Wading in the Velvet Sea

The movie opens with a shot in ‘space’, and Earth being lifted up in a tiny string before us as cheesy graphics descend in from all four corners, signifying some sort of Mongo targeting system (Mongo being the planet the bad guys are from). Ming the Merciless, our arch-villain, has been presented Earth as the next victim of his cruelty. His cruelty takes it forms through…bad weather. Seriously. He has a panel before him, activating by a red ring, with stuff like ‘Earthquake’, ‘Tornado, and the absolute best weather system, ‘Hot Hail’. Now, where I come from, hail is ice. So ‘hot ice’ is water, right? So basically he’s gonna make it rain. Couple this control board, the cheesy graphics, and CNN-footage of bad storms and you have a grabber of an intro. Ming laughs, and we go into the open credits.

Dear God. Where to begin? The soundtrack is provided by Queen. Yes, THAT Queen. To listen to it is to hear a band jumping the shark before your every ears. Over Queen-esque power chords, we heard Freddie Mercury screaming, ‘Flash! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! He saved everyone of us!’ while cutouts of the old comic strip pass by us. We learn, among other things, that Flash ‘...is just a man, with a man’s courage.’ Duly noted. And to be clear on who ‘every one of us’ is, they clarify that it’s ‘every woman, every man, every child…ooooooooh FLASH!’ Animals were apparently on their own in Flash’s world-saving plans.

(The Commander and I got tons of mileage out of this alone. At any time, one of us could have the following exchange:

‘Dude, you realize that Flash saved everyone of us.’
‘That’s amazing. Couldn’t have a few people slipped through his fingers?’
‘Nope, EVERY ONE of us. Flash rules.’

High comedy. Only topped by:

‘Dude, I think I’m like a bird!’
‘Really?’
‘Yea!’
‘Do you know where your home is?’
‘Nope!’
‘What about your soul?’
‘Nary a clue!’
‘Dude, you indeed possess avian qualities!’
‘I know!’

Ok, well, it’s funny to us. Moving on’)

Now, we hit the credits. You’d think this would have a bunch of no names. And given that Flash is played by ‘Sam J. Jones’, you’d think you were right. (This guy’s been in 50 things since, according to the Internet Movie Database. I’ll be damned if I have ever heard of ANY of them.) But no, this movie has Max Van Sydow (Ming), Topol (Dr. Hans Zarkov), Timothy Dalton (Prince Barin), and Brian Blessed (Prince Vultan). I can’t even make up a boy band’s worth of random actors like that. Simply stunning. You just have to believe it was all a typo.

Cut to the movie proper. We have Flash, sitting in a 1974 Pinto station wagon with cardboard doors. He’s actually a wearing a shirt that has his name in a logo. We learn he’s a quarterback for the New York Jets. Huh? There’s acceptable adaptation from source materials and there’s just being freakin’ lame. The movie unfailingly chooses the latter whenever the opportunity presents itself.

We get our first shot of hot hail, which looks like charcoal. It lands with sound effects derived from the Missile Command video game, lands, and, well, nothing. Flash goes back to reading his paper, completely unaware. (A theme which gets developed as the movie continues.)

For reason they never explain, they stick Flash and his love interest, Dale Arden, in a small plane going…well, we don’t know, because incredibly bad effects swallow up the ship, steal the pilots, and leave Flash to crash land it into Topol’s lab. But not before Flash makes #1 of about 18 really bad moves on Dale. This guy is as smooth as a rocky cliff adorned with broken glass. He makes the Freaker seem Santana-, seven inches from the midday sun-smooth.

Oh, Topol. You were so good in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. Apparently the ‘Fiddler’ royalty checks dried up, cuz there’s no other way to explain what he’s doing in this movie. He overacts so much that you can actually see the scenery backing off of him, lest it get eaten. You know how the first line of a character pretty much sets the tone? In Topol’s case, it’s ‘Check the angular vector of the moon!’ Turns out that Ming has dislodged the moon’s orbit via his hot hail attack and….oh who cares. Long story short, he’s a semi-insane scientist, but still manages to convince Flash and Dale that no, that’s not a rocket ship in the middle of his lab, it’s a telephone booth. (Remember what I said about Flash constantly stepping in it? I wasn’t kidding.) We see Topol and Sam J. fight inside the ship, which is…well, let’s just say there won’t be a Zarkhov/Gordon main event at Wrestelmania anytime soon.) Flash, in what is another motif, does something incredibly dumb during a fight and slams Topol’s head into the ‘Go’ button, and whoosh, they’re off into space. The intense pressure of being in such a crappy movie makes them all pass out within 4 seconds.

Our on-board flight entertainment consists of a space-age Queen cover band that plays porno music. Dale, as is her wont in this movie, gets really horny. Seriously. The ship is bathed in red light in the middle of deep space, and all we ever see is her licking her lips and idly touching herself. Flash, even in a space-induced coma, is copping a feel. Our hero, ladies and gents! They enter the land of Mongo via a Yes album cover. Once the land, Flash takes his hand off Dale’s chest and manages to piss off the royal guard in under 8 seconds. Nice work, Flash. All of them now captured they’re led to Ming’s palace.

Enter Ming’s Palace, which looks like what would happen if Baz Luhrmann designed the Death Star. (The direct ripoffs are far too many to enumerate; trust me, it’s astounding that this movie was even allowed to come out. I guess Lucas figured he couldn’t sue since he incorrectly assumed the movie was a satire.) It’s a bright red hall with about 400 different outfits on the people, and gold jewelry everywhere. Feels like an intergalactic prize fight’s about to happen. Ming’s daughter leads a midget by a leash, calling him ‘Fellini’. I can’t make this stuff up people.

We get our first shot of Brian Blessed, who leads a race of flying Viking people, it seems. I can’t imagine the jokes he musta gotten back at the Royal Shakespeare Company after they saw this. (‘Hey Viking Boy, you above a little ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ rehearsal today, you blank-verse impaired miscreant! Yo' momma performed 'A Doll's House' and LIKED it!’ OK, yes, the RSC needs to work on the vehemence of it’s insults.)

Soon after his comes in Robin Hood, I mean, Timothy Dalton. Green cloak, greenish outfit, a strap for his bow and arrow…just amazing. And he STILL was given the chance to almost destroy the James Bond series. Who does he have naked pictures of? (Someday they’re gonna debate on ‘The McLaughlin Group’ about whether this or ‘The Beautician and the Beast’ was the worst career move he ever made. Mark my words.)

Klytus, Ming’s right hand man, breaks up a Vultan/Barin whupass in the making. Simply put, they found a Darth Vader mask, painted it gold, threw a hood over it, and called it ‘Klytus’. My God. At least TRY and hide what you’re ripping off. Klytus brings Flash et al. into the forefront, and we have one of the many heroic exchanges of dialogue in this movie:

Klytus: Who are you?
Flash: Flash Gordon, Quarterback, New York Jets.

Pulitzer material. Regardless of the fact that chances are that Kyltus doesn’t have the Direct TV Sunday Game Day package, you could at least, I dunno, try and pump yourself up a bit when facing imminent annihilation and the hands of 400 gold people.

Ming, sensing he has to out-smarm Flash, asks to inspect Dale. Dale ain’t having none of Sydow’s macking. So Ming takes the weather ring, which conveniently operates as Spanish fly, points it at Dale, and suddenly Dale feels like she’s back in the spaceship. An interesting thing about Dale is that when she gets horny, but is not in a spacepod, she does performance art. Some sort of arm swaying thing that maybe represents the suffering of the Bosnian peoples. I dunno. But Ming and Lytus are lapping this up, prompting one of the best exchanges in the movie:

Ming: Have you ever seen such….response?
Klytus: No, truly. She even rivals your daughter.

Which means Ming uses the Ring of Horniness on his daughter. Can we have a collective ‘EWWWWWWWW’ here? Testify!

Mind releases her, and Dale, snapping too, seeks solace in the arms of our intrepid hero.

Dale: What happened to me?
Flash: I dunno, but it was pretty spectacular.

A class act, Flash is.

Flash then has his first ‘hero’ scene, where he gets to layeth the smacketh down on some soldiers. He of course gets completely schmucked for the first minute, until Topol, because the script told him to, throws a porcelain egg at Flash, who pretends it’s a football and starts to tackle the soldiers. Dales becomes a cheerleader on the sidelines (‘Go Flash Go!’ she cries, doing more freakish arm movements as though she's representing moonbeams). We get more crappy Queen music, which is so bad it almost makes one long for ‘Radio GaGa.’ Almost. The fight ends when Topol chucks an egg directly into Flash’s temple. The soldier’s don’t do anything, Ming stands there like a chump, but Topol takes him out. Uh, OK. (I think Topolo was getting back for the headbutt into the ‘Go’ button from before.

God, there’s so much to get into with this movie, like Flash’s execution and subsequent revival by Ming’s daughter (played by an Italian porn star named Ornella Muti), to some of the insanely, unintentionally funny dialogue (‘Flash, I love you! But we only have 13 hours to save the Earth!’). If you’re amusingly horrified by the description so far, by all means check it out, even you can even find it. But please, make a night out of it. A drinking game would be highly recommended it. Everyone can simply pick a character, and every time they do something that causes peals of laughter to erupt, drink. But please only pick one character, that’s liver damage enough. And no one can pick dear ol’ Sam J. Jones. I can’t be responsible for someone’s death.