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.

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.

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.

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov travel to the planet Mongo to fight the evil emperor Ming the Merciless who is secretly giving military technology to Hitler.

Despite Filmation reuse and overused of recycled cells (notably Ming laughing) this truly is one of Flash Gordon's greatest adventures. The setting and scenes ooze the imagination, with giant statues, palaces, space crafts and monsters. The 1980's live action movie borrows plenty from this Filmation film. Although shown in 22 December 1983 in the UK on ITV it was split up and used as the bases of the Saturday morning series Flash Gordon (1979).

Written by Samuel A. Peeples, whose credits include the original Star Trek series, its packed with great action set ups and array of memorable characters including the voice talent of Melendy Britt as Aura (later she voiced She-ra) and Ted Cassidy's Chewbacca lion like Thun. It's only short coming is that Dale Arden is sorely underused, reduced to a damsel in distress.

It's edgy has a great atmosphere and even delivers a twist ending that outdoes it's 1980's live action counterpart.