Quick as a Flash

The Flash Gordon serials were shown on afternoon TV when I was young. In the early 1950s a lot of our television time consisted of movies and cartoons from the 1930s. In Salt Lake City we watched Cactus Jim, a guitar-playing, singing cowboy who gave a whole package. We got a cowboy movie, a couple of ancient cartoons, and a chapter of Flash Gordon. Forget about the cowboys and Farmer Alfalfa cartoons...Flash Gordon was the attraction for me.



This 1936 serial starring Buster Crabbe is pure hokum. It's a throwback to an earlier era wrapped in a science fiction trapping. It's really just an old-time melodrama: "Marry me or pay the mortgage!" in fancy dress. Flash and Dale Arden go with Dr. Zarkov to the planet Mongo to stop it from crashing into Earth. The story was originally presented as a Sunday comic page by the great Alex Raymond, then made into a movie serial. Crabbe was great as Flash; he had that kind of blond, California surfer-look. Crabbe was an Olympic swimmer, an athlete. Flash Gordon was also an athlete, a polo player. Emperor Ming was just another version of the Yellow Peril, the racist view of Asian people, popular at the time. Why Ming looked Asian and no one else did is a mystery. Apparently nobody in that era asked why.

What comes across in watching a DVD of the original serial is something I didn't understand as a kid, and probably only subconsciously recognized when I saw the serial again as a junior high student: the blatant sexuality. Ming's daughter, Aura, lusts after Flash. Ming lusts after Dale. Flash wants Dale, but in a chaste way. Or at least that's the way he acts. Poor Dr. Zarkov doesn't get any chicks at all. He's kind of homely, and spends most of his time in his laboratory.

The plot is moved forward by sex. Dale is hypnotized by Ming so he can "marry" her. In this screen capture you wonder who has the hots for her more, Princess Aura or Emperor Ming.

Actresses Jean Rogers and Priscilla Lawson are posed in sexy costumes, racy for their day. With their bra tops, long hair and high heels they are a couple of hotties.

The special effects in Flash Gordon are par for the time. In some cases the special effects look cheesy. The Hawkmen's city in the sky is a painting on a backdrop with smoke blown across it; the space ships are models on wires. The science is also laughable. In one sequence slaves are shown stoking the "atom furnaces" with radium, which looks like a pile of rocks. It looks like the gang on a ship stoking coal into a boiler. Dr. Zarkov is one of those scientists of a former age. It's assumed because he's a "scientist" that he knows everything about "science." He's pressed into service by Ming, then by King Vultan of the Hawkmen. No one asks him what his scientific field is. Well, he created the rocket ship that brought the three of them to Mongo. I guess he's a rocket scientist!

In the first episode it's shown the Earth has a short time to exist, what with cataclysmic events happening because of the approaching planet Mongo. This idea was inspired by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer's novel, When Worlds Collide. Flash and Dale, strangers to each other, meet on a transcontinental plane. The plane is going to crash! The pilot rushes out and tells everyone they have a parachute and they'll need to use it! Passengers jump up, throw on their 'chutes and bail out! Of all of the things we're asked to believe as this plot--such as it is--rolls out, that was the one that caused my jaw to drop.

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Dale wonders if this soldier will share the secret to his sexy eye makeup.

Jean Rogers as a damsel in distress, and damn, what a damsel.

The magazine, Spacemen, is from the early 1960s. The photo of Dale and Flash looks like a publicity still. If I was Flash and had that babe on my arm...well, I'd be all over that sweet stuff. Considering the sexual theme to the serial and the bulge in Flash's trunks, I'd say within moments Dale will find out the true meaning of the caption, "his fantastic rocket."