#Flash Gordon Conquers the universe

[gameraboy2]

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1941)

[chernobog13]

A still from the film Robin Hood in Outer Space Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)

[yestolerancepro]

Tolerance Project extra The 8 Best Star Wars Rip offs Ranked

Part 2 Battle Beyond the Stars Battlestar Galactica and Flash Gordon 1980 and Spaceballs

Introduction

Welcome to the second part of my blog looking at 8 of the best films which RIP off Star Wars this chapter covers Battle Beyond the Stars Battlestar Galatica the original series from 1978 the 1980 film version of Flash Gordon and Spaceballs

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Battle Beyond the Stars was produced by the famous B-movie director Roger Corman. Who died on May 11th 2024 you can read a tribute here https://variety.com/2024/film/news/roger-corman-dead-producer-independent-b-movie-1235999591/

 His rip-off follows a farming world being threatened by warlord Sador (Darth Vader) who needs body parts to salvage his own deteriorating body. He possesses a Stellar Converter that turns planets into stars unless their inhabitants comply. By proxy, volunteers (Rebels) band together to thwart the doomsday machine. The film is comically derivative and was intended to be a Magnificent Seven in space.

My Memories of Battle Beyond the Stars

Not really a Star Wars Rip off its more Magnificent Seven in Space but its its still a great film I remember seeing it on ITV network one afternoon the story didn’t really grab me but I thought the acting was great I remember thinking what is John Boy from the Waltons and Hanibal Smith from the A Team doing in Outer Space lol

For those Wondering what I am talking about ha ha Richard Thomas who played John Boy Walton in the long running series played Shad the hero of Battle Beyond the Stars. George Peppard now more well known for playing the role of Haniball Smith in the A Team played the role of Cowboy in the film.

Further Watching

To watch a trailer for Battle Beyond the Stars click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t7z_44nGio

Battlestar Galactica (1978)

Battlestar Galactica began with the television pilot "Saga of a Star World" and was released theatrically as a standalone film. A thousand-year-old war in a distant star system between humanity and a robot race known as the Cyclons. A peace treaty is reached but ends in deception after the promise of sparing the Cyclon race was broken.

They use the Battlestar Galactica to protect them from the impending robotic fleet. The film and short-lived series led to a copyright infringement lawsuit; the planet Carillon, for example, has a gambler's den similar to the Mos Eisley cantina.

My memories of Battlestar Galactica

For me the original and best version of the show Again speaking as I find the Star Wars references went over my head. I loved the series as a kid  for a number of reasons. One was the classic theme tune by Stu Phillips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyHxYxc to listen to an interview with the composer click here : https://filmumentaries.com/2023/06/78-stu-phillips-composer-battlestar-galactica-knight-rider-etc/

The charectors of Starbuck and Apollo played by a pre A Team Dirk Benidect and Richard Hatch I also loved the space battles with the Cylons who were great baddies

Talking of the Cylons the blinking eye motif that moved across their faces would turn up  again in another Glenn Larson series for the grill in the talking car action series Knight Rider.

To learn more about Knight Rider click here (368) 10 Things You Didn't Know About Knight Rider - YouTube

I also loved the stories as well about them trying to find somewhere called planet Earth a planet for them to settle on a place to call home they would find Earth but not until the sequel series Galactica 1980 which took place 30 years after the original series .

Further Watching

To watch a trailer for Battlestar Galactica 1978 click here

To watch a documentary called WTF happened to Battlestar Galatica 1978 click here (368) WTF Happened to Battlestar Galactica? (1978) - YouTube

Flash Gordon (1980)

Flash Gordon is a space opera superhero film based on the comic strip of the titular character. Its story follows an unlikely hero who receives aid to stop a ruthless alien tyrant from destroying the Earth. George Lucas attempted to secure the rights to make his own adaptation of the space faring hero, but when denied, he made Star Wars instead. The film has since reached cult status for its campy, exaggerated costumes, set design, and special effects.

My Memories of Flash Gordon

Again this is not a Star Wars Rip Off Flash Gordon was arround in the early 30s and 40s long before Star Wars was even thought of.

I used to watch the old black and white serials with Buster Crabbe during the summer holidays you can watch a trailer for Flash Gordon conquers the universe by clicking here  

Also this article is worth a read about how the 1930s Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon seriels changed scifi https://www.tor.com/2019/08/21/the-flash-gordon-serials-of-the-1930s-changed-the-face-of-sci-fi/

 I had also seen the classic Filmation animated series The New Adventures of Flash Gordon 1979-1982 which again was shown during school holidays  and loved that  the first series more than the second.

So I was well grounded in Flash Gordon before I saw the film I first remember seeing this film as a movie première shown on the BBC during Christmas in the early 80s and I have loved it ever since.

The film is really well done acting and effects wise and Queen who I also love did an excellent soundtrack for it Flash’s theme which you can see by clicking here

  I think its a real shame that there was no sequel to follow it I would have watched it anyway

Further Watching 

To watch a trailer for the 1980 film of Flash Gordon click here

To watch a documentary called 10 things you didn’t know about Flash Gordon Click here 

To watch a retrospective review of Flash Gordon 1980 from the Oliver Harper Youtube channel click here

To watch a documentary called 10 things The Flash Gordon 1980 the version we never so click here

Spaceballs (1987)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Spaceballs is the funniest love letter to Star Wars in the entire galaxy. The parody created by comedian and filmmaker Mel Brooks follows mercenary Lone Starr (Han Solo), his half-man, half-dog sidekick Barf (Chewbacca), Princess Vespa (Princess Leia), and the wise, old alien Yogurt (Yoda), who teaches them the power of the Schwartz (the Force).

Together, the ragtag team stop the planet Spaceball from stealing the air from Vespa's home planet. The comedy also makes jabs at other franchises, including Alien, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek.

Probably the best Star Wars Rip off of them all is this one George Lucas even liked it the only thing he told them not to do before giving the production team the green light was asking them not to produce any merchandise for the film

Further Watching 

To watch a trailer for Spaceballs click here

To watch a documentary called 10 things you didn’t know about Spaceballs click here

To watch a Documentary called Spaceballs 10 things the version we never saw click here

Space balls will be getting a sequel click here to find out more https://www.avclub.com/spaceballs-sequel-josh-gad-mel-brooks-1851548890

To find out more about the planned Spaceballs sequel click here https://people.com/everything-we-know-so-far-about-spaceballs-2-8674590

Notes

Thanks to Minty's comedic arts for his documentaries on Flash Gordon 1980 and Spaceballs and Oilver Harper youtube channel for his Retrospective video on Flash Gordon 1980 You tube for the Viarous film trailers and google images for the pictures

[nerds-yearbook]

Appendix: Some of the Sci-fi/fantasy roles of Buster Crabbe

Tarzan - Tarzan the Fearless (1933)

Flash Gordon - Flash Gordon 13 ep serial (1936)

Flash Gordon - Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars 15 ep serial (1938)

Buck Rogers - Buck Rogers 12 ep serial (1939)

Flash Gordon - Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe 12 ep serial (1940)

Brigadier Gordon - Buck Rogers TV series (1979 - 1981)

Sheriff Kowalski - The Alien Dead (1980)

[jedwardsmedia1970]

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars is a 1938 Universal Pictures 15–chapter science-fiction movie serial based on the syndicated newspaper comic strip Flash Gordon. It is the second of the three Flash Gordon serials made by Universal between 1936 and 1940. The main cast from the first serial reprise their roles: Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, Jean Rogers as Dale Arden, Frank Shannon as Dr. Alexis Zarkov, Charles B. Middleton as Ming the Merciless, and Richard Alexander as Prince Barin. Also in the principal cast are Beatrice Roberts as Queen Azura, Donald Kerr as Happy Hapgood, Montague Shaw as the Clay King, and Wheeler Oakman as Ming's chief henchman. The serial was followed by Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

[blood-mocha-latte]

stormy - a luztoye drabble

for an ask from @malarkgirlypop || request an edit/drabble || i loved loved loved writing this, thank you for the ask <3 <3

The apartment they've found is all brick, sturdy and warm, but George can still feel the shaking of the thunder under his feet.

He sighs down at the metal tin that holds rapidly cooling water and dissipating bubbles. The sad, soggy lump of washcloths in his fist serves as a makeshift mop, because for some reason, they don't actually have one. 

They were in the middle of painting the walls of the kitchen blue – a (hopefully) better colour change from the dark orange it was when George, of course, dropped a good half quarter of blue all over the tile floor.

The thunder rumbles outside again. George groans, like it's a queue, and bunches his ‘mop’ together better before dunking it into the pail.

Leaning his knees on a rolled up towel, avoiding the harsh tile of the kitchen floor, he scrubs rather absently for a while.

He likes menial tasks, like this. Turning his brain off, George feels, is something that is both long and far between as well as just. Absent.

When he thinks — always, always thinking, and talking even more — it’s almost always about the now. About needing to clean the floor, about when they’ll need to water the plant on top of the fireplace again, about how they need a new bedspread, because George got blood all over their old one when he accidentally sliced his palm open with a razor.

(A mishap, with shaving. Joe had dropped something in their bedroom, and George had jolted so badly he’d needed fourteen stitches.)

Sometimes, though, he thinks of everyday and it blends into what used to be everyday; disjointed thoughts that he’ll need to call Lip down in West Virginia and ask about confirmation for blasting a house in Hagenau, that he’ll need to get new running shoes because Currahee tends to get muddier with the rain, this time of year.

This time, he thinks about Joe. Who, admittedly, consumes the majority of his thoughts, now. 

He thinks of a joke, and thinks about telling it to Joe, and realises he’s already told it to him, because he’s the only one George tells anything, anymore. He wonders vaguely about something that existed when he was a kid, and has to go and find Joe to ask him if he remembers that thing too, just to listen to him talk. He walks by a shop window with all sorts of jewellery in it, and wonders what Joe would do if he brought home rings.

As he scrubs at the tile, blue paint chipping off and into the cloths and George’s hands, he wonders if Joe’d like it if he could find Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Maybe they could watch it. Maybe they’d watch it for two seconds and get bored. Maybe, if George talked through it enough, he could get Joe to shut him up with his mouth, anchor a hand in his hair—

“George.” Joe says from the other side of the room, voice almost frustrated. George looks up from the mess on the floor; made no better by his scrubbing, and drops the ‘mop’ back into the soapy tin.

“Something wrong?” He asks, wiping his hands awkwardly on the fabric of his pants as he makes his way over to where Joe sits on the couch, holding the paper against his good leg, pen in his left hand.

“No.” Joe says, too quickly, almost sharply. He huffs, once, through his nose, and shoves the paper up roughly when George comes to stand over the couch, bracing the palms of his hands against the back of it. “Just. I can't— fuck.” 

Joe gets like this, sometimes. Usually when it’s cold and it’s been a while since he last ate. Frustrated, sharp. More impatient than usual, maybe a bit clumsier.

George kneels behind the couch, grimacing slightly at the pop of his knees, and fights down the cushioning of the sofa to rest his chin on Joe's shoulder, skimming through the messy handwriting that Joe held up.

It's been easy enough to get settled in. The apartment is a decent size, both bedrooms are nice. George seems ecksausted

exosted

exausted

exaustid

“I don't know why the fuck I couldn't just say tired.” Joe says, dropping the paper back into his lap when George pulls back and noses absently against the shell of his ear to show he was done reading. His voice is strained, like he’s trying to make a joke.

“Well, you've got a big vernacular. Might as well use it.” George says lightly, using Joe’s good shoulder to push himself back up, grunting. “Christ, call an ambulance. Who let an old man get down on the floor?”

“You're only twenty-seven, George.” Joe says absently as George rounded the side of the sofa. “And I don't have a big fucking vernacular. Can't spell for shit. It's not like I use fancy goddamn words all the time.”

“You use fancy words all the time.” George retorts, plopping down onto the couch and slipping his hands under his legs. Joe’s eyes, dark against his skin and framed by even darker lashes, glare down at them. “You just said vernacular.”

“Because you just said vernacular.” Joe says darkly, posture slouched. “I can't even spell vernacular.”

“Well, neither can I.” George says amiably. “There's probably a ‘j’ in there, somewhere.” 

Joe frowns down at the paper. “Can you even read the damn writing?” He asks, flipping the pencil clumsily between his fingers. George leans further into him, jostling his ribs with his elbow. Outside, the rumbling thunder seems to make the glass in the panes of their windows vibrate.

“Well, sure.” He says. “Could tell that you kept misspelling exhausted, couldn’t I?” Joe doesn’t meet his eyes.

“It’s not legible.” He murmurs. George sighs, and gently pulls the paper out of Joe’s grip before he crumples it into a ball. 

“Well, it’s not easy on the eyes.” He says lightly. He tries not to lie, but he doesn’t like being any sort of unkind. “But you are, so it makes up for it.”

“George.” Joe says, same way he always does. Like the beginning of a prayer, or a story. George just shrugs. He lets his head drop to Joe’s bare shoulder, fingers smoothing across his wifebeater.

“‘S fine, Joe.” He says. He’s leaning against Joe’s bad shoulder, and he can feel the lines of scarring and tissue against his temple and cheek like streaks of lightning. He taps his index finger against the deepest scar; one that runs from the crux of Joe’s neck and shoulder and wraps around his bicep to halfway down his forearm. “I can read it fine.”

Joe’s quiet. He shifts against George, and dry lips press to his forehead. 

“I can’t write so good, anymore.” He says. George knows. George was there when Joe couldn’t even use his right arm without it hurting, could barely keep a grasp on a tennis ball. George also knows that Joe tends to get inside his own head, tends to think that things are worse than they actually are, that every event is the start of a chain of bad ones.

That’s alright, though. That’s what he’s got George for, whether he likes it or not.

“Writing doesn’t matter.” George says. “I heard somewhere that Mark Twain couldn’t hold a pencil. He just said stuff and had other people write it down.” Joe snorts.

“That’s bullshit.” He mutters. George spreads his fingers against Joe’s forearm, pressing his palm to the scar. 

“Yeah.” He agrees easily. “Who gives a fuck, though.” Joe huffs. The thunder rumbles, as if in agreement, and they both turn their heads towards the window.

“Still stormy outside, I’d guess.” Joe says. George hums, turns his cheek to press a kiss to Joe’s shoulder. Fuck the kitchen tiles. They can be blue. It will probably come into fashion at some point, anyways.

“Yeah.” He says. “Who gives a fuck, though.”

[krinsbez]

Flash Gordon Conquers the Inner Sphere: A Battletech/Pulp Hero Storybuilding/Worldbuilding Project

Well, Conan/BT has died off and Tarzan/BT isn't getting much traction, but I'm an optimist and also definitionally insane, so I'm hoping the third-place contestant gets better results.

Keeping in mind folks, while I am not averse to fic or ficlets being written, the point here is a story- and worldbuilding. Ideally it'd be a group project, not just me shouting into the void for your entertainment. But then, at least I'll have entertained y'all, so that's something!

Anways, this one happened almost by accident. So this one started when I asked if we could do characters that are collar-tug, someone noted that "Stefan Amaris covers Ming", and I and a few others disagreed:

Pfft, Amaris wishes..wished?

(that's me, BTW)

Ming the Merciless is WAY more of a guy then Ameris is, if Ming existed in battletech he'd be driving a battlemech straight into combat against the titular Flash Gordon. Were as Amaris well, his best showing was a sneak attack and then hiding behind his guards. And he surrendered by offering his weapon to Kerensky. Ming would not be caught dead doing such a thing. So that's just a false equivalency.

(that's forum poster HouseOfWolves)

And so we started talking about Ming and eventually we ended up with the following: -Ming the Merciless is Ming Allard-Liao, the son of Melisssa Allard-Liao who spent decades preparing his Revenge. Well that's the reason he admits to, the fact is that (to quote forumposter BadHabits) he is "returning 'to type' for a Liao, but with a distinctly different flavor to him", and thus is a narcissistic and ruthless megalomaniac who intends to make himself emperor of universe, and in fact already styles himself as such. Anyways, he's a genius polymath: a brilliant scientist and Tech, an expert military strategist and tactician, a master of political intrigue and psychological manipulation, and his skill as a MechWarrior makes one think of his grandfather (he is not, in fact, as good as his grandfather the GOAT but he's one of the best currently living). He's also charismatic as hell, and thus far no one has ever been able to beat him at...basically anything.

-Mongo is, (to quote forumposter HouseOfWolves) a "series of systems had it's origins as a expansion to the Capelan Confederation with everything set up to become a province. Then the Civil war and Succession wars happen and Mongo was lost. Untill 2 centuries later all that prep work laid down that kept it from devolving into yet another periphery state plus Mings personal touch turning it into a proper contender for the Throne on terra." In that time the various worlds within the Mongo region have diverged greatly and gotten very, very strange, and spent most of their time fighting each other until Ming came along and conquered them by force, which included moving substantial portions of the population to the one-time provincial capital, after which the region is named. There he forged them into an army with which he was able to swfitly conquer the Capellan Confederation, then put a bigger version of The Wall around it's borders, while he consolidated his holdings.

-Note that the vague similarities between Mongothic overculture (if that's a word) and the Clans is coincidental and the reuslt of a sort of cultural convergent eovlution, both being the result of an isolated population using advanced technology to survive while fighting over scare resources on worlds that are often only marginally habitable

-Anyways, Ming launched is blitzkrieg of the CC in the wake of the Blackout; we considered that he caused the Blackout, but ultimately decided that he just took advantage.

-Anyways, a decade (or two, more on this below) later, Solaris champion Flash Gordon hired to serve as bodyguard to rogue scientist Dr. Hans Zharkov; his usual tech wasn't unavailable so he ended up with a replacement in Dale Arden who is as skilled in the job as she is nice to look at (and she's VERY nice to look at!). Dr. Zharkov, because he is working too hard and not sleeping enough became paranoid, was convinced they are spies trying to steal his secrets and forces them to come along on the test flight of his new and improved super-KF-Drive, which jumps them past the Capellan Wall and straight to Mongo itself, just as Ming is planning to drop The Wall and launch the next phase of his conquest of the Inner Sphere. They manage to earn Ming's personal ire (or at least Flash does. Not sure if should keep Ming being a creepster about Dale), and by luck, skill, and the fact that Ming is bored and wants to make a show of killing them, they keep surviving executions and escaping, damaging Ming's aura of invincibility. They also keep befriending many of the rulers of individual worlds that Mongo has forced to be his puppets and compete for his favor. Which combines in getting said puppet rulers to put aside their animosity for each other to join together and overthrow Ming. Probably replace him with his daughter Princess Aura and her husband King Barin of Arboria?

-My initial thought was that Flash and Co. arrive in the 3140s and things are done in a few years, because I wanted to worldbuild the IS after and it's help to have a good idea of what the IS would've been like in canon. But A; it was pointed out to me that the CC going dark at the start of the Blackout would have that affect regardless, and B: it was proposed that we could have fun with Ming and Flash putting asides their differences to defend Terra from Alaric Ward's Wolves and Malvina Hazen's Jade Falcons. Flash because he's a good guy, and Ming because he wants to be the one to conquer Terra. C: We want a good enough time that the people of the CC get used to and be fine with, their not being a CC going forward, just...uhh, the Mongothic Union.

-Part of this would involve Ming executing all the Liaos with the possible exception of Danai, sparing her life in exchange for her peacefully handing over Yen-Lo-Wang (which he has fully upgraded with Mongotech), and possibly because he likes looking at her, if we keep his creepster tendencies. Not sure what to do with her thereafte,r tend to bounce back and forth between her maybe being Princess Aura's mother and her being one of the multitude of female sub-rulers who tries to seduce Flash.

Got an assortment of other bits and bobs, but this is the most important stuff, I think, and I've spent over an hour typing this. So i'm gonna save the rest for self-RBs if i need to, or if y'all ask for it, if I don't

[ronmerchant]

A heavy from FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE (1940)

[johnny-dynamo]

Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe by JDNelms

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

Week 19:

Film(s): Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA); Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD and Streaming

Date Watched: 2021-10-08, 2021-10-22, and 2021-10-29

Rationale for Inclusion:

So far we have covered adaptations of some of the foundational literary works of science fiction, but this week we move onto two influential franchises that originated in the funny papers: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

To some degree, I know that I am doing both characters a disservice by lumping the two together, as the general public tends to view them interchangeably, but the motion picture serials featuring the characters were both produced by Universal Studios and shared actors, behind the camera talent, and props. In fact, Buster Crabbe stars as the title character in both Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA).

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. comic strip was first published in 1929. Modern day former aviator Buck Rogers ends up getting trapped in a cave while carrying out a surveying job, where a strange gas renders him unconscious and keeps him in suspended animation until he awakens 500 years later in 2429. In the future that Buck awakens in, the Mongol Reds have conquered the United States forcing Americans into rebel organizations to fight back to retake their country. Buck is supported in this strange new world by love interest Wilma Deering, plucky boy sidekick Buddy Deering, and scientist Dr. Huer. Together they fight forces led by Killer Kane and his lady Ardala.

Flash Gordon was created in 1934 in response to the popularity and commercial success of the Buck Rogers strip, and with an initial plot lifted from the 1933 Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie novel When Worlds Collide, which itself would be adapted into a motion picture in 1951. During the present day, polo player and Yale graduate Flash Gordon, his love interest Dale Arden and scientist friend Dr. Hans Zarkov use Zarkov's newly invented rocketship to prevent planet Mongo from colliding with the earth. In the process, they run afoul of Mongo's malevolent ruler Ming the Merciless. Their adventures later include various kingdoms on planet Mongo and later planets.

Despite being created second, Flash Gordon was adapted into a motion picture serial first in 1936. Motion picture serials, or chapter plays, had existed since the silent era and made the transition to sound. The two-reelers, 15-20 minute episodes, were screened along with newsreels, cartoons and stand-alone shorts as part of a motion picture theatrical presentation culminating in the screening of a feature film. Audiences had to return to the theater each week for the next installment, with serials lasting 12 to 15 chapters. The format ceased to be by the mid-1950s due to television becoming the preferred mode of distribution of episodic moving image entertainment. The serials did, however, become known to new audiences when they too ended up broadcast on television in subsequent years.

Since Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were both action oriented, episodic comic strip narratives, they were perfect candidates for serial adaptation. In addition to Flash Gordon (Dir. Frederick Stephani, 1936, USA), Flash and friends appeared in the serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (Dir. Ford Beebe, Robert F. Hill, and Frederick Stephani, 1938, USA) before the serial we watched for this survey, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. The reason for the selection of this Flash Gordon serial was ease of access as well as having the comparison of an already established hero in a serial versus one that required an origin story, as was the case with Buck Rogers.

It was always a given that one or both serials would have been featured on this survey, as these space operas have influenced, and been parodied and homaged by, subsequent sci-fi films and television shows from their creation to the present day.

Reactions:

My partner either did not know or had forgotten that the vertical title, chapter and prologue scroll frequently associated with Star Wars (Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Dir. George Lucas, 1977, USA) had originated with these sci-fi serials. His reaction of "that's where that comes from!" was fantastic to witness.

I, meanwhile, was amused to note that amongst the production elements that both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe share are excerpts from Franz Waxman's score for Bride of Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1935, USA). Perhaps Universal Studios took a comment made by the reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press to heart when they noted that the laboratory equipment in Bride of Frankenstein would have been more appropriate in Buck Rogers? More than likely the score was used for the same reason preexisting sets, props and stock footage were used in both of the Universal Studios produced serials: to save money.

In fact, props and costumes used in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars were used in Buck Rogers, and then the "chamber of death dust experiments" from Buck Rogers was used in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

The saminess between the serials resulted in us only watching half of each one. Not even the daring cliffhangers could bring us back after a certain point. Buster Crabbe plays Buck and Flash as essentially the same character despite the differences in their back stories and skill sets. The recaps at the top of each episode also made the serials hard to watch in rapid succession. Since the serials were created based on the understanding that people would wait a week between episodes, and may not have seen the proceeding episode or episodes, content overlaps quite a bit between installments. In their original edits, serials were not meant to be watched in one sitting.

Another grating aspect for modern audiences is the Yellow Peril influence on the way the villains are named and portrayed in the serials, especially in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Befitting of a sci-fi narrative that heavily borrowed from preexisting content, Flash Gordon's arch enemy Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) is based on the supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu. Like his inspiration, in the moving image adaptation Ming is portrayed by a white actor in yellowface. This insensitive tradition would continue in future adaptations well into the 1980s. 

Those criticisms aside, after having seen Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon parodied in everything from a Daffy Duck cartoon to Star Trek: Voyager, we expected the serial episodes to be a lot more cheesy and kitschy than they were in and of themselves, and in the context of the survey. The plots, settings and costumes are certainly ripe for the exaggeration that followed, but the originals aren't as over the top as the popular imagination would have you expect.

Buck and Flash will return to the survey in their own feature films in 1979 and 1980 respectively, thanks to the success of Star Wars making retro, space opera cool again in 1977.

[the-embroidered-screen]

Embroidered with a Star - Advent Calendar 5

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, 1940

[justyeghost]

September Begins... (a VTuber stream schedule)

Welp, it's the beginning of September and that means some more temporary changes to the schedule. Don't have a stream planned for Monday, but I will be wooing a Vint and fighting a Dragon on Tuesday in Dragon Age: Inquisition (on my VStream Channel), Re-Showing the last few chapters of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (on my Twitch Channel) on Wednesday, and completing my playthrough of Pokemon Sword back on my VStream Channel on Friday.

Catch the streams on my VStream (or Twitch) channels or the VODs the next day on my YouTube channel.

H'karu Starr is a scout for an extraterrestrial colony mission and decided to stream to better learn about Human Culture. They play the Dragon Age games, the Sims 4, Pokemon Sword, and show old Horror and Sci-Fi movies. | Age: 47 | Then/Them or He/Him pronouns. Here's the Lore Post

[chernobog13]

Larry "Buster" Crabbe as Flash Gordon in three serials:

Flash Gordon (1936)

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938)

and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)

[mcbitchtits]

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of His Old Movies

https://slate.com/culture/2023/07/indiana-jones-5-dial-of-destiny-raiders-inspiration.html

Raiders of the Lost Ark raided all of cinema for inspiration. With Dial of Destiny, the franchise steals only from itself.

 By Sam Thielman

   July 01, 2023

In her now-famous pan of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pauline Kael excoriated Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for wasting their talents on a film that aspired to be a B movie. “Spielberg—a master showman—can stage a movie cliché so that it has Fred Astaire’s choreographic snap to it,” Kael said. She had his number: The film (and the pair’s three sequels) is a sort of kitchen-sink pastiche, not of a single style of filmmaking but of everything the moviemakers loved from their own childhoods—Carl Barks comics, Citizen Kane, Gunga Din, Lawrence of Arabia, Stagecoach, Lost Horizon (the remake of which it actually raided for footage), and the cheap adventure serials that the two men had seen as children. That struck Kael, who also loved the artistic heights to which movies could aspire, as an unpardonable liberty to take with the audience.

She had the audience wrong, though—at least the part of the audience that was the age of the filmmakers. “The moviemaking team appears to have forgotten the basic thing about cliff-hangers: we had a week to mull over how the hero was going to be saved from the trap he’d got himself into,” she sniffed. Nope: Studios like Republic released serials weekly in the 1930s and ’40s in an effort to keep moviegoers returning regularly, but by the time the Indiana Jones team was soaking up stories of spacemen and lost treasure in the ’50s, those serials had migrated to television. In one story conference, Lucas said he wanted Raiders to have some kind of death-defying moment every 10 to 20 minutes, more or less mimicking the experience of watching several installments of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon uninterrupted, since that was how they aired on TV in the ’50s. Young people were used to drinking in set piece after set piece, and two technically brilliant filmmakers with enough money to make a feature were happy to crank up the energy way past the tolerance of their elders.

I can personally attest to the queasy pleasures of the serial experience. When I was a kid, my dad, anxious, like all dads, to introduce his offspring to artifacts of his own childhood (which, in his case, was roughly contemporaneous with Spielberg’s), scored an unexpurgated copy of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe on two VHS cassettes. I loved them. In fact, I found them hard to stop watching even after far too long in front of the television, and at least once I managed to creep downstairs to the VCR on a Saturday morning when most of the house was asleep and binge the entire thing in a single face-melting four-hour sitting. (Feel free to do this yourself if you want.) Raiders is probably my favorite movie, not least because it’s the skeleton key to so many other films that inspired its two colossal auteurs, and perhaps that is why it is so uncomfortable to hear echoes of Kael’s dismissal in my own distaste for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, allegedly Harrison Ford’s final adventure as the whip-cracking tomb raider.

For the original film, Lucas and Spielberg gleefully pilfered stories of adventure from foreign civilizations, the basic atomic unit of American pop culture during their formative years in the ’50s. Hiram Bingham had “discovered” Machu Picchu in 1911; in 1954 Barks had replaced him with Scrooge McDuck, and Hollywood had made him into a louche jerk named Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Secret of the Incas. The Raiders team stole their hero’s wardrobe from Secret—costume designer Deborah Nadoolman said the crew watched the film together several times—and the boulder sequence from Uncle Scrooge. When Indy channels a shaft of sunlight that reveals the location of the movie’s sacred MacGuffin, a scene lifted from Secret of the Incas, he’s dressed in a near-exact copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Bedouin garb in Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a slightly embarrassing quote—not as embarrassing as Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams appearing in costume as Marlon Brando in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—but perhaps it’s a little charming even so, not unlike catching a kid trying to wear his dad’s suit.

Spielberg and Lucas were also vigilant stewards of popular culture, not just appropriators of it. Star Wars may have looted Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, and Indy may be an amalgam of Toshiro Mifune characters, but Lucas paid that debt back in literal dollars, forcing Fox to finance Kurosawa’s Kagemusha as a condition of distributing The Empire Strikes Back. Both he and Spielberg worked to make the Japanese auteur’s final film, Dreams, a reality. A long-overdue restoration of Lawrence of Arabia had stalled out; Spielberg and Martin Scorsese (who plays Vincent van Gogh in Dreams, incidentally) got it rolling again.

But watching Dial of Destiny, it’s hard not to think that Indy’s world was a lot bigger in 1981. We more or less have the Republic serial model back again in the form of the Marvel movies and TV shows, which deploy every few weeks and draw liberally on the chase-scenes-and-quips model perfected in Raiders and strung out enjoyably across Temple of Doom and Last Crusade and even parts of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. During Dial of Destiny, we no longer see references to movies made before Star Wars; instead, the new film, directed and co-written by James Mangold, is an homage to the other Indiana Jones flicks, with Mads Mikkelsen’s baddie at one point jacking his whole outfit from Raiders’ Arnold Toht and, at another, donning René Belloq’s white suit and fedora. John Rhys-Davies reprises not just his role as Indy’s faithful counselor Sallah but the few bars of H.M.S. Pinafore he bellows at the end of the original film. Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), on the outs at the beginning of Dial, reenact Raiders’ “Where does it hurt?” scene right before the camera discreetly gives them some privacy as the film ends. And that scene in which a sunbeam reveals the location of the titular relic is back, except this time to nod to Raiders rather than to shine a light on a forgotten Charlton Heston vehicle.

These Easter eggs can be tough to swallow if you really remember Raiders with any admiration. Though he softened over the years, Ford’s Indiana Jones began cinematic life as an almost irredeemable monster; that’s the whole point of Belloq, a dashing fascist fashion plate who tends to saunter off with the treasure Indy bleeds for. “It would take only a nudge to make you like me—to push you out of the light,” Belloq teases. Indy’s love interest, Allen’s indomitable Marion, is proof of Belloq’s observation—Indy took advantage of her when she was “a child,” she says (15, if you do the math). What makes Marion’s get-well kisses so sweet is that they don’t actually come to anything. Indy falls asleep—he’s overmatched, just as he always is, beginning in the very first sequence, when he nearly gets himself squashed by a boulder and loses the treasure into the bargain.

Nerds have debated whether or not Dr. Jones actually accomplishes anything over the course of the film, cosmically speaking—the ark of the covenant turns out to be perfectly capable of defending itself after he fails to do so—but the movie’s most important stakes have to do with the disposition of its hero’s soul, not the wrath of God. Ford is blindingly handsome and as charming as one of Indy’s hated snakes, but can a morally compromised predator become someone genuinely worth loving?

It’s a much more interesting question than anything in Dial of Destiny, which declares itself to be thematically interested in whether history and the people who love it matter anymore. The text of the film answers the question in the affirmative, but everything else about it says “not if we can help it.” In the Disney galaxy of intellectual property, the Indiana Jones franchise is one of the smaller constellations, and its affection for films of a bygone era is its least marketable quirk.

Things have changed, largely because of Lucas and Spielberg. The films they fought to see recognized as great works of art now not merely have become canon but have aged into snootiness; whether or not it inspired the terrific truck chase in Raiders, Stagecoach is generally the purview of film buffs, now a tweedier demographic than the kind of nerd who dreamed up Indiana Jones. Same with Lawrence of Arabia, Lost Horizon, and the rest. Instead, everything looks like a Spielberg movie, even when it’s not. Our world is now filled with Apple products that look like set dressing from Minority Report, and moviemakers like J.J. Abrams have constructed entire visual styles out of E.T. The most popular show on the most popular streaming service is a travesty of Spielberg’s work in every sense of the word. We have more, but we draw on far, far less.

Raiders was conceived as a sumptuous meal of elegantly plated junk food, prepared in the firm belief that it’s actually not as bad for you as its detractors have declared. “In addition to the artistic pleasure given by comic stories and drawings such as Carl Barks’, comic art has something to say about the culture that produces it,” Lucas wrote in his introduction to a collection of the Barks stories that had so inspired him. And so it was, he and Spielberg believed, with children’s television and corny Westerns. The old serials were produced with a large measure of cynicism—some sequences of Flash Gordon are just footage from other films, notably the German mountaineering adventure movie The White Hell of Pitz Palu (starring Leni Riefenstahl!). But Lucas and Spielberg have forcefully and successfully made the case that low-cultural art is hugely valuable artistically and monetarily, and that case wasn’t generally accepted when Flash Gordon was being produced.

Now the companies that generate mass entertainment seem concerned primarily with wresting away the rights of artists and forcing every narrative angle to rebound back into intellectual property that they control directly. Stories must form part of a big collective mosaic of trademarked distinctive likenesses, deepening characters and complicating their stories only when those characters can be repurposed for another iteration. The opening sequence of Dial of Destiny, in which Ford is computer-graphically de-aged back to 1981, reads almost as a threat: “Like this?” it seems to say. “There’s more where it came from.” Imagine if Lucas and Spielberg had to dress up Indy as Lawrence not because they loved the David Lean movie but because Hasbro had a line of Lawrence of Arabia action figures coming out. “Essentially, George Lucas is in the toy business,” Kael wrote. She hadn’t seen anything yet.

[foone]

I'd show 'em the work that got me Interested into death rays: Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe!, the 1940 Buster Crabbe serial (which you can just watch. This is chapter 4: The Destroying Ray!)

had this on a two-tape set when I was kid. Loved it. I think this might have been my first scifi-love, before I'd even seen a war or a trek.

Anyway Ming The Merciless (in B&W yellowface!) has Zarkov captured and is death raying him, when Flash Gordon runs in and tries to free him, but is overcome by the Death Ray. He's doomed! THE END!

Why is it that every mechanical engineer I've met is like a normal guy, maybe a little bit into cars, usually a cishet guy, and then every electrical engineer I know is either a transgender furry or mad scientist (or both). Do the radio waves turn you insane or something

[floofyhobbit]

Starting watching Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, apparently it’s the best of the three serials

Please be good please