Friday, April 13, 2012

Jason blasts off in the Starship Vortex and lands on FLASH GORDON

A few manhattans, and we were ready for blast-off. We actually started with an episode of the 1936 serial starring Buster Crabbe. In particular, episode 7: Shattering Doom. They're held captive by King Vultan and Flash is forced to work in the Atomic Furnaces, shoveling fuel in. But he escapes when he throws a shovel in and blows up the whole thing. Yeah, that made sense.

Anyway, on to the much more "impressive" 1980 version. I could watch it over and over again just for the Max Von Sydow as Ming. Having Brian Blessed as Vultan and Timothy Dalton as Barin is just a bonus. Oh, and princess Aura (Ornella Muti) is pretty hot. No offense to Melody Anderson as Dale Arden, but if I were Flash I'd have run off with Aura.

[Update: Oh yeah, and I forgot to point out earlier that in the opening scene Ming unleashes a series of "natural" disasters on the Earth. Even though he only that moment was told the inhabitants call it Earth, he still has a button that says "Earthquake." Shouldn't it just say "Quake" of "Planetquake?"]

Sadly, I didn't stick around for BARBARELLA. But I should be back next Thursday for STAR PILOT (1966) and maybe STAR ODYSSEY (1979). I know, it's also opening night for SFIFF, but I already saw the opening film so I'll probably skip it.

Total Running Time: 129 minutes
My Total Minutes: 277,422

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