Gordon's Alive!!!

THE FINAL FRONTIER - Part 1 - "Flash Gordon"

Flash Gordon is rather like Moulin Rouge or Batman Returns; you either love it or you hate it. I can see why it bombed in the U.S. of A back in 1980. The sets are gaudy, the performances large and pantomime-like, the effects ropey, the story worthy of a 4 year old's imagination and the music unusual, to say the least, for a science fiction adventure film.

But director Mike Hodges had a big set of balls on him and knew exactly what he was doing. All the things that people dislike about the remake of the 1930's serials are all the reason why it's a great movie. The whole affair is so huge, tacky and over the top it's like going to see to the theatre to see a drag queen with a really good singing voice; it knows damn well what it looks like so sit back and enjoy the spectacle baby!

The sets and costumes are bright, glitzy and in-your-face-trashy brilliance. The effects, which cleverly(?) homage the 1930's version by being both retro and poorly executed too...but it just adds to the texture of the piece as a whole. Queens score is utterly original, from the thumping main theme ("FLASH! dum dum dum dum dum dum...")to the crashing guitars of the action set pieces.

The casting is inspired, with virtually every main actor adding to the iconography of this adaptation. Dalton is suave and brutal ("Bitch!" / "Bastards!"), Topol is resourceful and spirited, Wyngarde is conniving and slippery, Von Sydow is graceful and cruel and Flash himself is the softly spoken, yet dull, All-American he has to be.
Of course the standout performance is that of Brian Blessed, with his Shakespearean whisper-shouts dominating every scene he's in ("Gordon's Alive!!!").

And finally the girls who were poster icons for me as a kid... The sultry, simmering sexuality of Ornella Muti and the perky, righteous spunk of Melody Anderson; still devastatingly radiant after all these years.

A great piece of entertainment. The story is so slight it might blow away in a slight wind, but it has so many classic scenes (bore worms, the tree stump creature, a gladiatorial disc fight, the go-Flash-go football fight, etc) that it stands proudly on it's own. I've said it before, but I'll say it again; critisism of a movie for having style over substance is no critisism at all. Because in cases like this, style IS substance.