Nearly 3 years ago we began the project of restarting our podcast after a 12-year hiatus. We were a bit rusty at first, we had some crappy audio and it took a while to get back into our groove. But, to commemorate the event we thought we'd present all you loyal Dispatchers with our first episode...
with slightly improved audio!
You're welcome.
Embark on a high-velocity tour through the galaxy of geek culture!
We'll share the untold tales of Brian Blessed's boisterous portrayal of Vultan and how Flash Gordon charmingly outmaneuvered Indiana Jones across the pond, with a royal nod from Queen Elizabeth II herself. It's an intergalactic mashup of culture that will have you laughing and longing for a time when sci-fi was as much about fun as it was about the future. Strap in, listeners—this episode is all about celebrating the chaotic charm that is Flash Gordon.
Nearly 3 years ago we began the project of restarting our podcast after a 12-year hiatus. We were a bit rusty at first, we had some crappy audio and it took a while to get back into our groove. But, to commemorate the event we thought we'd present all you loyal Dispatchers with our first episode...
with slightly improved audio!
You're welcome.
Embark on a high-velocity tour through the galaxy of geek culture!
We'll share the untold tales of Brian Blessed's boisterous portrayal of Vultan and how Flash Gordon charmingly outmaneuvered Indiana Jones across the pond, with a royal nod from Queen Elizabeth II herself. It's an intergalactic mashup of culture that will have you laughing and longing for a time when sci-fi was as much about fun as it was about the future. Strap in, listeners—this episode is all about celebrating the chaotic charm that is Flash Gordon.
I don't know anything about Flash Gordon. He just brought me on here like a third wheel and a dead dog.
Speaker 2:Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds. Do you mind identifying what you are, we are the dreamers of tonight? Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative Dispatch, ajax, all weapons Now Charge the lightning field.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Dispatch Ajax Podcast, the geek culture podcast for normies and geeks alike. I'm Skip Harvey.
Speaker 1:I'm Jake Nelson.
Speaker 3:There you go and we'd like to introduce you to our new show where we explore the good, the bad and the ugly in geek culture. For our first episode, we wanted to explore something near and dear to our double hearts the pop culture phenomenon. That is more important than you think. But before we get to why it's so important to us, we'd like to give you some background on Flash Gordon, the first of many queen references today. Before we get to why it's so important to the two of us, we'd like to give you some background in a segment I like to call Speeding Bullet Points. Pew, pew, pew.
Speaker 3:So in this we will give you some basic bullet point topics throughout the episode so that you can get a lay of the land before we dive into the nitty gritty. So our first bullet point is that it's important to remember that Flash Gordon is based on Buck Rogers, who in turn, was based on John Carter. The concept for Flash Gordon was sourced from when Worlds Collide. Second important and interesting bullet point Flash and Buck Rogers were both played by Buster Crab. Flash Gordon was featured in three serial films starring Buster Crab Flash Gordon 1936, flash Gordon's Trip to Mars in 1938, and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, which seems like a big deal and he starred as Buck Rogers in 1939. Did you flash to Mars? I had an inkling about where that was going.
Speaker 3:Our third bullet point is Flash has been portrayed in comic strip form comic books, novels, magazines, radio, live action and animated television. And live action and animated movies. Pornography never forget that's true, that is fair. Pornography as well. The unsung market influencer in all of pop culture. Unsung, but never unhomed. There you go. Our fourth bullet point, which is arguably the most important Flash and Flash Gordon are two different characters. What? Yes, believe it or not, you have our tacit permission to punch anyone in the face who mixes those up. You are legally absolved of any wrongdoing by our decree.
Speaker 3:I mean I'll absolve you to punch anybody anytime, really Well yes, that did get us banned from a lot of comic book shops. The most recognizable Flash project is in all likelihood, the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis live action film starring Sam Jones, max Vonsidow, timothy Dalton, brian Blessed and so very much more, though the most famous part of the film is probably the epic soundtrack composed by none other than Queen itself. Was that? Yeah, yeah, there you go, that's where you drop it. We'll just get some sound stuff in here. Well, is it a?
Speaker 3:So this film is the inspiration for it, not just the name of our show, but a cornerstone of Jake and I's shared geek dump. But we'll get into that in a bit. Like we mentioned, the Flash character wasn't the first of this archetype, or even the second or the third. So here's some background. Now, with each of these topics we will probably tackle the heart of the subject what makes it what it is to Not all these people that love it, but the pop culture is zeitgeist in general, and to do that you have to find the trope. You have to dig down and find out what the trope is that rings true to so many people. So here's a little bit of background so we can dig into the trope of Flash Gordon Trope. This is the worst Captain Crunch commercial of all time.
Speaker 3:So I do love those Flash Gordon series. I wish, I mean, we had Batman's serial, we had Ninja Turtle's serial. Why did we not have Flash Gordon's serial, ninja?
Speaker 1:Turtle's serial is my favorite of all time. I still make it from time to time myself. Oh, you still. They still make that. No, they don't make it, I make my own. So essentially, you just get, you know, a bag of dried marshmallows. That's not serial. You don't tell me, damn well, it's serial. But you get a bag of dried marshmallows and a box of rice checks and you just put them together and eat the love of it out of it.
Speaker 3:No, you're using a really optimistic recipe there. Here's the recipe you get a bag of dried marshmallows and a box of Meowmix and then add milk. Then tell me I'm wrong, Especially with Lucky Charms, because it even looks like Meowmix. Well, yeah, that's where you don't go with Lucky Charm.
Speaker 1:Lucky Charm's just garbage serial.
Speaker 3:It's the same damn serial, just like.
Speaker 1:It is not the same thing.
Speaker 3:Oh, whatever, just like Captain Crunch was the same thing as Batman's serial, just shaped differently and didn't have razors in it.
Speaker 1:If I didn't want to eat razors, I wouldn't put it in my mouth.
Speaker 3:You could say that about a lot of things in your life, though.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dan. I'd ask you to stay out of my personal affairs.
Speaker 3:So to understand Flash Gordon, we have to go back to understanding Buck Rogers. Now, buck Rogers is a science fiction character created by Philip Francis Nolan in the novella Armageddon 2419 AD, first published in the August 1928 issue of the Pulp Magazine on Basing Stories In it. Sometime after World War I, nearly all the European powers joined forces against the United States for some reason.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean you saw how things turned out. I mean there's a reason for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not like they're all complicit in, like this, the neoliberal, colonialist Holocaust that permeated the Cold War for decades. It's not like Britain and France were complicit in any of that. No, no, everything's fine. That's what my history book says. I would definitely trust that that's what's back of my Captain Crunchbox says so who am I to believe?
Speaker 1:The Dakota ring said everything's A-okay.
Speaker 3:So in this scenario, even though the US won the war, both sides were devastated. Seizing on the opportunity, the quote Russian-Soviet's joined forces with the Mongolians. I made it up. It's a term that they used interchangeably with what they called the Han's, not the Han, which is, of course, the majority cultural group in China, but they refer to plural as the Han's, not Han's, arkhawk, not Han's.
Speaker 1:Grover, so like just a solo Han. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3:No, that's pronounced Han oh, but a Han. This term is used interchangeably to perpetuate the yellow peril anti-Asian racism that was all the rage at the time, and they used this in the story to take over Europe. Not the term, but just going to war, the letter. People are manning guns. Everybody get the peas, we're all those H-bombs.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a good one. Damn it, I should have thought of that. Drop some F-bombs in here in a minute. This is all long before the Communist revolt in China, mind you, so that's kind of bizarre. But the yellow menace archetype was rampant at the time, so they just played on that and nobody saw any problem with it. In this story, the US collapsed in on itself while the Han's turned against the USSR and defeated them as part of their march toward world domination, and then, way later, they turned to aggression toward the US in 2109, which was now essentially a third world country. They took over pretty easily, like Red Dawn, and the US was no more Somebody's got to.
Speaker 1:This is what happens when you don't have Patrick Swayze defending this.
Speaker 3:That's right, the Swayze shield went down and we're open to attack at any moment.
Speaker 1:I would remember when Reagan was putting this forth the great Swayze shield from the sky was going to protect us all.
Speaker 3:The Swayze Wars orbital platform.
Speaker 1:Well, mommy, looks like Renita Swayze shield.
Speaker 3:On the side. It said be nice until it's time to not be nice and dance like no one's watching. So here is where the trope comes in In this story. Anthony Buck Rogers was a veteran of World War. I now working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, because back then evil energy companies didn't bother with clever marketing and were just openly evil. This was all before Enron. So he was scouting out, I guess, radioactive gas in a cave in Pennsylvania where he, you know, found some. This knocked him unconscious and put him in suspended animation for nearly 500 years, which is, I'm pretty sure, how fracking works Frack that Fracking toasters. So Buck wakes up in 2419 without food or water and, I'm sure, not emaciated at all in any way, skin glowing, self-care, routine, immaculate. He disapproves of the current affairs in world politics and helps mount an insurgency against the Hans, which I really wish was just a combination of Hans-Arkhaven, hans Gruber from Die Hardt or maybe it was a Hans with a Z.
Speaker 1:It was like techno Hans.
Speaker 3:Oh, like their Euro trash. Yeah, euro trash, hans, they're all wearing pleather pants and then mesh shirts and sick glasses with slits in them. Yeah, smoking a milk and ciglets.
Speaker 1:I think it's time for you to die, Mr Buckarajas.
Speaker 3:And then he's like what? Because the entire time there's house music blasting, thumping in the back. What?
Speaker 1:I said it's time for you to die.
Speaker 3:Man and they all take a bunch of 2CI and then they all have to go to like a diner afterwards. Come down and then they'll get American-style cheeseburgers.
Speaker 1:I like this movie a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this thing writes itself. So, if you really dig down, the actual trope here is that the All-American do-gooder is taken to a different time or place, or both, to champion American values to the sad heathens who have either forgotten or never experienced cheeseburgers and imperialism, which is my favorite. Jimmy Buffett, song Buffett in spaaaaaace yes, I think we discussed that last night. Warren Buffett and Jimmy Buffett together, once again in a cop buddy movie, but in space.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like Rush Hour or 48 Hours in space with two old white men and they're Buffett buffets, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. They're Imperial Golden Corral. And of course this hero does this to defend these core downtrodden people against despotic rule as their white savior. And before anyone claims that that's too much editorializing, it's important to remember that the origin of this trope goes back to John Carter of Mars, where a Confederate soldier is transported to the Red Planet to fight Depression. Well, thought that too, to fight oppression, and I sure am sad. It just shows that John Carter just swings in through one of the windows in the breakfast club. John John Hughes is John Carter of Mars.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, just woke him up, johnny.
Speaker 3:This is a lot of Allie Sheedy screaming at people.
Speaker 1:Ah she's the true princess of Mars.
Speaker 3:That's why Mars doesn't really have much going on anymore.
Speaker 1:We had a lot of water and civilization, but then Allie Sheedy took over. We kind of just devolved really.
Speaker 3:There like ruling council was, like Allie Sheedy and Margo Kidder and Shelly DuVall and Sean Young.
Speaker 1:The 80s. Sad Ladies of Space. Yes.
Speaker 3:You know what that is? That's Ridley Scott's Designing Women.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it goes on forever.
Speaker 3:And Sigourney Weaver's the only one that comes out on time, which I find. Yeah, that works for me. Yeah, also the Hollywood from the movie Mannequin. Nobody remembers that, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I remember.
Speaker 3:Hollywood. He was in Designing Women. He was like yeah, I know, this is for their benefit, jake, this is for their benefit. By that I mean Kim control and the guy that played Hollywood in Manicin. Kim control also is on that panel, by the way. I feel like she's like more of a guest star who just stops by. No, no, no, that's Shelly Long.
Speaker 1:Where's Michelle Pfeiffer pop in? Was she the upbeat niece of one of them? She is way too young at that point, Exactly like she's the teenager who comes in You're the Delta Burke era, here Come on. I'm always in the Delta Burke era.
Speaker 3:You're the once and future Kirstie Alley. You know, light up sounds like the worst version of Wonder Woman ever created. If that's the Amazon you have to rely on, Should we say humanity Is it worth it? I brought my own suit.
Speaker 1:But not for those men to ogle.
Speaker 3:No, they could work out like a superhero team. Like Margo Kidder rams her car into Tim Burton's house so that Shawn Young can convince him to make her catwoman.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm following you, but I'm missing all the cocaine and cigarettes.
Speaker 3:That was just assumed. I mean, I thought that was like you got handed those at the door, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you don't get to point A without point C.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's just a snakey.
Speaker 1:it's no tale there 80s or Boris of cocaine and cigarettes. The Robert Downey Jr story.
Speaker 3:Told by an old woman paying home. Oh, that's good. I'm sure they'd have a lot of good things to say. It's Robert Downey Jr and Rob Lowe going. Don't, just don't, don't say it, just come here, come here 88 lines from 40 for a woman, about Robert Downey Jr 88 lines of coke from 44 women about Rob Lowe. So that's much like Pokemon.
Speaker 1:So I love the episode zero. Recurring joke.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't know what it would get, because we'll never actually do the Pokemon episode, so it'll be very funny. So Buck Rogers had been a big hit and at this point the comic strip was published by the Dilt Syndicate right D-I-L-L-O-E. Maybe it's Dilly like Dilly bars. Oh, it could be. We should look up the pronounce for that someday. Should we actually look at?
Speaker 1:yeah, that would take efforts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it would take years. We won't go to space with that type of effort. That's the spirit to beat the Japanese Continue Rival publisher King Features Syndicate wanted to cash in. They tried to create a comic strip out of ye olde John Carter, but they couldn't get the rights from the family of Edgar Rice Burroughs. So they turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. So he combined the aforementioned trope with a plot taken from 1933 sci-fi novel. When Worlds Collide In it. An approaching planet threatens the earth and an athletic hero plus a female companion, love interest and a half-mad scientist traveling to said planet by rocket. It's the oldest story. That's what happened with Moses. That's how our forefathers did it.
Speaker 1:It was good enough for them, and it's good enough for you.
Speaker 3:Now in Flash Gorton. So our hero is Yale's most handsome Aryan polo player. So we hate him already, and his companions were Dale Arden and Dr Hans Zarkoff.
Speaker 1:For a mint NASA.
Speaker 3:This story begins with earth threatened by a collision with the planet. Mongo, mongo, dr Zarkoff For a mint. Nasa, that's a rocket ship to fly to space in an attempt to stop the disaster. Somehow, Flash is flying on a commercial or at least passenger flight and meets the young woman next to him and probably being a creep. For some reason he was wearing a parachute. It begs the question why is a grown man wearing a parachute on a commercial flight?
Speaker 1:I think he's literally just playing to blow up every single plane, but he's so bad at it that it never happens.
Speaker 3:That's a red flag, right? He's obviously DB Cooper, right.
Speaker 1:I mean the dots connect.
Speaker 3:He's either DB Cooper or he's character actor DB Sweeney, who is in Fire in the Sky and the underrated show Strange Luck. I think DB.
Speaker 1:Soonie would have been a great Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3:Probably not, but it's fun to pretend. I know you hate Fire in the Sky, so I had to bring that up, it creeps me out.
Speaker 1:It's not a hatred, that's what I'm saying. It's that the it gets me.
Speaker 3:It sure does. I know it's one of your things I know, just like me and spiders. It's you and DB Sweetie. Vehicle should be in spiders.
Speaker 1:That's not aliens in general. If one happened to book a room at the Holiday Inn Paramus and invite to be over there, it's not going to be a problem. It's just if he kidnaps me, he gets my will.
Speaker 3:If Lord Kenboat comes up to you on the street.
Speaker 1:Oh, space candy, yes, please. Where are we going, rocky?
Speaker 3:Okay. So when the plane is hit by a meteor, flash gathers Dale in his strong arms and rescues her. They land in the art of Dr Hans Zarkoff.
Speaker 1:Poor move NASA.
Speaker 3:Who thinks Flash and Dale are there to steal all his great ideas. Obviously, I kind of imagine that if this were today, zarkoff would be like a QAnon guy you know unhinged, doesn't think things through, thinks he's an expert of something he clearly knows nothing about and his grasp on science is suspect. He kind of checks a lot of the boxes.
Speaker 1:This would have been his godsend. Literally, a dim-witted blonde tall guy who thinks he has all the power and right to do anything in the world just lands into his lap and says let's go save the world.
Speaker 3:Literally, and he's from New York. So in that vein, much like a QAnon mother who has lost custody of her children and hired a crazy grifter for a lawyer, he kidnaps Flash and Dale and throws them into the rocket, which seems like a solid plan. Here it is Landing on the planet Mongo and somehow avoiding the collision. Mysteriously, they flee a couple of dinosaurs. They run afoul of Mongo's evil ruler and obligatory racial stereotype, ming the Merciless, who throws Flash into his arena to fight against giant beast men. Beast men just want friend. Why fight beast men Didn't do much effort. Masters of the universe, I admit so Me. Just want job and friend. I don't know about you, but this scenario happens to be all the time. Just a normal Thursday for Skip Yep. Beast man Thursdays Get your local wingstop.
Speaker 1:I tried to invite myself over and he never lets me.
Speaker 3:Got my hands full of beast men.
Speaker 1:At least recorded for Boston.
Speaker 3:There's a lot going on His hair and knives everywhere.
Speaker 1:Is there like a hairy only fans.
Speaker 3:Yes, I guarantee it, Voltain Wow, flash court.
Speaker 1:You take on a completely different term there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it takes on a whole new meaning doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it does. Really gets you.
Speaker 3:To each his own. I'm not. That's not shaming. No, not shaming. No, that's not what I mean. That's something you hear all the time.
Speaker 3:Okay, so in this scenario, flash, court of course, wins. He bests the beast men and is immediately sentenced to death. Fortunately, the Princess aura, daughter of Ming, likes Flash's doggy style and helps him escape. Flash returns the favor by rescuing her from monsters. In the ensuing melee there are hilarious mix ups a slide, whistle, yakety, sacks, plays, and then we all learn a little bit about sharing. So the premise here gets tweaked in almost every iteration, but the fundamentals are more or less the same the whole way through. It's turtles all the way down, and throughout the years Flash Gordon and his universe would be expanded to include a diverse, if cliche, cast of characters.
Speaker 3:And Sparron is an exiled ruler of Mongo, banished from his rightful place by Ming, not at all Lord of the Rings. His fierce opposition to Ming's rule is tempered by his growing obsession for Ming's daughter, princess aura. You mean Lord of the Ming, lord of the Ming's? There it is. Why did no one ever make this movie? Ming? Ming thinks, ming thinks she dot protest too much. Just like how Flash Gordon was an inspiration Skywalker, which we'll address later. Sparron was also one of the inspirations for Han Solo, or as it's pronounced in the Dino De Laurentiis 1980 movie Bowen.
Speaker 3:Then you have King Voltan who rules the Hawkmen on Mongo, the Hawkmen who did literally aesthetically inspire Hawkman in DC Comics. He also just rules. No, voltan does rule, voltan kicks ass. I think he kicks ass and he takes ass. Then there will be Queen Azura, who first appears in the Flash Gordon comic strip, in the Witch Queen of Mongo, as the leader of the blue clad magic man. Now it's strange here that she's not Ming's queen, but I guess, since he's Emperor and she's Queen, somehow that's like a subset of the weird royal hierarchy on Mongo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's plenty of other royalty, you just have Emperor above everybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but she actually she was evil and worked with Ming. So you figure like let's just make this a fresh way Now.
Speaker 1:Ming saw her blue man group and decided this isn't the marrying.
Speaker 3:Then you have Prince Thun, who's the leader of the Lionmen on Mogo. Thun actually turns out to be the first character that Flash meets when he lands on Mogo. While they're in mid-attack on Ming's palace, flash and Thun battle then realized that both of their mother's name is Martha. They become fast friends and Thun helps Flash save Dale from the palace. And to tie this together with the grand theory of everything in this era of science fiction, prince Thun's first words in the comic strip are upon seeing Flash Gordon by the great god Teo. A mere youth and white. That's how you know he's good. Yup, that's. The crowd rejoices. The white savior is here. The crowd rejoices with no rhythm or style. Funny enough, in the Dealer of the Rites, prince Thun is played by the same actor who plays Captain Katanga in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Really, yeah, he's Mary's killed right at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the death of the Ming bit, right. Yeah, just keep that in your back pocket. I'll just submerge that in my back pocket and it'll pop up later.
Speaker 3:And then I have some interesting background. I don't want to get too far into it, but I do have some interesting background about some of the other artists who did Flash Gordon over the years, because you'd be surprised at some of the stuff that they did afterwards. One of the most well-regarded artists of Flash Gordon during the both comic strip and comic book days was a guy named Al Williamson, who was actually inspired to become an artist when he encountered Flash Gordon in his youth. He worked for a variety of comic companies through his career, including Atlas EC, before it was DC Harvey and Warren Publishing. He then assisted with the Alex Raymond-created Rip Kirby newspaper strip.
Speaker 3:In the 1960s he drew a very well-received version of Flash Gordon himself for King Features, for which he won a National Cartoonist Society Award for Best Comic Book. In the 1980s he began a long collaboration with Marvel by illustrating a comic based on Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back. You remember that one. I've heard of that movie. Well, no, the comic. Because, hilariously, remember, they didn't have rights to Star Wars and so they were just making up stuff based on vague recollections people had of the movies.
Speaker 1:It's like those foreign movie posters in Africa. And then it was like, yeah, well, just be sure there's severed heads floating around. Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 3:That sounds right. Well, Marvel did the same thing with 2001,. A space Odyssey with Jack Kirby. They were just like, well, we can't tell you what's really in it. So there's a thing and there's a guy and a robot, and they're in space Go and he's like easy weekend folks and then, very correct, sound, amazing comic.
Speaker 3:Sadly, though, Al Williams did not like the adaptation of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie which, once again, we'll get to more into later because he was given the comic book adaptation of the movie, which was an adaptation of his work from earlier, and he really didn't. He didn't like Sam Jones, he didn't like Dale, he just he thought it was disrespectful to the spirit of the stories and the characters, and he was irritated because of the last minute changes that happened in the movie, which I'm sure you're going to let us in on here in a bit. He also worked on a short lip Star Wars newspaper strip, which I didn't know existed, and while he did draw more comics for Marvel, including more Star Wars and Flash Gordon books, he decided doing both penciling and inking was a little too stressful, which I totally buy that, and he eventually just became a dedicated inker, one of his most famous inking projects being Spider-Man 2099, which is one of my all time favorite Marvel comics.
Speaker 1:Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Oh, I love that book. Well, I mean, it's not great. You go back and it's not great, but I really liked the whole 2099 vision, like they were willing to try something different. I mean, x-men 2099 sucked Ravage, I don't know what that garbage was. The Doom 2099 was written by Warren Ellis.
Speaker 3:I thought Spider-Man 2099 was like one of the coolest Spider-Man adaptations of all time. I still think he's a cool character. I have a big yellow hair. I should figure it out here somewhere Creeping around. I should stop letting that thing out at night. Okay, and so in some of the other media we'll kind of go through this quickly. Some of the other media.
Speaker 3:One of the famous incarnations is in 1954, they blasted it into your home with the popular medium of television perhaps. Now this adaptation was particularly fast and loose, with Flash played by Steve Holland, dale played by Irene Champlin and Zarkov played by Joseph Nash, now serving as agents of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation in the year 3023. So remember last night when you were like, why don't they have Flash Gordon, james Bond, like when I was peeing, they did oh, you heard that, I forgot. I said that, yes, I listened to it this morning. Yes, so they did. It was in 1954, which sounds completely boggers. But the new setup kind of allowed them to expand what kind of stories they told and not just retell the origin story over and over again, because apparently no one can write original thought. It basically became torch wood, which may or may not be a good thing.
Speaker 3:And, funny enough one of the weirdest quirks about the show the entire series was filmed in West Germany. Well, the original first part of the series was filmed in West Germany and was very, very popular in the US, with 39 episodes running in syndication through 54 and 55. Now, although the three leads were American, filming in West Germany met that everyone on the planet spoke with the German accent. So it's kind of like Doctor who, where you're like always surprised that everyone in space has a British accent. It's basically that.
Speaker 3:And despite the general conservatism of the Cold War era, the series was heralded as strangely progressive, as it was the first time that Dale Arden was portrayed as a scientist and adventurer in her own right, rather than the damsel in distress she'd previously been, which is pretty cool, yeah. And in this show the story begins with Flash seeking a new friend in Warsaw, which is being systematically annihilated by Hitler's bombs. So this one directly goes into the Nazi thing, which nowadays is just a bailout when you don't have anything to write about. But this one's interesting because, like Flash, has never dealt with this before. So he takes a plane when he meets Dale, who's trying to get an interview with Dr Hans Sarkoff.
Speaker 3:Formerly of NASA, formerly of Operation Paperclip. So the plane is caught up at a violent thunderstorm, which becomes a devastating meteor shower, of course again knocking one of the plane's engines out. Flash and Dale bail out, but the meteor takes out their parachute, this time, setting them free falling. And this time, instead of just gliding gently into Hans Sarkoff's lap, a mysterious blue energy beam seizes them out of the air and gently guides them to the ground. And then they have to scramble for shelter. But they bump into Sarkoff, who rushes them into his rocket for shelter, not this time kidnapping them, but helping them escape. And this is where it kind of ties into the 80s movie. This is the first time where he claims that the meteor was no accident but an attack by Muggins. Good, oh, wait, isn't that guy so his assistant in that? Isn't that the other from Raiders? Okay, that's what you're saying. Top man man? Okay, so we're on the same page there. Okay, good, is that also Porkins from Star Wars? Oh, it might be actually.
Speaker 1:Is that the same guy? William Hootkins? Yeah, it's William Hootkins. Yes, strangely, star Wars originally Lost Ark Batman Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3:Oh, he's Eckhart right. Why don't you broadcast it? Well, you've been spending your nights yeah he's Eckhart right. That's it, that's it. That's what's in Batman. Oh no, why did we? Not put this together earlier, Like we talk about these characters all the time.
Speaker 1:That's just the magic of this movie.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's good. Yeah, to get even more obscure into this. In 1967 there was a low-budget Turkish adaptation of Flash Gordon called Flash Gordon's Battle in Space, which is probably the best place to have it. You can find that free online very rarely with subtitles, but you can find it on archiveorg and it's a Hoot, trust me. He's got weird like oh William.
Speaker 1:Hootkins Nipple dials. Nipple, what is Nipple dials?
Speaker 3:Oh, Commando Cody had them. You just got to watch and find out, my friend. A lot of tweaking going on. What?
Speaker 1:are the words? What are the words?
Speaker 3:Interesting adaptation of Flash Gordon was an animated series produced from 1979 to 1980. It was referred to as simply Flash Gordon, but it spawned an animated movie called the Greatest Adventure of All, which is ironic, considering Max Lonsidog, please. Emperor Ming, later on, is in the greatest story ever told. So make of that what you will, I vote.
Speaker 1:Space Jesus.
Speaker 3:So Superman, doesn't Superman win every fight? No, wait, no, that's Space Moses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:No, Batman wins every fight.
Speaker 1:Oh touche.
Speaker 3:So the interesting thing about this was that it was a filmation project and people actually really, really liked it. It had pretty good reviews among you know boomers that grew on up with Flash Gordon and it came out right after Star Wars. Now the filmation produced the series in 79, partly as a reaction to this mammoth success of Star Wars, which is ironic and we'll get to that later. But the series itself was an homage to the original Flash Gordon featured most of the original characters, including, of course, dale and Hans Arcoff.
Speaker 2:Oh you blew it, you just blew it Formerly of NASA.
Speaker 3:So the original concept was that it was to be produced as an animated TV movie, but when NBC saw the finished work, it was decided they wanted to take the concept to series because it was relatively well done. Apparently. Now, the original movie, which introduced, you know, all of our classic characters, for some reason was held back from release until 1982, when it was aired as Flash Gordon, the greatest adventure of all. Therefore, the series would have been a little jarring, because Flash and everyone else would have already been kicking ass on Mongo from the jump, with no explanation of who they were or what was going on, and that ran for two seasons. That's not that complicated, well, but it's weird because, like so, it came out in 79, in Randall 80 and the pilot didn't come out until 82. It's classic NBC. It's like the time when law and order was canceled for a mid season replacement of one of its own spinoffs Peacock. Don't care, I mean, that's vintage NBC, it's cannibalizing itself.
Speaker 3:This one was well received. The series was a bit dull and a lot of people didn't like it most because they didn't have any. There was no origin for it. So when the second season was ordered, nbc insisted that the serial format be dropped and the stories be written for a more, like, you know, juvenile crowd, and it resulted in addition of a pet dragon called Gremlin, which I'm sure is just Lockheed, you know. And then the second season did not at all, farewell, it was canceled. So, and then, you know, in between then you had the Dealerantus production, of course.
Speaker 3:Now, if you're looking for this, if you ever want to watch it, it might be a little difficult to direct on. Only because, though, the title screen says Flash Gordon, and although the series is now known by a bunch of different names, including the Adventures of Flash Gordon and the new Adventures of Flash Gordon I don't know how it could be both at the same time, though I guess those aren't mutually exclusive Each source that cites these names seems to have a different variation on it. So, for instance, the 2006 DVD box set calls the show Flash Gordon, but the official Hearst Entertainment site, which owns it, calls the show the Adventures of Flash Gordon. So pick any one of those, play Mad Libs with it, and I'm sure you'll eventually find it.
Speaker 1:Gordon Adventures News Flash. Yeah, gordon Adventures News Flash.
Speaker 3:There it is. Now I'm going to skip over. So the next chronologically is of course our favorite part, the 1980 film. But since that is going to be your section to kick off, I'm going to skip ahead of that and we'll come back to that, because of course that's our favorite part and I'm going to talk about some of the other very briefly. I want to discuss some of the other really weird incarnations of Flash Gordon up till present. Later on there was an admittedly more ambitious project called Defenders of Earth.
Speaker 3:No, I don't know if you ever watched this, but I saw it. It was kind of awesome. I don't remember this at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was great, it was actually really cool. So it was in the mid-80s, it was around the time of winding down of Masters of the Universe and like Thundercats, you know. So in it it was completely different than everything else because it included other characters from the King Feature Syndicate, including the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, and so it was them. And then Flash has a son named Rick, and the Phantom has a daughter and Mandrake has an adopted son, and then, like Mandrake's bodyguard, lothar, and Lothar's son.
Speaker 1:Or the crew.
Speaker 3:And you know it's a lot of generational stuff. Yeah, in a weird and really dark twist, the team's supercomputer is run by the consciousness of Dale, who is Flash's wife and Rick's mother, who was killed by well, thankfully now Greenskinning in the very first episode Weird. So she's murdered and then they transfer her consciousness into their bat computer, essentially, and then they go out and they try and fight like aliens and not. It's bizarre but it's really interesting because they tried something really, really different. And like they kind of bring up that the Phantom has been around for a long, long time and that, you know, mandrake the Magician's been around for a long time. I just, I appreciate that one because it at least was ambitious, was different. They tried something else. Oh, but here's the weirdest part, is the weirdest part. So it's got kind of a weirdly, annoyingly addictive, catchy theme song.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And the second theme were created by Rob Welch and Tony Pastor with lyrics written by Stan Lee. That right, there is the reason to check it out. I see Flash.
Speaker 1:Who did I steal these lyrics from? Who cares? He's dead in the ground.
Speaker 3:Come on, Josh, help me out. Steve, Steve, you got the ideas.
Speaker 1:Nah, you don't want your name on this, this is just for me.
Speaker 3:Nah, it's a personal project. This is a vanity project.
Speaker 1:But aren't all of your projects, vanity projects, staying? Get back in your hole. Oh, I guess I'll just make the X-Men.
Speaker 3:You got 12 issues right by sundown. So and so then after that. So the funny thing is that Defenders of Earth is that it was essentially there's essentially well, what was that show with all stars? What was that show that had Michael?
Speaker 1:Jackson and Wayne Gransky, and.
Speaker 3:Michael Jordan. That's what Defenders of Earth was.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, but with way cooler characters. Yeah, with less hockey Right.
Speaker 3:Well, strangely, just as many hockey. Mandrake was a hockey fan.
Speaker 1:I just like there's like something going on and then Mandrake's in front of the space TV is like ah, shut up, shut up the cup's on. No, you got to do it yourselves. You don't need magic this time. Ask Lothar, I don't give a s***. What.
Speaker 3:Red Wings. I'm a Maple Leafs guy.
Speaker 1:And then he magics them to lose in the playoffs.
Speaker 3:So in 1996, there was another attempt at a Flash Gordon show, which crashed and burned spectacularly because in it Flash and Dale were 90s teens who rode hoverboards. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's it. That's it. That was the whole thing. It ran for one season and is mostly remembered as not being remembered, so it is a good example, though, of how Flash incarnations always, always are products and reflections of the time in which they're made. Now this brings us to the really the last in popular media other than the comic strip, which actually went was published until, I would say, 1993, which is surprising.
Speaker 1:And the comics, which has kept on going.
Speaker 3:Well, now they were brought back Because Dynamite picked them up, which is great. Well, it's something. Well, I like the idea that there's Flash Gordon in pop culture always. So the last, the last thing we'll touch on as far as recent popular media, until we get to the to the rental stuff, is in 19 or 2007,. The sci-fi channel produced a new version of the Flash TV show. So in this version, having Flash travel to Mongo was done through a wormhole, not a rocket, and it completely deviated from the story almost entirely. This way, flash wouldn't be trapped on another planet and have that sort of I don't know conflict or peril. He could just, you know, travel back and forth when he felt like it and in it Ming controls. The quote source water, which is the only source of safe drinking water on Mongo. But you know, if you have that wormhole, you just come to Earth and take it.
Speaker 1:Do not let yourselves be addicted to space water.
Speaker 3:Or maybe it's like, maybe it's the water that the sand worm, you know, like larvae produces, the one of life. Unlike previous adaptations, ming isn't called Ming the merciless, he's just called the benevolent father. But this is a mask. They tried to make him seem like like a combination of a cult leader and like an like an eastern block dictator, but it doesn't work. Like it doesn't? He doesn't have any of the like charm, or charisma, or ability, or or or depths or character One might say anything he barely has a face.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's really pointless. I mean he's awful, and in this thankfully though, in this version he's he's just like a white guy, instead of making him vaguely Asian. You know, I mean, they still have Princess Aura, but in this, in this version, she like hates her father for his brutality. And then they introduced this new non earthborn character named Balin, who's a bounty hunter for Mongo, and then she gets trapped on earth and becomes a conrad of Flash and Dale and Sarkoff and helps them, guide them through Mongo or whatever. And so then, this is where they really mess up. Here is, the different races of Mongo live in what they call cantons, which are tribal groups that echo the, these human animal hybrids of the original strips, but they change everybody's names and everybody's powers and everything that they are including. There's one called the Verden, which is Prince Baran's forest dwelling people, the other arborean people, the Turin, which are the lion men, the Dactyls, which are the Hawk men, that's terrible.
Speaker 3:It really. It sure is the Omadrians, who are like powerful women, mages or like apothecaries, and then the Friggans who live in the frozen wasteland and those are kind of in the comic strips later and that they never really get to them in a lot of like some of the modern tellings of Flash. So at least there's that, because Frigida they mentioned in the 80 movie. Then there are the Tritons who live the least, the ocean Chalker, and then the magic men. The blue magic men do show up as the Zern for some reason.
Speaker 3:Then there's this there's another group called the Deviates, who are mutants who drank the non-safe water, so like they drank Fiji water and everyone else drank, you know, like Dasani or whatever. And then of course they were mutated into these horrible, you know monstrosities or whatever, and then no one cared. And so I'd like to read some reviews from this. It's good, yeah. So the show lasted one season and I don't know anyone who got to every episode. In fact, a lot of reviewers said at this point reviewers were the only ones watching it by the end. So here's some.
Speaker 1:I hardly watched the first few episodes.
Speaker 3:I don't think I even got to the first episode. Honestly, I hated it like right off the bat. Well, you were deservedly hated it Well, especially since they used Queen's Flash theme in as they covered for all the promotional stuff and then never once appeared in the show, ever at all, and it stole the actual DC Comics Flash logo. For the logo, oh, in Gordon is the circle with the lighting bulb through it. It's like, come on, man, like you're not even trying at this point.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you saw it, they were trying, they didn't care.
Speaker 3:No, no, they weren't. The main guy is spun off from Smallville. Completely forgettable actor from Smallville.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the character, yeah, a side character that no one gave a sh** about, I think it was Christian Croix's boyfriend. Is that right? I think so. I mean not that, yeah, it was. It was Lana's boyfriend, I'm pretty sure. I think he like went off to the army so they could write him. They went off to army, I'm off to army.
Speaker 3:Go fight me some people. These are my trophies from army.
Speaker 1:I love that it's now called Flash Gordon, a modern space opera. That's how it's labeled on IMDb.
Speaker 3:What? The TV show? Yes, it's neither of those things. You can kind of argue that it's none of those things, especially especially since I have to go back to see if I can find the original articles that I read that had talked about this. But when sci-fi channel was first talking about doing this, they were doing their preliminary like promotional stuff. They said that they were going to make this show, no matter what, whether it was going to be Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. It just depended on which rights they got first, which right there says we care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're making it. I don't care what it is, I don't care if it would ever slip a coin, I don't care Pizzolino.
Speaker 3:I mean that's been the history of those characters in general, though, right, I mean that's kind of like part and parcel for how these characters have been treated throughout time. I mean it's truly pulp character. Yeah, I mean they're reactionary to each other, and we haven't even mentioned Adam's strain. But anyway, here's some reviews for the glorious Flash Gordon TV show. Yeah, no, I was wondering why this is where this is going. New York Post gave the show zero stars. What.
Speaker 3:Yep Describe it as, quote, an amateurish exercise in stupidity and disgrace to the name of the entering comic strip character, turn movie and TV space hero.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a yeah, that's a positive review.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you had a good time with it, is it?
Speaker 3:possible to be worse than zero. Well, less than zero. We're down here with Robert Townsend. Can we get into negative territory? The Chicago Tribune said, quote this is a cheap looking, uninspired remake that aspires to be a B movie and most often flounders in the attempt. Usa Today said badly written, badly cast and done on the cheap in the Canadian woods. Tremendous Flash is the kind of fantasy toss-off that gives sci-fi, and sci-fi in capital letters, a bad name.
Speaker 1:Maybe the other way you enjoyed it, if you were getting tossed off in the Canadian woods.
Speaker 3:Oh, we've all been there. Oh, I haven't. Okay, this one's from a UK science fiction magazine called TVZone, and this is specifically for episode 13. It says, quote the series continues to improve and you start to see the meaning of the producer's madness. They must have hoped they could lull passing viewers into watching sci-fi with pedestrian mainstream plots before building up a world of dune-like complexity, which might even have worked if the early episodes hadn't been so dire that no one but reviewers were still watching.
Speaker 1:Well, at least they put port and they tried to find a gem in the midst of the pile of sh**.
Speaker 3:That right, there was the most glowing review I saw for hush, so now we're going to tackle the oft-mentioned 1980 Dino T Laurentus produced movie, which is probably the most familiar incarnation for most of you out there. Okay go.
Speaker 1:Do you want more boring elements of Flash Gordon? Well, that's what I'm here for. So old Johnny O Mars may have begun it and Buck taken the reins, but it was Flash Gordon who far surpassed Bucky Boy and prevented a classical hero model with space-operatic themes which then bled him the very fabric of pop culture. Superman, of course, there in the Star Jammer's comics subsumed his archetype, but it probably most took root in the two stars Trek I mean Kirk, for certain plays right off of old Flash and the Great Wolves, star Wars, truly to the nth metal degree. As Lucas desperately desired to make a Flash Gordon film, he had approached King Features, the owner of Flash Gordon's rights, to acquire about making his own film in the early 70s. He was quickly gutted when he was denied due to lack of funds and due to the great Frederick Bellini, a lifelong Gordon fan, who was contemplating making his own beloved hero into a film. Lucas decided to just make his own version, which would spawn the greatest media franchise at all time, debatably.
Speaker 1:At this point I'd like to take a little side journey, a little detour, if you will, and provide a brief expose on the immense and numerous stolen I mean homage elements that Lucas used from his beloved icon. So even from the opening beginning, the iconic title crawl with its tech vanishing to a point on the horizon and even ending in its quixotic four point ellipses. This is the exact same style as the opening text of each chapter. Flash Gordon conquers the universe. Then we get episode four as your beginning, which is a strong and dead on nod to the serial nature that Lucas was eeping from the Flash Gordon features. Then you have the old fashioned wipes, quickly moving between action scenes, again something that was done all the time with the old Flash Gordon serials.
Speaker 3:Well, you know those wipes, they used those again. They carry that over in Indiana Jones too, kind of like herring home the whole serial nature of both of those franchises right, oh, completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, it was an easy technique to get from one point in the script to another within those serials without any connective material. You really didn't see it that much up until Lucas did it.
Speaker 3:It was considered hacky because when those were considered innovative, because there were new techniques of transition, not just fading from one to another and they would use them in things like pop culture, serials and stuff like that so it was considered low brow by Haya Art filmmakers so it was kind of a no-no in film schools. Never use these things because it's like the comic sands of transitions, exactly, yeah, but it does feel easy effective.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but they were kind of like, if you're not used to it, they are jarring. If you remember growing up with those like the Republic serials and all that, then it's just kind of like a warm blanket, you know, and you don't think twice about it. But isn't that weird. Now that we see, if we ever see anybody doing that again, we're like oh, it's the Star Wars wipe, not the Flash Gordon wipe, not the Buck Rogers wipe, but now it's the Star Wars.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what's all it was new again Star Wars, I mean firmly supplanted Flash Gordon every way shape and form. So it took all of those things and made them their own, that's true, that's true, and maybe for the better.
Speaker 3:But maybe not, because it still doesn't use any of the actual tropes of Flash Gordon other than, like I mean some of the superficial ones, but like the actual, like the character archetype isn't the same at all. I mean, and you know, you know, I've talked about that before it's not. Oh, he's not, he's a different type of, he's a different trope, but in the same setting.
Speaker 1:He is, but he's also. I mean, they take Flash Gordon. They kind of split him into parts, and part his loop and part his hand, and that's fair, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:His weird fetish side is chewy. That's your Harry Oly fans right there.
Speaker 1:Give right into that top. So the original screenplay name of Star Wars. It would be an apt Flash Gordon title any day. The adventures of Star Killer. In fact, early draft of Star Wars cover or panel Raymond's comic strip, an image of Flash and Ming swords drawn, an almost identical scene to Obi-Wan's final duel with Darth Vader. Right away we can get into some of the elements of the actual plot. Infiltrating the Emperor's fortress by two heroes disguised in soldiers uniforms is drawn directly from Flash Gordon coffers. The universe, with Luke and Anne filling the roles of Flash and Prince Baron respectively. The Emperor's deadly hostile planet, the Death Star, just like the Mongo, a sometimes scanty clad Burnett's princess whom the hero defends and is related to, it's his land. Princess Aro yes, anne, anne, just really a big, strong, hairy animal like ally in Chewbacca, that's Prince Thun of the Lionmen, whom I despise.
Speaker 3:You do have that weird thing about Lionmen. I hate them. Did Lionmen kill your parents, mr?
Speaker 1:Lionman asked me to play the secret Lionman closet game and I don't feel comfortable with it.
Speaker 3:But it was only seven minutes, it's fine.
Speaker 1:That was seven minutes of hell Cure, hairy hell. Speaking of Lionmen, the Flash Gordon book, the Lionmen of Mongo, includes a strangely see-through like five foot tall metal man of dusky copper color who is a trained servant and speaks polite phrases. He also fights a fearsome monster found on the ground and they fight in an arena. There's Gokko, or Orangapoid, just like the Rhondkor from Return of the Jedi. Oh, okay, yeah. There's a city in the sky ruled by someone who originally works with the villains but then later joins the heroes Lando of Bespin, or Cloud City, as many might say, and Vault Anne of Sky City. There's, of course, the ray guns and the dog fighting spaceships. Those are all retained elements from the universal Flash Gordon serials and from other things. So Princess Leia went in her scantily clad wore a Princess of Mars outfit, but she's more well known for the buns on the side of her hair, right, well, that's taken directly from Queen Freya. You wore off.
Speaker 3:No, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I've ever seen that, but really, for Lucas, as we've talked about before, he was pulling things from everything there was, from Samurai films, which I don't know if you know this, but they're called Jedi Kiki, believe it or not, I did not know that no.
Speaker 1:You know, you have the hidden fortress Tsu-Jimbo, dur-su-azala, you have Campbell's hero, thousand Faces, tolkien, john Carter of Mars, which actually had bontas and flying sips, which were bad things, along with Jet X and Jadara's. Oh. So we love taking from Leonie, john Ford, casablanca, lawrence of Arabia, Metropolis, jodorowsky's Dune. Yeah well, I mean, a lot of that was technical as well, but I mean just about every sci-fi franchise in the 80s took from Jodorowsky's Dune.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they just dissected that Bible thing that they created for the movie, and then you had brilliance there.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, yeah, you just. I mean, if there's great things there, take it. If nobody's using it, which I understand, this is an attack on Lucas. I mean, we can attack him for many things. Oh yeah, he happened to take all of these things that he loved. He put them all in a blender, mixed it up and he made magic, maybe only one time, but magic nonetheless.
Speaker 3:He took a gremlin. He put it in the blender. Some of the Star Wars came out of it.
Speaker 1:You see what I see. So after the monumental success of Star Wars, the Italian producing bigwig, dino De La Renta, saw jagged lightning bolt dollars in his eyes. This was his time and he was gonna make it. So when Dino was looking for someone to direct this soon-to-be blockbuster billion dollar idea, he went to an Italian friend of his but really an Italian giant, because Frederica Fellini was still in the mix to make a Flash Gordon film. But he's soon decline.
Speaker 1:So Laurentius then went on the search for a new director. He brought in Nicholas Rowe, who had done Walk About the man who Fell to Earth and Don't Look Now, and the entry to Dragon'scribe Michael Allen. They worked on it for a while and Nick's version was going to be a more comic book story for adults. In his version, ming was a god. Flash and Dale were an adam and an eve and Ming was an evil deity chasing him across the universe. Ming's ambition was to conquer the universe by destroying populated worlds, leaving no survivors except chosen females within who would populate their world and his image. Flash or Adam's task wasn't Dino's words to save a da world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's Adam Strange right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly what Dino was talking about. But, as things so often do, it took a turn for the worse. As cost rose and tensions over the potential project grew, dino became disillusioned with the fare. Rogan Allen left and Lorenzo Semple Jr would've worked on the Batman Show, along with writing Pupillon, the Parallax View, three Days of the Gondor and the 1976 King Kong. He was brought in to work on the screenplay. He had a new scribe brought in under the noses of both Rogan Allen and as they left he did a new director.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like the soul kind, so it was Superman, right. He just brought in Mario Puzo and got it over with oh, that's it. So Tully Savales plays Ming and we'll go into that story later. For people to know that reference, tully Savales was almost like Sleuthor in Mario Puzo's Superman.
Speaker 1:Who loves you, Superman? So with Rogan and Leone, a spaghetti nightmare.
Speaker 3:The one place where you were in when you wrote that line Were you eating dinner.
Speaker 1:Subtring enough, I just have Chef Boyardee right before then, so this is important. This means something. It's a meatball nightmare in there.
Speaker 3:God, and then we all went to Devil's Tower.
Speaker 1:So with those guys out, laurentus search for a new director. That's dumb. So with those guys out, I don't remember. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:That's what Leonie said too, on the way out the door. So he hired Joel Schumacher, and now Flash has Flashnitles. Richard Lester came on board and they brought on Richard Pryor as Vultan, and we all lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1:So Dino needed a new man behind the camera and he went for the more grounded and gritty Mike Hodges. Mike Hodges had just done Get Carter and recently left.
Speaker 3:Omen 2. Did he leave Omen 2 under suspicious circumstances, or he walked up, said or did he just finish it?
Speaker 1:Well, he almost finished, but then someone stepped on his balls and just ruined the whole thing.
Speaker 3:We're doing this for you.
Speaker 1:No, so apparently there was a problem on the set and he just left sometime during the production or post-production of Omen 2. So he's not credited as the director, but he was the director.
Speaker 3:It's different than like a writer or an actor or a producer leaving mid-production, like if you have a director lead mid-production, all Oz, zack, snyder, things can happen. Yep, flash Gordon can happen and they got it did. And let's never, ever equate Flash Gordon with the Snyder cut ever again. That was your fault, that wasn't mine. You're setting up the pins, I'm just knocking them down, come on.
Speaker 1:So, along with Hodges and some, dino brought on Oscar winning Danilo Donatum for production design accostumes, and he seemed to be given a free reign to make whatever he liked. The production quickly became a hodgepodge Full of brand ambitions, short time prams and language barriers. Unlike hodgepodge, indeed Hodgepodge Well, that's no. Hodges rolled with the punchers saying once I realized the film was way out of my control, I relaxed and I made it up as I went along.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I read that he said something about how freeing it was to not have to worry about the movie being good.
Speaker 1:Well, apparently he was approaching like a normal director with the script, but the script was kind of being written and rewritten all the time. Hodges would have an idea, he'd throw it out to Dino. Dino would be I'm not sure, and then he'd wait for Dino to come back and say I have this great idea, repeat Hodges' idea from the day before, and then they'd run with it. There's this Italian-English language barrier both with the producer and with production designer. So Dino already would just come up with things, with costumes and sets, and he'd give them to Hodges and Hodges like, well, I guess I gotta put this in the film and you would just make it happen. But it didn't matter where it was. So apparently Dino already made a huge tree for Arborea, this huge tree set. But there was no way to film this tree set, but he put it in the film nonetheless.
Speaker 3:That explains the football scene.
Speaker 1:Then yeah, there are certain moments that we both love and kind of hate about this film, that you totally see how they were just winging it on the set and they just, oh, let's go with this. I mean Dale cheering and all of that that was just made up on the set just by her, oh, wow, and there's like, well, let's just keep it going.
Speaker 3:Well, sometimes that will work. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry, go, go, go yeah.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no. I mean we can get to that. So this certainly gave a freedom to the whole enterprise which, to both credit and detriment, can be seen on the screen. Whether that works or not is debatable, but it is definitely an abnormal method for movie making.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, yeah, okay, unless you're making a Will Ferrell movie. Yeah, usually that doesn't work that way. But you know what actually? You know what it sounds like. It sounds like. It sounds like Hearts of Darkness. You know the oh yeah making of Apocalypse now where it's like, oh well, then Martin had another nervous breakdown and he's under, where I guess we better put that in there, film it, film it, keep rolling, keep rolling. 10 years over schedule and nearly hits his dollars over budget.
Speaker 1:So Dino had finally gotten his director and his writer out of time to get this cast in line. First up, hurt Russell, who was approached to be Flash Gordon. Oh yeah, but it said that Hurt Russell absolutely rules curtain down because Flash had no personality. Wow, yeah, true, I mean, look at the script, look what he does.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's true. Yeah, he's an inappropriate guy like Sam Jones, who's barely a person.
Speaker 1:Which we'll get to Next up on the shopping block was old Arnold Schwarzenegger. Considered for his athletic appeal, one might say, but he was quickly abandoned due to his unshakable accent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, an accent which he has to this day, though he's been an American citizen for decades.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's baked in baby Apparently. William Katt was also considered being appeared with Cary and Big Wednesday recently, but his fate dwelled in a different super form as he became the star of the greatest American hero and also house. Who's he on House?
Speaker 3:No, no, no. The movie House, oh yes.
Speaker 1:I was like I don't remember him in the Hugh Laurie Dr Drommel.
Speaker 3:No, no, it's a discovery show about renovating haunted houses. Yeah, is George Wentz still there?
Speaker 1:George, went is with us always. The hunky, all American and naive Sam Jones's cast previously is only featured in the Dudley Moore vehicle. 10 not directed by Fellini. No, so there's eight, eight and a half, nine, nine and three quarters 10. Yeah, I guess there's 3.14159.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's directed by Darren Aroski, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, too bad, nobody drilled a hole in their head in this one.
Speaker 3:No, it's a, it's Lestrada. The Fellini cut the Anthony Quinn. The drill is a hole in the middle of it. It's really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I called it. So Jones got a helping hand from, strange enough, dino's mother-in-law as she saw Miss Contestant on the dating game. That's how he got his name to Dino's ear, but he still had a 10 month long audition process, which I have no idea what they're doing for 10 months.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're doing it in somebody's ear, just do like a steady alpha five and start trying to be pretty easy right, sam Jones is the lone inhabitant. And Sam Jones is the only remaining indigenous life form, not quite domesticated, of course. Yeah, now this all checks out. You see, fred Rico Fellini exploded six months after they were left.
Speaker 1:Love it Well with Jones as Lash. Melody Anderson was also a newcomer and got the role of Dale Arden, but only three days before shooting, when the Canadian sports illustrated model Dale Haddon left the production at the last moment.
Speaker 3:I mean, do we know why she left, or so there are there's conflicting stories.
Speaker 1:I saw that she left because she had something to do or wasn't comfortable with the situation. I also read that you know just didn't like her anymore and decided to switch it up at the last moment. It's lost the sand of time like a three-door down saw. Yeah, did they do that? Super Kryptonite.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's one of the lyrics in there. Oh, all right, that's.
Speaker 1:That was the reference I was making. Well, that's sad, don't make that reference again. Nobody wants to hear that. No, that's fair, because they're garbage. So if there are two leads cast, it moved on to friends of Dino, with big hitters in the form of Max Von Sido being cast as Ming the Merciless and Broadway sensation Dupal. I am Dupal, although Dennis Hopper was also considered by the producers, and I think that pretty would have been pretty far out man.
Speaker 3:Hmm, hmm, yes, the velveteen touch of a dandy fob. You've crafted this tale.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, those are those space smokes. That's been a while I've been needing man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. I mean it worked out really well for Waterworld. So who doesn't like Dems Hopper? Probably his family and friends, I'm guessing. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Anyone's ever worked with him. A fun fact for Max Von Sido is that apparently his costume apparently weighs 70 pounds and he wasn't able to sit in the costume, so whenever they weren't filming he would just lay down on a board, which apparently a lot of the costumes they made were so unwieldy and weren't meant to be like truly lived in that other people, like all the Hawkmen, they all just had to lay on their stomach. Next up was old Brian Blessed. He was, in fact, an huge fan of the Flash Gordon series as a child and he landed his dream role as Vultan, which ultimately became his career defining role. He said that he was truly made for this role and he pointed to his utter resemblance to the Alex Raymond Vultan.
Speaker 3:Well, okay, but there's a little more to that, Is there? Reportedly, Brian Blessed went to Dino De Laurentiis in person and told him if you don't give me this part, I'm going to punch you in the face. And when Brian Blessed tells you something like that, you believe the man and then you give him the role. End of story.
Speaker 1:Do you know, if you don't give me this role, I'm going to punch you in the face. Well, I can't do a good message, but that same bombast which he brings to all facets of his life, that came to the production of the film as well. Because apparently every time that they would be shooting guns on the set all the space lasers, ray guns, the Jewish space lasers you get making pew, pew noises which would force Ahadjah's just yell cut and start over. I love it though.
Speaker 3:Like, oh yeah, I mean that's just pure joy, right. I mean, that's just a man who's living his best life right there.
Speaker 1:And he was loving it. He said I couldn't f***ing live without making the noises.
Speaker 3:What a great line that's so good. You cannot not love Brian Blessed. God bless, brian Blessed.
Speaker 1:And I think that's probably emblematic of a lot of what was going on with this film. You know kind of the chaos, the unusual form it was taking, but some of that utter joy kind of bleeds out into those scenes of these characters. The action of the wildness makes it fun and you feel it.
Speaker 3:It does. I think that's one of the best parts about that movie, I think, one of the things that makes it so endearing. Like, yeah, flash is kind of dead weight in general, but like Maximo Cido is just, he's just chewing up the scenery in like a great way, like a really great not in the same way Brian Blessed is, but like Brian Blessed is taking every scene and pouring milk over it and shoveling it into his face in every moment that he's on screen.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh yeah, I mean, each one of those lines is deep fat, fried, covered in honey. It's so good.
Speaker 3:I mean, even Timothy Dalton seems to be having a blast the entire time. He's doing it and he's pretty stoic for the most part. So, yeah, Maximo Cido is just like come alive. That was the greatest role he ever played and he was Jesus.
Speaker 1:Mirroring a bit of the chaos. Behind the scenes came the falling out between Sam Jones and Dino De La Renta. They had filmed most of things.
Speaker 3:Epic. It's like the breakup of the Beatles, Uh okay, so Dino's Ringo. It's a weird, bizarre world where Ringo matters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's kind of. You know he's behind the scenes, the brains of it all. You know Most of the principle of photography was already done, but Jones never returned to set. Now it varies on who you ask of how much of the dialogue of Flash Gordon was redub by a still unknown actor, with Haja saying oh, only a few lines and Sam Jones saying almost the entirety of the film. But it led to bigger problems later on, as without Sam there was really hard to have much of a press campaign, which was a major blow for American promotion. I mean, really, can you imagine any other major film production like that, where the star just walks away and won't talk about the film? I mean, imagine Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford just doesn't want everything to do with it.
Speaker 3:The Imaginarium of Dr Prenas.
Speaker 1:Dead silence crickets.
Speaker 3:But I mean at the same time how much of it did they have to do? I?
Speaker 1:don't know. I mean maybe with the wackiness behind the camera, with you know what they were doing on set and just all coming off the cuff. And maybe there was an Italian sound man, you know, not quite capturing everything.
Speaker 3:I don't really know. Maybe there was an Italian sound man, Morfioso hey we don't talk about Morfioso right here.
Speaker 1:You want to go meet the sound man? I'm in here, I'll meet. I'll meet the Italian sound man.
Speaker 3:I mean there is a distinct possibility that the guy that they because I know the guy that did the voiceover stuff yeah, he's always been unnamed and uncredited, but they do say in a lot of behind the scenes stuff that he was very famous, like he did a lot of voiceover stuff. So it's obviously either Tom Kenny from Mr Show and SpongeBob or there's Mark Hamill, which would wow, that'd be ironic, right, there's a distinct possibility that the guy that they had to use to do the ADR just didn't sound like Sam Jones and so they had to go back and just do everything so at least the voice sounded the same. You know what I mean? That's the only thing I could think of. Yeah, I mean, because how else would that really work? I mean because if you got all the principal photography, no other movie ever has to just unless it is a f***ing surgery, Leonie nobody else has to go in and dub over all the voices.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of like a spaghetti space opera.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know there are some. I'll read you some of the titles of some of the more popular spaghetti sci-fi from the 60s and 70s. Okay, that's good. What do you got? We've got Kaltiki the immortal monster. Yeah, everybody loves Kaltiki.
Speaker 1:There's a 2020 Texas Gladiators. Oh really.
Speaker 3:Planet of the Vampires. I've seen that one. It's bizarre, it's bizarre. You've seen that one. Right, I've seen that one Wild, wild planet the Snow Devils. Oh, that sounds promising War of the Planet.
Speaker 1:Eyes behind the stars. That sounds interesting.
Speaker 3:Whoa, that's actually a great title. It is it's War of the Planet, and then there's War between the planets, both in the same year from the same director.
Speaker 1:Oh, 77. Hell of a year.
Speaker 3:This was funny, this was 66 and it was so. Planet War Between the Planets was released under the title Planet on the Prowl in Italy. Oh, okay, no, this is interesting, so, okay, so, listen to this. So this was apparently like a multiverse. They were trying to do an MCU type thing, a Planetary MCU. Yes, it called the Gamma One series and it was by director Anthony Margaretti. So the first one in the series is released as the Diaphanoids came from Mars, and then the one that was released later that year in the same series by Margaretti, was called War Between the Planets, released as Planet on the Prowl, the premise of which is a rogue planet is on an imminent collision course with Earth and Earth is rocked by a series of cataclysmic gravitational events and panic scientists and astronauts fly to the planet to try and save humanity. Full circle, full circle, wow.
Speaker 1:This is really a snake eating its own tail in Italy, isn't it? So Flash had a lot of problems, both in the making and in the promoting of the film, but it's one thing that was not a problem and it's never been a problem. When you think of Flash Gordon, what's the number one thing you think about? Queen, queen, queen, I'm gonna say queen. Or, in Adino De La Regis' words, who are the queens?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I guess you did say that, my old man.
Speaker 1:Eh, who are the queens? But of up the Mike Hodges, it would have been Pink Floyd who would have been doing the soundtrack. Hmm, yes, but thankfully, as he later came to say, he came to his senses and the queen was by far the best choice and went on to become the iconic.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm. Right, it is iconic. And I think what most people identify when they think that most people don't know who Flash Gordon is until they're reminded or think of the main Flash theme by Queen. You know, like a lot of the lay, people don't.
Speaker 1:It's so catchy and singable. Yeah. It evokes I don't know something. There's such a sense of fun that Queen brings to everything but still being operatic.
Speaker 3:But it's not. And but it's not a pop song. I mean, the Flash Gordon theme's not a pop song. No, it's really not, but for some reason it had a weird crossover.
Speaker 1:It's something that I don't think many other bands could have even brought to the table.
Speaker 3:No, and we have even a Highlander soundtrack as a whole and other, you know, but that's a horse of a different color, we'll get to later.
Speaker 1:So the film was done. It was released on December 5th 1980 to mostly positive reviews. It ended up making $27 million in North America, which unfortunately was a bit of a disappointment. That, and the lack of Sam Jones, is probably what kept it from getting the sequels it was planned to make. I think Sam Jones said he had signed on for a seven-picture deal, but obviously it never came to be. What is?
Speaker 3:this thing, yeah, is this. Chronicles of.
Speaker 1:Nornie Lord True serials probably. I'm sure Dino had an idea for one a year. Just constant, pump them out. Each one was 20 minutes long. Flash Gordon won a single week at the American Box Office. It has the place and then relinquished back the top spot to Raging Bull at the Box Office.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, that's not exactly a blockbuster, no, no, but at least it was something classic. The film did, yeah, but that's more like an indie film. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah but it was still above. I don't know. I wasn't really cognizant at the time. So no, I wasn't alive at all at the time, so I definitely wasn't cognizant Nelson's alive. So the film did do poorly in America but I think, probably helping being helped by Queen and Dino de Laurentiis, it did pretty well in Europe. It even outgrossed Raiders of the Lost Ark for that year in the United Kingdom. All right, wow, I just wanted just a little effectoid that Flash Gordon is the most popular film with the Queen and is a consistently shown with her grandchildren over the whole of this. Queen of England, yeah, queen Elizabeth II, love.
Speaker 3:That's the most amazing fact I've ever heard. I did not know that. What that's crazy. That's amazing. I know I had. No, I had never heard that. That is amazing. I totally would have hang out with her now. That's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we still kind of want to punch her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole colonialism thing, but anyway keep going.
Speaker 1:The film suffered from the charge of camp and being too humorous by fans of the strip and sci-fi fans in general, who have liked a more realistic and dramatic approach. There was that sense that it needed to be comical and tongue-in-cheek. The both simple thought kind of got out of control. Dino seemed to want comical but also didn't realize why the crew would be laughing at the rushes each day at the end of filming. So in the end this is a weirdly talented crew with widely disparate goals and a lack of communication and a free willingness on set. That, I think, created a flawed but forever likable camp vision.
Speaker 1:The hectic chaos, I think, both led to its downfall but also its resurgence, for that wild galactic spirit, mixed with the ridiculous trope-ness and surrounded by the talented designers and actors, delivered something special to be loved. Or its flaws as much for its flourishes. It's fitting and says a lot that Flash is jumping. Yeah, to close out, the film was, like everything else on it, out of the blue and improvised, but an enduring ideal of what Flash Gordon is and forever will be.
Speaker 3:And thank you everyone for coming to Jake's TED Talk. But that's the reason we chose that name for our podcast because it's not Star Wars, it's not Star Trek.
Speaker 1:I think it was something that you and I bonded over. You could say dispatch Ajax, you know crowd of people, and it wasn't. You know, made a force with you. It's that little thing, that little wink, and nudge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's those three guys in the back. There's those three guys in the back who are like it is, yeah, you get it, and that's what geek culture really is. Yeah, and that's what geek culture really is, if you break it down, the purest form of geek culture. Those three guys in the back who knew exactly what you're talking about. That's us, even though there's only two of us. The third guy died.
Speaker 1:I don't know where you're going. I don't know.