Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All

I'm normally not a big fan of anything that Filmation did after Star Trek, but this movie just blew me away when I saw it one Saturday night when I was only 15. The stunningly good animation, the surprisingly high level of violence for its day (Adult Swim has much more nowadays), and great voice acting all made an impression on me. What was more I noticed that the artists were given much more leeway than is normal when it came to showing female flesh, especially that many of the female creatures wore little more than very narrow straps over their breasts. Princess Aura acted more sultry than ever, posing like a pinup model and reclining suggestively upon her ever-so-handy couch. About the only clunky spot in the movie came when Thun and Flash were about to turn in for the night and Thun spoke about his personal sexual desires. Well-intentioned upon the writers' part, but it just seemed more than a bit weird to me. It's too bad that Filmation buried this gem after showing it only once. However, my sources tell me that it was not the level of violence that concerned the company. It was all of the sexually suggestive costumes which, in the days before digital editing became possible, would have been impossible cut out of the scenes without eliminating the scenes altogether.

Filmation has gotten its ample share of criticism of their somewhat slap-dash animation, and not undeservedly (although the same can be said for pretty much every animation studio producing Saturday morning fare). Their animation did improve in the '70s as they, somewhat surprisingly, adopted rather expensive and intesively-detailed rotoscoping technology to their bag of tricks. This upgrade was evident, if overly overused, in their later offerings of Tarzan, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and so forth.

None of these come close to comparing to the masterpiece that is "Flash Gordon - The Greatest Adventure of All".

While the animation style is utterly familiar as being Filmation's, there is a subtle grace here that is not evident in even their better Saturday morning productions. There are actually entire passages where the lip movements match the dialog. What you have to understand is that Filmation was not known for this type of detail, so to the initiated, it's nothing short of breathtaking to behold.

The story is extremely faithful to the comics and mythos, while having some darker, more realistic elements added, another pleasant surprise.

While initially intended as a live action feature, costs mandated it be animated, and it's much better for it. NBC were so impressed that they shelved this movie in favour of ponying up more geld for a Saturday morning series (not going into that here), finally airing it in 1982, three years later.

This can be found on YouTube, as well as other places around the web, so it isn't difficult to locate, but it would be wonderful to have a proper, official blu-ray release.

This animation was my first contact with magical world of Flash Gordon. I had never before even heard of him, although there was some similarities with one Micky Mouse story. This film was made with love and it shows: the animation is absolutely fabulous.

I never saw this movie in its original network broadcast (NBC late night Sunday after the local news) and assumed that it was merely a compilation of the first 4 episodes of the TV series, "The New Adventures of Flash Gordon." In fact, "Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All" was an original movie separate from the TV series. This movie is the pilot episode made by Filmation to sell the TV series to the networks.

Although some of the footage from this pilot movie was recycled and reused in the TV series, the movie tells an original story that parallels some of the story elements from the TV series, but also has many scenes that never appeared in the series at all. As just one example, the TV series begins with the arrival on Mongo by Flash, Dale, and Zarkov. The movie begins earlier, with Flash still on Earth in Poland in 1939, as the Germans are bombing Warsaw. Flash later meets Dale Arden on a commercial airplane flight, and they both meet Zarkov after they bail out of their plane before its crash. Eventually, the three blast off in Zarkov's rocket immediately before a flaming comet destroys Zarkov's lab. (The first scene in the credits for the TV series included several seconds of this footage of their departure from Earth.) All of this is straight out of the original Alex Raymond comic strips, and the entire movie is faithful to the spirit and sense of wonder in the original 1930s and 1940s comic strips.

This movie is much more adult in tone than the Saturday morning TV series it inspired,which may explain why NBC effectively buried this movie by airing it late at night on Sunday. Although broadcast standards have changed since 1979, this movie would have been considered too violent to be aired on Saturday morning in the 1980s. This is unfortunate because this movie is so entertaining and well animated. The story is superb, and the animation is superior to most of the animation in the TV series. (The best animation in the TV series is the animation reused from this movie.) This is one of those rare cartoons (like Jonny Quest) that can be enjoyed equally by adults and children. It is a crime that this movie has never been released on home video (yet), since it seems never to be aired on TV. You may be able to find a bootleg copy on eBay if you are fortunate.

Flash Gordon began as a comic strip drawn by Alex Raymond. In the 1930s it was the inspiration for three much-loved movie serials starring Buster Crabbe, which George Lucas says were his inspiration for Star Wars. In the 1950s, there was a really bad live action TV version. In the 1970s, there was a camp live action film, most famous for its Queen soundtrack. "Frash Wawa, he saved every one of us..." Al Williamson drew some beautiful Flash Gordon comic books, before moving on to draw the Star Wars comic strip.

The Flash Gordon comic strip is now all reprint. My favorite Flash Gordon stories are those written for the comic strip by Harry Harrison, of Stainless Steal Rat fame, and drawn by Dan Barry, reprinted in Comics Revue.

This TV movie, also released as a Saturday morning cartoon, was written by Star Trek writer Sam Peeples, and more or less faithfully follows the early Alex Raymond comic strip adventures. The less polished, more repetitious, Saturday morning version is now out on DVD.