FLASH GORDON: ROCKETSHIP, 1936, Holland Releasing, 72 min. Dir. Frederick Stephani. Condensed from the original four hours plus serial, ROCKETSHIP hurtles along like, well, a rocketship! Flash (Buster Crabbe), faithful female sidekick Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) and Dr. Zarkov (Frank Shannon) do battle with interplanetary tyrant Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) while Flash tries not to succumb to the wiles of smitten, seductive Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson), Ming’s daughter.
FLASH GORDON, 1980, Universal, 111 min. Dir. Mike Hodges (the original GET CARTER). Like the early 1930s serial, director Hodges’ FLASH is surprisingly faithful to Alex Raymond’s original comic strip, with just the right balance of action, tongue-in-cheek humor and mindblowing production design (here courtesy of wizard Danilo Donati), with a score by none other than Queen!