FLASH GORDON: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Universal/Dino De Laurentiis/Starling/Famous Films II, 1980) Arrow Academy

With cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor’s eye-ball-searing use of Technicolor, splashed across fire-engine red-soaked sets a la production and costume designer, Danilo Donati, suffering from a mind-boggling bout of elephantiasis, producer, Dino De Laurentiis all but affirmed director, Mike Hodges would create a dynamically obtuse and bizarre albatross out of Flash Gordon (1980) – the big screen reboot of Alex Raymond’s 1933 comic classic, re-fitted as a B-grade kiddie serial in 1936, starring Olympic swimmer, Buster Crabbe. Crabbe’s magnificent torso was the real/reel star of that 13-episode B&W matinee filler. Alas, the star of this eighties’ redo is not Sacramento-born, Sam J. Jones (curiously, to have inherited the mantle from Crabbe after Kurt Russell turned it down) – a moon-doggy/square-jawed ex-Marine, whose failed attempt at semi-pro football paved the way for a full-frontal spread in a 1975 issue of Playgirl magazine, before indulging in a spate of TV commercials, peddling sporting goods. Even with such heavy-hitters in the cast as Max Von Sidow (playing it totally straight as the evil, Emperor Ming), Timothy Dalton (a pompous Prince Barin), Topol (ambitiously flawed scientist, Hans Zarkov), and, Brian Blessed (the winged, Prince Vultan) Flash Gordon’s biggest selling feature remained its truly whack-tac-u-lar score by the rock sensation - Queen. “Flash – ah-ah!” With its uber-muscular heroes and villains, seductively clad and flexing in tightly fitted costumes, owing more to a late 70’s dayglow discothèque than exotic ‘over the rainbow’ outer space action/adventure, cheesy dialogue (brutally scripted by Lorenzo Sempler Jr. from an adaptation by Michael Allin), and Ornella Muti’s sex-kittenish Princess Aura as the femme fatale, a perfectly abysmal and multi-mascaraed counterpoint to Canadian-born damsel in distress, Melody Anderson as scissor-legged travel agent, Dale Arden, Flash Gordon is the kind of ‘soooo bad, it’s still bad’ spectacle, embarrassingly hokey-jokey at a glance, and, utterly second-rate and silly once you begin to peel back its layers of gaudy excess.  

How could Hodges, the creator of the ultra-gritty Brit flick, Get Carter (1971) have stooped to such awe-inspiringly abysmal camp? Seemingly intimidated by De Laurentiis’ desire to anchor and submarine this space opera in a small army of art directors and visual artists throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at the screen, Hodges’ storytelling approach to Flash Gordon is a wan ‘connect the dots’ endeavor, further afflicted by Sam Jones’ inability to convincingly deliver virtually any line of dialogue as though he were not directly reading it, for the first time, off a teleprompter. Honestly, Jones’ performance ought to be classified under the definition of ‘stick figure with no soul’. And, as though to add absurdly malicious subtext to this intergalactic firestorm, Jones is cast as a famous American footballer come savior of the universe after Emperor Ming unleashes a series of floods, earthquakes and otherwise seemingly ‘natural’ disasters upon the Earth. The movie even affords Jones the opportunity to engage Ming’s minions in a bone-crushing 50-yard run for freedom, before being subdued, stripped, murdered, resurrected, and forced to do battle with the envious and self-involved Prince Barin for Aura’s affections. Inevitably, Barin and Flash bond in their self-preservation and desire to liberate the universe from Ming’s tyrannical control. Yet, Flash Gordon, for all its wildly colorful glitz and kitsch is a fairly colorless and dull affair, only marginally enlivened by Max Von Sidow’s presence as the devastatingly sinister Ming.  

Over the decades, a legend has grown, that Sam J. Jones’ career was all but derailed by a now ‘infamous’ clash of wills with the all-mighty, De Laurentiis. But the truth of the matter is that Jones, despite offering up a certain sex appeal of the blonde/buff surfer dude stud du jour ilk that was briefly fashionable in the late-70’s, utterly lacks any screen presence or staying power beyond his build. Although working steadily in films and television since Flash Gordon, Jones’ reputation in the industry has been relegated – justifiably – to that all but forgotten dust bin of Hollywood has-beens/ briefly was-beens. So, let us not endeavor to make a Brando out of a Brolin! The minute Jones’ opens his mouth in this movie he loses all credibility as an ‘actor’. Meanwhile, screenwriter, Semple likely came to this claptrap highly recommended, having already worked on the Adam West 60’s uber-camp classic, Batman (1966-68). And lest we forget, Semple also authored the fantastic thrillers, The Parallax View (1974), and, Three days Of The Condor (1975). Sci-fi, however, proved a tougher nut for Semple to crack, and in absence of a more intuitive understanding for the suspension of disbelief inherently required by the genre, Semple instead makes a valiant first act stab at legitimate ‘drama’, then pretty much trashes everything, loosely to string together a series of ‘set pieces’ culminating in one of the clumsiest conflagrations in movie history. Of course, the real/reel art-imitating-life-imitating-art irony here remains Hodges fashioning Flash Gordon in the shadow of George Lucas’ colossally successful, Star Wars (1977), itself, based on the original Flash Gordon serial of yore.   

It ought to be noted that originally De Laurentiis pressed director, Nicolas Roeg into service. Roeg immersed himself in Flash Gordon lore for nearly a year, offering De Laurentiis a total revision of the franchise, with a metaphysical kingdom, utterly void of the sort of action set-pieces that eventually made up the finished product. Unimpressed, De Laurentiis tried to persuade Roeg to see things his way. Instead, Roeg departed the project. In his wake, De Laurentiis hired illustrator, Mentor Huebner to kick-start pre-production by producing a series of graphic concept art to help crystalize his vision of the picture for the next director. Sam Peebles, the original screenwriter was replaced by Semple, while De Laurentiis aggressively pursued another ‘big name’ to helm his project. His first choice, Federico Fellini was an absolute ‘no show’, leaving Mike Hodges to fill the role of ‘lion tamer’ on a production already spinning wildly out of control. In the end, style trumped substance, an executive decision that caused De Laurentiis' first pick/leading man, Kurt Russell to walk away, and De Laurentiis then, to openly reject Arnold Schwarzenegger’s candidacy to play the buff and beautiful ‘all-American’ hero, based solely on the thickness of his Graz, Austrian accent. Admittedly, Sam J. Jones represented something of a grotesque compromise; Jones’ only real ‘experience’, appearing on TV’s The Dating Game, followed up by a very brief cameo in Blake Edwards’ classic sex comedy, 10 (1979).

Leading lady, Melody Anderson basically took on the part of the ‘good girl’ under duress, De Laurentiis brow-beating her into acceptance. Conversely, Max von Sidow accepted his role from the outset with an ebullience, eventually to transfer into his performance. Sidow had loved the original cartoon series and believed he could contribute something fresh to the characterization of Ming. But for Anderson, her initial apprehensions proved all too telling once the 4 ½ month shoot was underway. Clashes between the English and Italian crew and the actors trapped everyone in a constant flux of diametrically opposed artistic sentiments. At director, Hodges’ insistence, Jones and Anderson were instructed to ‘play it straight’ to elicit Flash and Dale’s romantic chemistry; De Laurentiis incensed when, at a sneak peak, audiences began to snicker, then burst into laughter during their love scenes. When the dust had settled, Hodges astutely assessed Flash Gordon as “the only improvised $27-million movie ever made.”  And indeed, moments like the ‘quarterback’ fight scene in Ming’s palace, whereupon Flash puts his footballing skill set to good use against Ming’s warriors, was conceived off the cuff. Meanwhile, Jones and Anderson found it increasingly difficult to react and emote against a blue screen for the climactic flying sequence.

Given the slapdash shooting schedule, waste was inevitable and, occasionally, tremendous. In one instance, an elaborate sequence where Ming causes Flash to hallucinate Dale as a spider creature was scrapped by Hodges, but only after Anderson had spent some 4-hours in the make-up chair being outfitted in an expensive costume, complete with blood-stained vampire teeth and a headdress with glass-cut eyeballs, weighing a debilitating 25 lbs. and another 6-hours spent, waiting for her never-to-be filmed close-up on the set. During the sequence where Flash and Prince Barin do battle atop a ricocheting ‘metal’ disc, the actors had to frequently pause to have the fresh silver paint cleaned from their costumes and bodies. As the largely Italian crew spoke virtually no English, Hodges began to indulge his visions for the production. Alas, these veered considerably from the producer’s final thoughts as Flash Gordon’s arbitrator of ‘good taste’. Not concerned with perfecting the audio on set, Hodges later employed voice double, Peter Marinker to re-record many of Sam Jones’ lines. When Jones discovered this, he and De Laurentiis had words. Tensions continued to mount between producer and star after Jones wound up in hospital with a facial scar incurred on the set. According history, Jones departed L.A. during the Christmas respite and just never bothered to return to the set, leaving several crucial sequences still incomplete. Undaunted, De Laurentiis instructed Hodges to find ‘the best stand-in’ at his disposal, and finish the movie. Given Jones’ disappearance it is more than a little ballsy he sued De Laurentiis for ‘breach of contract’ for failing to indulge him in 2 more, originally planned sequels; especially after Flash Gordon theatrical release was officially declared an absolute turkey by the critics.

The distinction here ought to be made between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ camp, for which Flash Gordon, despite every opportunity to fall into this latter category, has nevertheless since managed to perilously cling like a trailing piece of sticky excrement to the former moniker instead – though, only just. The movie’s plot is a higgledy-piggledy mess, begun when bored potentate, Ming the Merciless elects to make the planet Earth his latest curio, to be dismantled in a series of devastating natural disasters of every shape and kind. The net result is that airplane-bound NFL quarterback, Flash, and, travel agent, Dale Arden crash-land through the solarium of conspiracy-loving scientist, Zarkov, who tricks them into boarding his homemade spacecraft, bound for Ming’s outer space principality. Soon, Flash and his cohorts become embroiled in a deadly power struggle. Ming orders Zarkov’s mind erased of all memory, reprogrammed to do his bidding, while Flash is tortured, killed, but mercifully resurrected by Princess Aura who desires him over her betrothed, Prince Barin. Meanwhile, winged military leader, Vultan is patiently biding his time as a Ming ‘loyalist’ who would prefer, but is powerless to incite, a military coup against his lord and master. Ming pits the newly resurrected Flash against Barin, ordering the pair in a duel to the death on a spike-laden and gimbal-rocking disc. Alas, this confrontation culminates in Barin and Flash becoming allies instead. And thus, the intergalactic war to end all wars begins.

Screwy and deranged, Semple’s narrative devolves into a crazy quilt of oddities with Jones’ bleached/butch corn laid extra thick. In their respective ‘what were they thinking?!?’ roles, Brian Blessed and Timothy Dalton offer a sort of robust and steely-eyed gravitas, counterbalanced by Max von Sidow’s maleficent intelligence – by far, the most fully realized and legitimate reason to still see the picture some 40 years later, and find something in it that can loosely be (mis)construed as ‘art’. But does anyone actually believe an intergalactic demigod like Ming, wielding absolute autonomy from a mesmeric blend of demonic-channeled super powers, can be undone by Flash Gordon – a footballer whose mien is trapped in teenage navel-gazing optimism, and, whose most celebrated assets are his chiseled jaw and firm pecs? It helps, I suppose, Ming’s daughter, Aura, finds Flash a real beefcake to ruffle her dishonorable intentions. So, go stud/go “Flash - ah-ah!” As Flash Gordon is more a hold-over from the 1970’s than a true signifier of where the 1980’s were headed, we get equal opportunity sexism here; a genuine affinity for sex-slave-styled harems chalked full of scantily clad bimbettes, floating to a fro, even as their uber-hunky menfolk take on the distinct flavor of homoerotic caricatures a la Tom of Finland, devoted to a sort of warped pseudo-masculinity. Regrettably, the movie is more over-preening pantomime than prime science-fiction run amok. It is that over-the-top quality virtually to kill even the inference Flash Gordon might be on the cusp of a crying gag.  So, once again the earthlings prove nothing can defeat them - even their own ineptitude. Dale attractively melts into Flash’s arms, and Hans – despite having his mind wiped clean, manages a miraculous recovery, liberating Ming’s minions, and placing the future sovereignty of the universe under joint rule between Princes Vultan and Barin.

Viewed today, Flash Gordon appears ever more to be a picture so unabashedly desperate to take chances, it defies any sort of picture-making logic, especially when considered in relief from those laissez faire days and ambitions of its maverick producer, Dino De Laurentiis. Mired in a sort of intergalactic sand trap of retrofuturism meets postmodernism, with a slightly homoerotic/pornographic fetishism to boot, Flash Gordon’s opening credits, set to the strains of Queen’s immortally tacky main theme, are something of an homage to Raymond’s comic book franchise, even if what follows is a thoroughly complex and convoluted departure from this source material. The doleful dialogue and incongruously bad ham acting, astonishingly, is never enough to thoroughly sink the picture, while Danilo Donati’s ‘out of this world’ – literally and figuratively production design all but ensures, even when there is absolutely nothing worthwhile about the story unfolding, there remains always something compelling to look at from a purely visual standpoint. Yet, even in the insular ‘comic world’ in which this story exists, Flash Gordon remains preposterous, with the queasy détente between Hodges and De Laurentiis, grappling for its artistic aspirations, on full display. The costumes and SFX are a farcical melange of big and bloated budget eclipsing good taste or even practicality by design. Indeed, what is here is so meaningless and awkward, it completely staggers the senses. At some point, abject surrender of every cinema principle known to mankind, and the possible indulgence in some pre-viewing psychotropic drugs is likely the best way to appreciate this movie at face value. Perhaps this is the real/reel reason, despite its epic implosion at the box office, we are still talking about Flash Gordon today.

Originally shot on 35mm photochemical Todd-AO with anamorphic lenses, Arrow Academy marks Flash Gordon’s 40th anniversary with a 4K UHD release derived from the original camera negative, restored by StudioCanal and color graded in Dolby Vision and HDR10. All to the good, we lose the baked-in edge enhancement and excessive DNR that plagued Universal’s Blu-ray from 2010. Opticals remain soft and transparent (no getting around that), and, some minor and very welcomed digital manipulation has been employed to massage the rougher edges of these dated SFX to produce an image in line with modern-age expectations. But film grain has been accurately preserved. Apart from sporting superb color reproduction (the reds are even more eye-popping brilliant), contrast is excellent, and image stability could scarcely be better.  Arrow offers up two DTS options: 5.1 and 2.0 – the latter surround track, a remix. In both cases, dialogue is front and center with Queen’s soundtrack filling in the acoustic gaps, offering astounding crispness. The 4K disc offers 3 audio commentaries: the first from Mike Hodges, the second, featuring Brian Blessed, and the third, a sort of forum discussion between Kevin Schwoebel, Melody Anderson, Sam J. Jones, and Bob Lindemayer.

We also get a ‘behind the scenes’ featurette, an investigative piece devoted to Nicolas Roeg’s never to be realized plans for the picture, and, an episode from the Flash Gordon animated series. In addition, there are brief junkets devoted to a ‘reunion’ of the stars, graphic artist, Renato Casaro, composer, Howard Blake, and, exploring the merchandising campaign, plus a ½ hr. long ‘flashback’ with Mike Hodges. Add to this, a host of galleries to include stills, concept art, trailers and other pre-production fluff and nonsense.  Ah, now for the good stuff – Disc 2 in standard Blu-ray: kick-started with the 1 ½ hr. documentary ‘Life After Flash’ – with copious reflections on all that has gone by since Flash Gordon first hit movie screens.  The rest of the extras basically boil down to outtakes and excised content, detailing virtually any and every query one might have about the making of Flash Gordon, plus extended Comic-Con sequences, the ‘Prayer Walk’ in full, and, interviews with Lisa Downs and Alex Ross. Add to this a lavishly appointed 60-page booklet, chalked full of essays and images. Bottom line: were that every movie released to 4K - or even Blu-ray - would get such a posh and comprehensive treatment as Flash Gordon. I cannot imagine any collector wanting to know anything more about this C-grade clunker after having had the opportunity to peruse this extensive and thoughtfully assembled offering from Arrow. While I continue to think of Flash Gordon as one of the tackiest movies ever made, Arrow’s 4K debut is a very classy affair from top to bottom. On this score then, this 4K set comes VERY highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

5++