: Basically all the aliens do. None of them are really
Speaker 3: shown to be, like, I don't know, considering the philosophy
Speaker 3: of deep space or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, maybe they're doing all that in the background,
Speaker 1: and that's why everything else is dumped down a bit.
Speaker 3: In this scene, we also meet Peter Wingard as Clytas.
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 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's his total like vibes of doctor Doom,
Speaker 1: of destro from g I Joe, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Mask, 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 Hawkmen.
Speaker 3: We meet Timothy Dalton as Baron, the prince of the Arboreans,
Speaker 3: I think the tree.
Speaker 1: People, yep.
Speaker 3: And when we first meet these to they are fighting
Speaker 3: with each other. They're arguing about who gets to present
Speaker 3: the fabled ice Jewel of Phrygia to Emperor Ming as
Speaker 3: a tribute. Voltan tries to present it first, but then
Speaker 3: Barn comes into the room and says, you stole that
Speaker 3: from me. I unearthed it to give to Ming as
Speaker 3: a tribute. I saw it first, but then Voltan stole
Speaker 3: it and they get mad at each other. They're about
Speaker 3: to duel, but then Clydas shuts it down. He says,
Speaker 3: no one in the palace dies without a command from
Speaker 3: the Emperor. And oh boy, Brian Blessed looks so eager
Speaker 3: to fight. He also, his beard looks so wild. It's
Speaker 3: very like, I don't know, it's very like not smoothed out.
Speaker 3: It has the look of like when a cartoon character
Speaker 3: gets like electrified and like their hair stands on end.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's rare to see a picture of
Speaker 1: him without a full glorious beard, but this one I
Speaker 1: 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 peoples here, the
Speaker 3: Prince of Ardentia named Thun and he's dressed in sparkling gold,
Speaker 3: and he approached it. He's called up before Ming and
Speaker 3: he's like, we have suffered greatly since you blasted our kingdom.
Speaker 3: He says, they don't have any riches to offer, but
Speaker 3: the Ardentians can offer their loyalty.
Speaker 1: You pointed out that I'd forgotten to mention them in
Speaker 1: the crew. I mean, there are a lot of actors
Speaker 1: in this film. We can't mention them all. But this
Speaker 1: is George Harris playing Thun Born nineteen forty nine. Fans
Speaker 1: will definitely recognize him as Katanga in Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Art small part, but a memorable one, and he
Speaker 1: also 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 it, do a smart double cross, Like he
Speaker 3: tries to look like he's gonna fall on the sword
Speaker 3: but then strike out and kill Ming, but the globe
Speaker 3: robot gets in the way. It like freezes him in
Speaker 3: place before he can do it, and then Ming kills
Speaker 3: him with his own sword.
Speaker 1: Purple blood right or blue blood? I can't remember, but
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, you think they would have green blood because it's
Speaker 1: just you have aliens with all different colored bloods, and
Speaker 1: I guess you probably have that whole situation going on
Speaker 1: here where sensors famously are okay with blood if it's
Speaker 1: not red, you can have as much as possible if
Speaker 1: it's green, but if it's red and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: 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 glow robot overhears him in tattles. It like
Speaker 3: blares out on the speakers. This Ming is a psycho
Speaker 3: and they're like, who said that? And now all eyes
Speaker 3: are on the Earthlings, including Princess Aarra, who is still
Speaker 3: aggressively ogling Flash Gordon from afar. Gordon does notice this,
Speaker 3: and he like looks back at her and Dale gets jealous.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, they've never explained this really, but Princess Aura just
Speaker 3: has like a guy on a leash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure this is Deep Roy, an
Speaker 1: actor who's come up on the show before. Again, very
Speaker 1: very deep Gast on this picture. Among other things, Robbie
Speaker 1: Coltrane shows up at the airport scene early on in
Speaker 1: the picture. Hits a blink and you miss it situation,
Speaker 1: But there's Robbie Coltrane.
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, you 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 1: Yeah. Absolutely, there are moments like this in the picture
Speaker 1: where yeah, it'll get really serious and like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this meaning is terrifying, and then you know a football
Speaker 1: 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, ming Dale's 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 like activates his
Speaker 3: football brain so he can tackle the bad guys. Rob,
Speaker 3: I 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 1: Your note on it being more football theme than you
Speaker 1: can possibly imagine if you haven't seen the film is
Speaker 1: totally on point, because yeah, it is like a straight
Speaker 1: up football game that breaks out to the point where
Speaker 1: there's a There's this one moment where Clyde has like
Speaker 1: gets some of the cronies and again these are okay,
Speaker 1: two things. First of all, The aliens who are engaging
Speaker 1: in the football fight are of like a different type.
Speaker 1: They have different armor that strongly resembles like football padding.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're dressed up like football players.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then when they when they're getting their butts
Speaker 1: kicked by Flash, Clydus jumps in and he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: huddle up. He like does like a football coaching thing
Speaker 1: where it's like you need to do like this, do
Speaker 1: this play. And they go out and try it, and
Speaker 1: it is. It is tremendous fun. It is just absolutely goofy,
Speaker 1: and it can come as a shock, Like I say,
Speaker 1: if you kind of like we're buying into ming a
Speaker 1: few seconds earlier and you're like, oh man, this bad
Speaker 1: guy's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 3: We go from cosmic horror to football fight in like
Speaker 3: eighty seconds.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: And also in this fight, Dale is doing cheerleader cheers.
Speaker 3: She's like, go Flash, Go Flash. Also, Brian Blessed likes
Speaker 3: what he's seeing. 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 1: Yeah, tripping a few aliens us, I think he uses
Speaker 1: the cudgel on them. A little bit too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's doing it like on the sly. I
Speaker 3: guess they 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 Clytis 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 1: The football rebellion is over.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so yeah, they're they're imprisoned and condemned. So
Speaker 3: we get one. One scene that comes up soon is
Speaker 3: this little well. First, there's a there's a moment with
Speaker 3: Prince Prince Baron and Princess Ara where he says he
Speaker 3: doesn't trust her, but she convinces him to go back
Speaker 3: to Arboria tonight and she will come and meet him
Speaker 3: there with a surprise and then we see Flash in
Speaker 3: prison in Ming's dungeon here wearing one of the best
Speaker 3: helmet mask things I've ever seen. It looks like a
Speaker 3: like a giant die of some kind, and it's got
Speaker 3: spikes shooting out of it where his face would be.
Speaker 3: I don't is if that's like to prevent anybody from
Speaker 3: getting close to his face. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's because if he runs away, he'll like
Speaker 1: stick into the wall and then he can't move. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It looks impressive, though.
Speaker 3: So as a final request before his execution, he tells
Speaker 3: Clydas that he wants to see Dale, and they're given
Speaker 3: a moment together, and Clydas, of course regards it as
Speaker 3: pathetic that they are in love. And Dale comes in
Speaker 3: in her emperor's concubine uniform and the first thing Flash
Speaker 3: Gordon says when he sees her is you look great?
Speaker 3: That about adis rolling on the floor. You look great anyway.
Speaker 3: They say that they hope this is only a bad dream.
Speaker 3: You know, soon they'll wake up, and Flash tells her,
Speaker 3: you know, after he's dead, she's gonna have to meet
Speaker 3: up with Zarkov to find a way to save the earth.
Speaker 3: So we go to the execution and it's going to
Speaker 3: take place in this chamber that's like a hat. It's
Speaker 3: like a glass hemisphere with this chair where this like
Speaker 3: yellow smoke comes out out that is apparently some kind
Speaker 3: of poison that will kill Flash Gordon. The execution scene
Speaker 3: set is actually gorgeous, with these clouds blooming in the
Speaker 3: sky and all these bizarre costumes. It's really again one
Speaker 3: of the many feast for the eyes scenes here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a cross between church and a gas
Speaker 1: 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. He looks
Speaker 3: very boring compared to everybody else around him. He's like
Speaker 3: the square in Ming's palace. And we see him slip
Speaker 3: Flash Gordon some kind of secret medicine before the execution.
Speaker 3: And there's a great moment in the scene where I
Speaker 3: think we see Dale and Zarkov and they're watching Flash
Speaker 3: Gordon be prepared for execution and they're crying, and Princess
Speaker 3: Ara says to Ming, look, water is leaking from her eyes.
Speaker 3: In Ming says it's what they call tears. It is
Speaker 3: a sign of their weakness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is I mean ultimately an important theme in
Speaker 1: the film is that what humanity offers is is compassion
Speaker 1: and reason and that's what that's what's ultimately going to
Speaker 1: win the day, and that's that's ultimately what Flash has.
Speaker 1: That is his superpower, but it's not helping him out
Speaker 1: a 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: Imperial Surgeon to give him an antidote that will protect
Speaker 3: him from this yellow smoke that is supposed to poison him.
Speaker 3: So he just like gets knocked out by it, and
Speaker 3: we come back to him later in this room where
Speaker 3: his coffin is laid out next to like a stylized
Speaker 3: custom tombstone that says Flash Gordon Earthling executed by.
Speaker 1: Ming oh man. That's so good it's its 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 1: Everyone is if you're executed by Ming, you are buried
Speaker 1: in hotpants. 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 she's like, oh, it's only conditioning, come on,
Speaker 3: And so they leave. Aura and Flash leave the palace,
Speaker 3: but then we zoom in on this room where Ming
Speaker 3: and doctor Zarkov are talking, and Ming explains his whole plot.
Speaker 3: He says, quote, every thousand years, I test each life
Speaker 3: system in the universe. I visit it with mysteries, earthquakes,
Speaker 3: unpredicted eclipses, strange in the wilderness. If these are taken
Speaker 3: as natural, I judge that system ignorant and harmless. I
Speaker 3: spare it. But if the hand of Ming is recognized
Speaker 3: in these events, I judge that system dangerous to us.
Speaker 3: I call upon the Great God Diezan and for his
Speaker 3: greater glory and for our mutual pleasure, I destroy it utterly,
Speaker 3: and so Zarkov realizes. He says, you're saying it's my fault.
Speaker 3: The earth is being destroyed, and Imperi Ming says, precisely,
Speaker 3: it's a real bad twist. But then they explain, okay,
Speaker 3: they're going to empty his memory as we might empty
Speaker 3: your pockets. They're going to steal all his memories out
Speaker 3: of his mind. And then we get this brain wiping
Speaker 3: scene where we see, like, as this beam is beaming
Speaker 3: at his head, we see on a television screen Zarkov's
Speaker 3: whole life playing like in super speed in reverse. We
Speaker 3: see all these formative memories, personal tragedies, family struggles. So
Speaker 3: in the middle of this goofy movie, this sequence is
Speaker 3: 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 for the film,
Speaker 3: but it's also quite strong. It's strangely moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is exactly how I've always felt about this,
Speaker 1: or that's the way I feel about it now. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing this when I was a kid, and this
Speaker 1: scene was like kind of disturbing, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: it's you're used to seeing characters vaporized by lasers. We've
Speaker 1: seen it already in this picture, you know, run through
Speaker 1: with swords. But this is just this is this is
Speaker 1: rather poignant and disturbing. And yeah, we just had a
Speaker 1: football fight, now we're having this. So it seems like
Speaker 1: something that maybe he should have been cut or maybe
Speaker 1: should have been saved for another movie. But again, the
Speaker 1: performance is so solid. What can you do? And and
Speaker 1: and the way they the images are cut together with
Speaker 1: other like random images of like cats and faces, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's quite troubling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's like really good, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't belong here.
Speaker 1: It's so weird, like this belongs in the Nicholas Rogue
Speaker 1: movie that he didn't get. This needs to be in
Speaker 1: 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 ar 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 she's just like she
Speaker 3: thinks he's dead, but this conversation lets her know that
Speaker 3: he's alive, and she she sort of gets the idea, Okay,
Speaker 3: I got to escape here and do something now, Flash
Speaker 3: and Aura. They go to this place ar Borea. This
Speaker 3: is like a moon or a planet characterized mainly by trees.
Speaker 3: It's sort of an Ewok village, as we were saying,
Speaker 3: but full of people, including Timothy Dalton and Richard O'Brien,
Speaker 3: and we witness this interesting ritual when they first arrived
Speaker 3: there where like a young man, he says, I am
Speaker 3: now of age, greenfather, I ask for the test of manhood,
Speaker 3: and this ritual commences where he has to go around
Speaker 3: this like tree root and reach into one of many
Speaker 3: holes in it. If he reaches into the wrong hole,
Speaker 3: he will be stung by this weird tree beast. It's
Speaker 3: like a scorpion inside the tree that has a venom
Speaker 3: that tortures people with madness until they die, and he
Speaker 3: does get stung. So this kid is like Timothy Dalton,
Speaker 3: you 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 1: Yeah, the tree Beast sequences are very memorable. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was watching this with my wife last night. She'd
Speaker 1: seen it before, and I was at one point we
Speaker 1: reached we reached a point in watching the film where
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, do you want to go to
Speaker 1: bed and I can finish it in the morning, And
Speaker 1: she's like, no, I need to stay up at least
Speaker 1: until the tree Beast scene happens, at least until they
Speaker 1: started sticking their arms into the big stump. So we
Speaker 1: ended up watching the whole thing. But that was nice,
Speaker 1: one of her favorite scenes.
Speaker 3: It is quite mean. They're actually a couple of these scenes.
Speaker 3: So we see this other guy failed to test early on,
Speaker 3: and then Aura dumps dumps flash on this planet. He's like, Barn,
Speaker 3: take care of him. I've got to go back and
Speaker 3: do other things. I'll be back and Barron does he
Speaker 3: like this? Of course not. This is like my fiance's
Speaker 3: other boyfriend just has to hang out with me. Now.
Speaker 1: 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 1: 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 she's kicking butt too. As you said,
Speaker 3: it is not explained, but okay, great, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because she drank a little bit of that
Speaker 1: potion from the Galaxy Pleasure or wherever they said it
Speaker 1: was from, and so she drank just enough to give
Speaker 1: her like super combat the skills, and that's what we
Speaker 1: see here.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah. So she meets up on her way
Speaker 3: out of the palace with Zarkov again, which at first
Speaker 3: we worry is agent Zarkov an apparently brainwashed drone form
Speaker 3: Ming and Ming thinks this guy is working as a
Speaker 3: double agent. But once they're out of the palace, Zarkov
Speaker 3: has this moment where he reveals he is still himself
Speaker 3: and he still has all his memories. He I couldn't
Speaker 3: fully understand it, but he says like he was able
Speaker 3: to resist the brainwashing by holding onto memories including I think,
Speaker 3: the theories of Einstein, bits of the Talmud, and songs
Speaker 3: by the Beatles. And then he says that like spoke
Speaker 3: focusing on these specific memories allowed him to keep all
Speaker 3: of his memory and knowledge. He says, it's you can't
Speaker 3: conquer the human spirit.
Speaker 1: The performance sells it, yeah, but it is a complete
Speaker 1: turnaround because it's just like, oh, yeah, all that you
Speaker 1: thought happening not happening. Fine, disregard it. I'm good.
Speaker 3: So, like Ming, Calla and Clydis 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 Clydis to discover who the trader is
Speaker 3: no matter where the trail leads, by any means necessary.
Speaker 3: So this leads to the torture scene of Princess Ara.
Speaker 3: Clydas has her like chained up and they're torturing her
Speaker 3: for information. They're like, where is Flash Gordon? Where did
Speaker 3: you take him? Clydus seems to be kind of enjoying
Speaker 3: this because he's he's portrayed to be somewhat of a
Speaker 3: creep when it comes to aur and uh, then it oh,
Speaker 3: there's the part it gets to where he's like, bring
Speaker 3: me the bore worms and she goes, no, not the
Speaker 3: bore worms. Ara has has multiple lines where she just
Speaker 3: has to make very very straight reference to the horror
Speaker 3: of the boar worms. It'll come up again.
Speaker 1: It works. I mean, it builds up a sense of
Speaker 1: fear of these worms that we will never see, never see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe Dino came in. He's like, Okay, look,
Speaker 1: I gave you the cage lowered into the swamp. I
Speaker 1: gave you the tree beast, but we can't have bore worms.
Speaker 1: We're at the very limit of the 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 Barren, 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 1: Yeah, it's monstrous and it doesn't make a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: but it's a monster, it's a space monster. It's not
Speaker 1: supposed to do.
Speaker 3: So Timothy Dalton comes it kills the monster, and then
Speaker 3: you think he's about to kill Flash Gordon. But then
Speaker 3: I don't even remember what happens here. Is it that
Speaker 3: the Hawkmen show up and stop him from killing him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hawk Men come at that point because they're
Speaker 1: here for Flash, and the hawk Men are still trying
Speaker 1: to play right by Ming. They're not an all open rebellion.
Speaker 1: This is all heading to, of course, open rebellion, but
Speaker 1: right now there's still division between these factions that will
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, this one especially. So it's gonna be trial
Speaker 1: by combat in the Hawkman floating city. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are a few steps to get get where we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with this, but it's like Barren is going to
Speaker 1: be tried and executed, but it's going to be trial
Speaker 1: by combat. Who's he gonna fight. Seems like he's gonna
Speaker 1: probably fit. Uh, he's gonna probably pick Brian Blessed. Right,
Speaker 1: he's there, he has his cudgel, he's eager for it,
Speaker 1: but no, he chooses Flash Gorton. He's like, I will
Speaker 1: 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 it's like they got
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 it's 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. I'm there.
Speaker 3: I think this this friendship arc has been earned.
Speaker 1: It really was earned here in this scene. Great fight
Speaker 1: with whips of all things. Even going back into this,
Speaker 1: when I saw the whips come out, I'm like, oh lord,
Speaker 1: you know, not swords but whips. But it works. They
Speaker 1: make it work. It's well choreographed. The pail feels real,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, it's earned. It's a whole it's a
Speaker 1: we 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, we can do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is also the scene where in the middle they're
Speaker 3: like fighting and Dale Arden yells a 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 1: Yeah, I think he set a timer earlier, or he
Speaker 1: will set a timer in a bit so that we'll
Speaker 1: 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 get the death of Clytis. How
Speaker 3: does that happen?
Speaker 1: Oh well, he shows up, he's upset about this whole
Speaker 1: scenario with these warning factions suddenly joining forces. He gets
Speaker 1: thrown out. There's like a double team, and he eventually
Speaker 1: gets thrown out onto the spy platform run through, and
Speaker 1: we do get that scene of his mask doesn't come off,
Speaker 1: but we see like his eyes and his tongue like
Speaker 1: melting out through the mask. Yeah. Gross ending, But this
Speaker 1: 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 1: The last temptation of Flash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. He's like, how about this. I make you
Speaker 3: the Prince of Earth, and all of the people of
Speaker 3: Earth must serve you and be your slaves, and you
Speaker 3: you just must be loyal to me? How about that?
Speaker 3: And Flash is like, no, I won't do it.
Speaker 1: It's a creepy scene because Ming is saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: they'll be different once I'm done with them, They'll be
Speaker 1: easier to manage, yeah and all that. Yeah, Flash is
Speaker 1: our hero. He doesn't want any part of that, he says.
Speaker 3: No, I think Ming says that he will condition the
Speaker 3: people of Earth to be satisfied with less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what he says.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, Flash would never do that.
Speaker 1: All right. So Flash is left on the Hawkmen floating
Speaker 1: castle thing and they're gonna blow up, and Ming's force
Speaker 1: to start blowing it up. But fortunately he finds a
Speaker 1: rocket slid, which is kind of like he finds a
Speaker 1: jet ski. It's a jet ski. It's a space jet ski.
Speaker 1: I don't know why the hawk Men need a jet ski.
Speaker 1: They have wings that allow them to fly through space,
Speaker 1: but it's it's fortunate for our friend Flash here, who
Speaker 1: 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 Hawkmen to like all work together to go oppose Ming.
Speaker 1: That's right, just as Ming is about to get married
Speaker 1: to our heroin. So you know, a lot of things
Speaker 1: predictably coming to a head.
Speaker 3: Here, that's right. So several things are happening here somehow.
Speaker 3: I think the Zarkov and Timothy Dlta are in the
Speaker 3: dungeon 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 Aura?
Speaker 1: I believe? So, yeah, she completely turns face at this point,
Speaker 1: and she's working for the good guys.
Speaker 3: We've been told that she's gonna be punished for her
Speaker 3: treachery by like being sent to a planet where she
Speaker 3: will she will like freeze and suffer, and I guess
Speaker 3: this will like 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 1: Oh yeah, and they're all interconnected, so they all short
Speaker 1: out and die.
Speaker 3: So the Hawkman and Flash or attacking first the ship
Speaker 3: that's out there, General Kalo'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 movies.
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 1: Yeah, and it's a very small role, but it's also
Speaker 1: very fun. This is a kind of predictable comedy here
Speaker 1: with your tyrannical ruler going through some vowels with his
Speaker 1: 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 untils such
Speaker 3: time as you grow weary of her and promises I
Speaker 3: do another great scene in this in this whole like
Speaker 3: assault on the palace at the end is the like
Speaker 3: the codes have changed and so have we moments.
Speaker 1: Oh god, this is my favorite, favorite, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite moments. Upon this rewatch Like it's not effects, it's
Speaker 1: it's just like really weird writing. And this this feels
Speaker 1: very improvisational, like they realized they needed something to get
Speaker 1: him from point A to or point are to point
Speaker 1: as wherever we are in the transition here. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well we got to open this lock
Speaker 1: that the locks have changed. And then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: well you know I've changed too, how about you? Yes,
Speaker 1: I've changed. It's like this moment where they're using a
Speaker 1: change in passcodes to quickly comment on their own capacity
Speaker 1: for change 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 1: So I don't know what was going on with the
Speaker 1: scene this was there's something If this was improved or
Speaker 1: there was something lost in translation, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 3: stomach like the spaceship skewers him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like upper like not quite through the heart, like
Speaker 1: he's a vampire, like a little lower than that, but
Speaker 1: still vampire slaying esque. So it's uh right as he's
Speaker 1: turning away from it. So it's a pretty great villain
Speaker 1: skewering scene. And then there's the you know, the sixth
Speaker 1: scene where he like pulls himself off of the impalement
Speaker 1: and I forget what color is it? Purple blood? It's
Speaker 1: one of the alien colored bloods, I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And then he tries to use his his
Speaker 3: chunky magic ring to to fight back against Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: but no, he can't win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's weakening, and then he just kind of blinks
Speaker 1: out and the ring falls to the floor.
Speaker 3: So it's a happy ending. It seems a Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: isn't Is he like declared the new emperor or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he would take the job.
Speaker 1: But now I think Timothy Dubbon is the new emperor, right,
Speaker 1: and then Brian Blessed is the new general. Yes, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine anything going wrong with this scenario, but for
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, we get the close up with that ring and
Speaker 1: some dust being blown away. So yep, it looks like
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a sequel, except there was never a sequel.
Speaker 3: Ah. Well, Rob, I'm glad you suggested Flash Gordon this week.
Speaker 3: This one was was such a delight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I feel like
Speaker 1: listeners have have requested this one in the past as well.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty pretty obvious picture to hit on the
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema journey, and I'm glad we did it.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll go ahead and close out here, but
Speaker 1: as always we invite you to write in. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you about your experience with this film,
Speaker 1: your your thoughts on the film, your history with the film,
Speaker 1: and so forth. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's been on Fridays. We set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete
Speaker 1: list of all the movies we've covered so far. You
Speaker 1: can go to letterbox dot com. That's L E T
Speaker 1: T E R box d dot com and you can
Speaker 1: find us there a weird Weird House that's our user
Speaker 1: handle there, and we have a list of all the
Speaker 1: movies we've covered and you can toy around with that.
Speaker 1: You separate them, buy genre and so forth, and see
Speaker 1: what we've been up to, and sometimes there's a peek
Speaker 1: ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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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