Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon – I watched this movie when I was 11 years old, haven’t seen it since, although I know it’s become a cult classic (how many times have I heard the Queen song since?!?!). It was great fun to watch it now, in 2012, with my 10-year-old kid, and is just as exciting/campy as I remember it, with the whole wood-beast game of trust/hand grab, the battle on the spiked floating platform with the bullwhips (!!!), the gruesome deaths of Klytus and Kala, not to mention the impalement of Ming by the battleship’s spikey prow. I had forgotten, though, how Flash was nearly eaten by a gruesome swamp beast, only to be saved by Timothy Dalton, who then wants to kill him himself, but is stopped by the Hawkmen, who want to see both of them dead. Nutty. But it all makes sense in an innocent way – at least there’s nothing wrong with the screenplay and plot (unlike some Batman movies I’ve seen).
The Earth’s weather has gone amuck, it’s even being tormented by… hot hail? Mad Dr Zarkov takes Flash and Dale into space for no good reason other than one of them needs to keep his/her foot on the red button so that the g-force doesn’t destroy all of them. They pass out and drift into a Barbarella alien world of lava lamp skies (nice). Great dialogue from Dale: “I was trying to get my head together. By myself. Y’know? This isn’t my scene, Flash.” The scene of Flash football in Ming’s throne chamber is pretty funny. Lots of fighting, torture, near-death experiences. “Lying bitch”, Timothy Dalton says to Princess Aura. “Don’t you love me?” “I don’t trust you.” And she is a bitch, a spoiled hussy who has her own pleasure moon – there’s even a nice catfight between Aura and Dale, some time after Dale is given some sort of space quaaludes to help her stomach Ming’s love thrusts (“Many brave men died bringing this from the Galaxy of Pleasure”). Good fun from beginning to end, even if it is a bit long (funny that it seems long – many of the scenes already look like they were chopped too close to the skin by an over-zealous editor).
Basically, it’s the fun movie that Barbarella should have been, down to the evil queen and everything, but with a traditional macho hero defending his damsel in distress, etc.