I did it for twelve consecutive nights. Only while my wife was away, of course.
Don’t worry, this blog hasn’t been rated for even brief nudity, so I’m referring to the fact that for my birthday recently, my brother bought me the complete 12 episode Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe on DVD.
I’ll confess, I approached it with a little trepidation. A few years back, in a similar ‘nostalgic birthday present’ scenario, I rewatched ITV’s Dick Turpin from the 1970s. The theme music and title sequence were as good as I remembered – but the programmes themselves, other than Richard O’Sullivan’s superlative leading man performance, were rather disappointing. Dull, thin, repetitive.
Maybe that lowered my expectations this time round; or maybe I recalled that the Flash Gordon serials were already old when I’d first watched them as a kid. This final Flash story is generally regarded as the poorest of the three, and to be honest it made the least impression on me back in the day. But, just as I’d gladly watch Return of the Jedi even though I know it’s not a patch on the other two, so I enjoyed (re)watching Flash now.
Of course, you’ve got to take it on its own terms. As a child I probably watched wide-eyed from the edge of my seat, hanging off every word like it was some kind of gospel truth. As an adult, the response is often wry amusement rather than white-knuckle excitement. Professor Zarkov’s curious accent, which to my ear at least sounds rather more Irish than Hungarian, for example; or the recasting of Princess Aura from the arresting beauty of the first serial, to some kind of shrill, permed, sub-Lucille Ball type figure in this one.
Undeniably, though, there are some striking moments in it too, probably hugely impressive to the original Saturday morning audience of 1940. The weird movement of the walking bombs in parts three and four is clearly achieved by undercranking the camera, but it makes for an eerie effect nevertheless. And the language of the rock people, despite O’Zarkov’s claim that it is similar to an ancient Gobi dialect, is simply the sound played backwards – at times you can spot where whole scenes have been played backwards to achieve the effect, leading to peculiarities in the actors’ movements. At least it goes to show that somebody, the director maybe, was determined to experiment, even on a lowly-regarded, ‘knock it out quickly for the kiddies’, film like this.
Still, it’s a product of its time isn’t it. The treatment of the female lead is the most obvious sign of this. Nominally, Dale Arden is one of the three heroes but in reality, she gets little to do except say, “Flash!” a lot, and get herself captured. Her highlight is probably getting to change costumes around about episode six, into a female Robin Hood type outfit which, dare I say, she clearly rather fancies herself in.
But then, in context, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe was made nearly thirty years before the first moon landing, when Gone With The Wind had only just been released. Looked at another way, in 1940 America was apparently happy telling this sort of tale, of brave, square-jawed heroes fighting a seemingly unstoppable tyrant hell-bent on absolute domination, while Europe was… Well, you can see where that’s going can’t you.
This was the last of the Flash serials, for whatever reason. Perhaps it was considered just as effective, and considerably cheaper, to reshow the old serials instead of making new ones, meaning of course that they, and he, was prevented from falling into cinematic obscurity. TV clearly snapped them up, so it’s no great surprise that more than thirty years after the last serial was made George Lucas wanted to make a feature film. Alas, he was refused the rights so had to go off and make up some sci-fi show of his own instead (not sure how that panned out for him).
A film arrived in the end, of course – Flash, in 1980. Proving beyond a doubt what we TV-loving schoolboys of the late 1970s already knew.
Gordon was Alive.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 