Flash Gordon - Blu-Ray Review

At the end of the seventies Science Fiction was hot property in Hollywood following commercial successes such as ‘Star Wars’, ‘Alien’ and ‘Superman: The Movie’. Italian uber-producer Dino De Laurentiis, responsible for some of Hollywood’s most expensive flops and still recovering from the critical and commercial disaster of his 1976 remake of King Kong was looking for a hit. He had owned the rights to Alex Raymond and Don Moore’s comic book creation ‘Flash Gordon’ for many years and decided now was the time to bring the character to the big screen.

‘Flash Gordon’ had originally appeared in a number of 1930’s Saturday morning serials starring former Olympic medallist Buster Crabbe in the title role. Californian film geek George Lucas was a fan and when looking for an idea for a screenplay to follow up ‘American Graffiti’ he intended to write and direct ‘Flash Gordon’. On discovering that De Laurentiis owned the rights and would not give them up, Lucas decided to write his own original screenplay influenced by the cliffhanging serials of the thirties. The result was ‘The Adventures of Luke Starkiller’, later renamed ‘Star Wars’ and spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise.

In 1979, De Laurentiis set to work developing ‘Flash Gordon’ as big budget sci-fi epic to rival Lucas’ effort. Hiring Lorenzo Semple Jr. to write the screenplay, a screen writer on the popular ‘Batman’ TV series starring Adam West during the sixties thus ensuring the project would be instantly injected with high camp. With a screenplay in place, De Laurentiis then needed a director to bring the vision to life. Originally pursuing fellow Italian Federico Fellini to fill the role the producer worked his way through a massive list of directors including Nicholas Roeg to find someone willing to take on the project. Eventually, his eighth choice, Mike Hodges, whose CV included the classic Brit gangster flick ‘Get Carter’, was hired for the job.

Together Hodges and De Laurentiis assembled an eclectic cast of big international names including Max Von Sydow, Topol, Brian Blessed, Peter Wyngarde and Timothy Dalton. For the title role they chose an unknown, Sam J Jones beating off competition from Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger who was to be cast in his own heroic adventure serial a few years later, ‘Conan the Barbarian’ also produced by De Laurentiis.

Despite the talent involved the film failed to make an impression either critically and commercially. However with the introduction of home video during the early eighties the film found a wider audience and with the continued popularity of the rock band Queen, who scored the film, ‘Flash Gordon’ began to benefit from a cult following. With numerous releases on video, DVD and now this month it’s debut in HD on Blu-ray, the film seems to continue to gain adoration from new and existing fans.

For those of you who have not seen it the film’s basic plot sees Flash, an American football star and Dale Arden a journalist skyjacked aboard Dr Zarkov’s spaceship following a series of freak weather conditions on Earth. Zarkov traces the source of the weather disruption to the planet of Mongo where Ming the Merciless is planning to destroy Earth. Flash attempts to bring together opposing forces, the tree people led by Prince Barin and Prince Vultan with his army of hawk-men to help overthrow Ming and return Mongo to the people and save Earth in the process.

If you ask people what they remember most about the film they will usually mention one of three things. The music, in particular the theme song by Queen, Brian Blessed’s over the top but brilliant performance as hawk-man Prince Vultan and his oft imitated line “Gordon’s alive”, and finally ex-Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan failing to beat a deadly tree in a variation of Russian roulette involving putting his hand into various holes in a tree trunk knowing that there is a poisonous creature inside one of the holes.

The sets and costumes deserve special mention, eschewing the cold, used look of many science fiction films of the time. Oscar winning designer and Fellini collaborator Danilo Donati’s vision for the film is one of bright, elaborate sets full of vibrant colour and grand art deco design. Costumes are camp and outrageous in keeping with the overall style and range from the sublime to the ridiculous from Flash’s iconic t-shirt to S&M leathers and PVC.

The film is highly enjoyable and despite some dodgy special effects it has not dated too badly. ‘Flash Gordon’ does not take itself too seriously and I think that is one of the reasons it has remained so popular. Everyone involved seems to be having a great time, particularly the actors best known for more serious roles. Here they are able to lose themselves in their characters, hamming it up without parody or losing that sense of fun. The film is ridiculous but it never pretends to be anything else.

Quality

The film has never looked so good, the 1080p transfer handles the colours well and the image has been really cleaned up compared to previous DVD releases which were already pretty good. The only downside to such a crisp, clear picture is that it makes some of the poorer special effects look even worse. The DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack is very good and Queen’s score sounds excellent, it is just a shame there is no option to watch the movie with an isolated score.

Extras

This is where this 30^th Anniversary release really lets itself down with recycled extras from previous DVD releases and a wealth of material missing. Considering the amount of space on a Blu-ray disc this should be the definitive edition but unfortunately there is nothing here to recommend that owners of the DVD should make the upgrade.

There is a woefully short 2 minute introduction from Mike Hodges and also an informative feature length commentary with the director but that is all. The Brian Blessed commentary track from the 25^th Anniversary DVD is missing as is the 30 minute interview with Mike Hodges from that release. Also there are no episodes from the original Buster Crabbe series available as in previous editions. An Anniversary edition should have retrospective documentaries, vintage featurettes, deleted scenes, a documentary tracing the origins of the character from comic book to big screen, Queen music videos, the list of possibilities for a film of this nature is endless.

The Blu-ray comes in a limited edition 2 disc steel book case and includes the original Queen soundtrack on CD. I understand that the rights to the film have changed hands a number of times and has probably had some impact on the extras available to certain film companies but this is one of the laziest releases I have seen for a Blu-ray. This camp cult classic deserves a better release but unfortunately we may now have to wait for the 35^th Anniversary to get it.

(This review originally appeared in slightly different form on the 'Obsessed With Film' website, I am posting it again here in case you missed it!)

Here is the link if you want to see the original:

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/reviews/blu-ray-review-flash-gordon.php