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| Max
von Sydow, Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol, Ornella Muti,
Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Klytus (Peter Wyngarde): Most
effective, Your Majesty. Will you destroy this Earth?
Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow): Later. I like to play
with things a while before annihilation.
A football player and his friends
travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyrant,
Ming the Merciless, to save Earth.
 Every
movie trivia buff knows that George Lucas had originally wanted
to remake the fondly remembered Flash Gordon serials from
the 1930s into a feature-length motion picture. He ended up writing
the original screenplay for Star Wars after learning that
the notoriously eccentric Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis already
held the film rights and was planning a movie of his own. In the
wake of Lucas' success, De Laurentiis finally seized the opportunity
and brought his vision of the comic book hero to the screen in the
same year in which Lucas had produced the first Star Wars
sequel.
Audiences expecting a new thrill-packed epic were bewildered by
this intentionally campy would-be adventure. Even in hindsight,
it's hard to imagine who the intended audience of this eccentrically
designed, hugely expensive and spectacularly unsuccessful box office
flop could have been. With a buffoonish non-actor like football
star Sam J. Jones cast in the starring role, the film all but forfeited
any chance it had of appealing to the Star Wars crowd of
teenage boys that found a heroic role model in Luke Skywalker. The
effects, art direction and set design are so campy that it's impossible
to view the film as anything but artificial. And the lack of any
kind of actual narrative to propel the silly characters forward
sealed this turkey's fate. Instead of story, the film relies on
gaudy costumes, over-the-top set designs and an obsession with grossly
unsubtle sexual innuendo that seems inappropriate for a fantasy
film so clearly geared towards a young audience.
Rock band Queen's pompous, semi-satirical soundtrack has provided
the film with a core fan base, while the film also has much to offer
visually with its outrageous production design. Max von Sydow's
lip-smacking turn as Emperor Ming the Merciless thankfully provides
the otherwise fairly limp cast with a fair share of humorous moments,
and Ornella Muti has undeniable presence as the sultry Princess
Aura in het screen début. But otherwise, the film has the
most to offer film students familiar with the 1930s serial, the
characters of which are cleverly but faithfully recreated here. |
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A non-anamorphic bare-bones Region
1 DVD release from Image Entertainment has long since gone out of
print. The Region 2 release that is cucrently available in most
European countries has an anamorphic transfer and a 2.0 ProLogic
sound mix, and very few extras. The Region 2 release served as the
basis for this review.
The anamorphic widescreen image
is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 2.35:1. The film's lush
color pallette is intentionally oversaturated, with adequate presentation
of the over-the-top visuals in this transfer. The image is rather
soft, with pixelization and edge enhacement showing up on occasion.
All in all, the film has a dated look on this DVD, though it's a
passable presentation that easily surpasses the horrendous non-anamorphic
DVD that was previously available.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound mix has a nice wide spread across the
front soundstage, but lacks the punch and dynamics demanded by the
sound effects and the blustery Queen score. The music tends to sound
shrill, without enough bass response, and dialogues are often muffled
and lacking in fidelity.
Besides the theatrical trailer,
the disc includes an image gallery containing a random collection
of still images related to the film, including poster deisngs, stroyboards,
behind-the-scenes photographs and promotional stills. Without any
form of explanatory information however, these images only have
limited added value.Menu screens are static and simply
designed. The main menu screen is accompanied by a familiar sound
loop from the score.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
February 15, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on Flash
Gordon.
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to return to the front page.
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