Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

This is a review in two parts As it was then, seen in the cinema, week by week, when I was five or six, As it is now revisited with affection fifty years later.


As it was then
In an astronomical observatory Professor Gordon is discussing with a colleague the disastrous onward rush of the newly discovered planet towards the Earth,watching its approach through a vast telescope. Outside thunder growls, lightning flashes, and meteorites bombard the Earth. It is only a matter of time before the planets will collide and destroy each other.

While they are talking, another colleague brings a telegram for Professor Gordon: it is from his son, Flash. Flash has abandoned his polo game just in time to fly back to be with his father before the end.

The flight is battling through clouds of black vapour, tossed by turbulence, surrounded by multitudes of crashing meteorites. In the turbulence a pretty girl with blond hair is thrown against Flash. They talk for a moment or two just as it becomes evident that the aeroplane is going to crash. This possibility had been anticipated and and a parachute has been provided for every passenger. To protect the girl, Flash leaves his own parachute behind and helps her, heaving her out of the plane and hanging on to her parachute as they descend together landing in a forest, close by a mysterious huge, cylindrical object with a pointed nose and tail fins. Flash supposes that this is a rocket-ship. Suddenly Flash and the girl are confronted by a distraught bearded man who threatens them with a pistol. The man is Dr Zarkov, the inventor of the rocket-ship, who intends to try to save the world by flying the rocket-ship to the planet and using the planet's radio-activity to divert it from its course. He has been waiting for some time for his assistant, but the assistant has been delayed, either having had second thoughts about the journey or having been caught up in the physical turmoil besetting the planet. The meteorite storm is increasing in intensity and Dr Zarkov needs to take off, but he needs an assistant. Flash Gordon introduces himself, finds out that the girl's name is Dale Arden. Flash agrees to act as the assistant, but only after he has taken Dale to some place of safety. But there is no time, and indeed no place of safety on Earth, and Flash won't leave her to fend for herself, so Dr Zarkov agrees to take them both with him in the rocket-ship.

They go into the rocket-ship and find a complex engine flashing and sparking. Dr Zarkov settles himself in the pilot's seat, in front of an array of dials, flashing lights, and control levers. Flash and Dale find convenient places to hold on, to keep their feet as the rocket-ship takes off with a mighty roar, and plunges through space to the planet. The rocket-ship passes through the stratosphere, and negotiates the Death-Zone successfully. 'That was the only thing I feared' Dr Zarkov explains, and the rocket-ship soon lands in a desolate mountainous area on the planet.

They open the door of the rocket-ship and set foot on the new planet. Their surroundings are rocky and arid. They see a city on a hilltop and encounter vast lizard-like monsters that seem dangerous. Another rocket-ship arrives and kills the monsters with ray-gun mounted in its nose. The rocket-ship lands and a body of soldiers, commanded by a leader wearing plate armour, captures Zarkov, Flash, and Dale, and takes them to the court of the Emperor Ming, the overlord of the planet. Ming wears a robe with a high collar that rises up behind his head. He has a bald head, arching eyebrows, a long, drooping moustache and a narrow beard, a terrifying figure surrounded by his guards and female attendants.

When they are presented to Ming he sends Zarkov to his laboratory, and immediately desires to make Dale his wife. Dale is unwilling. Flash and Dale have been falling in love since the parachute fall. The extraordinarily beautiful Princess Aura falls in love with Flash at first sight and the lightning of desire flashes from eye to eye, from Ming to Dale, from Dale to Flash, from Flash to Dale and from Aura to Flash.

The scene is set for a series of thrilling adventures in cities below the sea, above the clouds, with lion-men, shark-men, with with hawk-men, fights, duels, space-battles, as Aura tries to ensnare Flash, Ming tries to espouse Dale. Flash tries to rescue Dale, and Zarkov, the scientific genius, patches up the damage caused by the struggles and adventures of the other characters.

As it is now
The cinema serial is a lost art-form. To some extent it is replaced by series such as Star Trek but in our visually sated society even the most thrilling television series cannot have the impact of the unfolding, week by week, of the amazing adventures of Flash Gordon on the planet Mongo. A contrast between television space-opera and the cinema serial is the pace of each episode. With 50 minutes or so each episode of Star Trek can contain a completed adventure, the cumulative effect of the continuity week by week being the revelation of character or at least the predictable revelation of personal tics and eccentricities. In the span of a 20 minute episode the cinema-serial cannot satisfy the classical requirement of having a beginning, middle, and end. Each episode though has to be constructed with enough information for the casual viewer to make sense of it from the start of the action without necessarily having seen any of the preceding episodes. Each episode ends with the hook to the next, to be eagerly anticipated for the whole week that must pass before the next episode is shown.

The emphasis in the serial of love and desire balanced by physical trials looks back to mediaeval romance, flavoured by Victorian social attitudes. Flash loves Dale, who is a typical passive blond to whom things happen. Flash is loved by the dynamic brunette Princess Aura who saves his life, and who tries to divert him from the vapid Dale. Flash---Wouldn't you just know it?---prefers the blond, and yet again the hero ends up with the wrong girl.

Made in 1936, the serial is bound to seem unsophisticated to modern eyes. Based on a newspaper cartoon strip drawn by Alex Raymond, such a production would have barely merited any critical consideration when it was first produced. With the passage of time, both the original strip, and the film, have acquired a cultural resonance, and Flash Gordon has joined the American pantheon with Superman, Batman, and the host of comic-book heroes that still stir the imagination in the 21st century. Alex Raymond's drawings were characterised by an extraordinarily assured sinuous line, and a taste for curvilinear composition, reproduced in the serial by sets that combine neo-classical elements with hanging draperies.

The stars
Buster Crabbe, Flash Gordon, is the physical hero. Blond-haired, handsome in a fine-boned way, different from the typical Hollywood hero of the time; possessed of an athlete's physique, he has an engaging stage-presence. 'Some boat you have here' he says after climbing into Zarkov's rocket-ship. It is surprising how much the profile of Buster Crabbe resembles the profile of the Flash Gordon of the cartoon strip.

Jean Rogers, Dale Arden, is pretty, blond, and feminine and feeble. She faints more than once. Things happen to Dale, and much of the action is taken up with rescuing her from the clutches of the marriage-minded Emperor Ming.

Priscilla Lawson, Princess Aura, is statuesque, a woman of action who loves Flash at first sight, and when danger threatens him fights for him, stands side by side with him, the antithesis of the wilting Dale.

Frank Shannon, Dr Zarkov, with a thick Irish accent, moves like a brick, and delivers his lines speaking clearly but with an autistic disengagement from their import. A typical scientist, he does not care who he works for provided that he is given a well-equipped laboratory. He displays his genius after Flash destroys the atomic furnaces that power the ray keeping aloft the city in the sky. Within minutes Zarkov invents a new ray, just as good as the old one, that works without the inconvenience of needing an atomic furnace. Further evidence of Zarkov's genius is given when he dissuades Ming from destroying the Earth by suggesting that it might be more sensible simply to enslave its inhabitants.

Charles Middleton, the Emperor Ming, is consumed with desire for Dale, but expresses this by trying to marry her. He is feline, sly, untrustworthy, a pantomime baddy who was hissed in the cinema.

Prince Barin, is portly, balding, possessed of a Clark Gable moustache, the rightful ruler of the planet Mongo, displaced by the usurper Ming.

Prince Thun of the lion men, and King Vultan of the Hawk-men are agreeable planks.

Special effects
The rocket-ships are unforgettable, I still remember the thrill of seeing Zarkov's rocket-ship plunging through space to the planet Mongo. It is true that they lack such modern accessories as airlocks, the doors having handles and locks like car-doors. It is also true that their main propellant seems to be sparklers, and they do have a tendency to yaw and roll as the slack in the wires is taken up when they take off. Every laboratory where Zarkov is sent to work contains the standard set of electrical equipment including instruments from Baron Frankenstein's laboratory as depicted in James Whale's film released in 1931.

Costumes
At the start of the adventure Flash left his polo game in such a hurry that he did not even stop to change out of his riding breeches. He lands on Mongo, and in the first of his fights, his clothes are rent by the huge anthropoids with which he has to wrestle. He escapes into a vacant rocket-ship and finds a change of clothing: a close fitting sweater, with a heraldic star on the front, bathing drawers, and buskins. This is the standard kit for male visitors from the planet Earth: it looks a lot better on Buster Crabbe than it does on Frank Shannon.

The women are attired in long flowing skirts and bikini-bra tops and look very fetching indeed, Priscilla Lawson being especially alluring.

Action
For unexplained reasons people are armed with swords as well as ray-guns, and the sword-fights are stylized, most of the action being the clashing of blades. Nobody is stabbed or slashed. The hand-to-hand fighting is mostly simple wrestling throws. We are looking back to a gentler age where there is no depiction of blows or blood.

Nevertheless there is a high seriousness. There is no cynicism in the performances and the laughs (and there are a few) are raised unintentionally.

In the changes of scene the cinematography makes use of a baroque selection of complex wipes, giving a unique futuristic feeling to the story-telling entirely in sympathy with the futuristic story.

In the end, as in Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the boys are matched up with the girls, the bad are frustrated, the Earth is saved and everybody lives happily ever after...but see next week's thrilling episode.






Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12