Flash Gordon

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Film Preservation 2015 Blogathon that is being co-hosted by Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod and Wonders in the Dark.

After the phenomenal success of Star Wars (1977) every studio was eager to capitalize on the movie-going public’s renewed interest in feel-good space operas. This resulted in numerous rip-offs and wannabes with arguably the most hyped of them all being Flash Gordon (1980). It was the brainchild of legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis who, ironically, was responsible for Star Wars when he bought the film rights for Alex Raymond’s comic strip when George Lucas was unable to thereby paving the way for him to create his own science fiction epic.

Alas, Flash Gordon was a debacle from the word go. Early on, De Laurentiis decided that the movie should be filled with humor and hired Lorenzo Semple, Jr. to write the screenplay. Semple had written several episodes for the 1960s Batman television series and proceeded to apply a similar camp aesthetic to the movie. During filming there was some confusion between the cast as to the tone of the movie. The end result is a lavishly mounted production with absolutely stunning production and set design, which is in contrast to the rather silly tone for a fascinatingly jarring effect.

As a result, Flash Gordon barely surpassed its budget at the North American box office but performed well overseas. However, it failed to reach the dizzying heights of Star Wars that De Laurentiis was hoping for and was derided by many critics that felt it was a horrible, cinematic trainwreck. Then, something happened. Over the years, Flash Gordon quietly became a cult classic among science fiction fans, counting director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), comic book artist Alex Ross and comedian Seth MacFarlane (Ted) among its admirers who have all paid tribute to this much-maligned movie.

The movie sets its peculiar tone from the opening credits that feature Queen’s bombastic theme song playing over panels of Raymond’s comic strip interspersed with Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) wreaking havoc on the Earth’s weather system. “Flash” Gordon (Sam J.Jones), the star quarterback for the New York Jets football team, meets travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) on a small airplane that struggles with turbulence, which mysteriously turns into a meteor storm coupled with an unscheduled solar eclipse.

The “irrational” Dr. Zarkov (Chaim Topol) is convinced that the storm is an attack and plans to launch a counterattack with his own rocket. After a meteorite hits their plane causing the pilots to mysteriously and suddenly disappear (?!), Flash and Dale manage to crash land right into Zarkov’s laboratory. The clearly mad scientist tricks Flash and Dale into his rocket and the ensuing struggle accidentally manages to launch them into outer space where they pass out from excessive g-forces.

The rocket finds its way into the Imperial Vortex where it is guided by Ming’s forces to the planet Mongo. Our heroes are captured by Ming’s troops, sporting a curious mix of samurai and Star Wars stormtrooper armor. It is only but one of many odd touches that populate Flash Gordon – like the enigmatic Lizard Man, a guy dressed in a poorly-made costume, and who is quickly vaporized by Ming before he can make any kind of meaningful impression.

Flash, Dale and Zarkov are led through a red-saturated hallway that answers the question, what if Dario Argento applied his 1970s era Giallo aesthetic to a space opera? They are brought to Ming’s throne room where they meet a truly odd assortment of characters: Prince Vultan (Brain Blessed) and his Hawkmen clad in skimpy armor and giant wings, and Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) and his men that come across looking like a futuristic riff on Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Along with Ming, they participate in a bizarre ceremony that is intended to demonstrate their loyalty to the emperor.

Another odd detail includes the fact that the women populating Ming’s throne room are scantily-clad in some of king futuristic bikini outfit, chief among them Princess Aura (Ornella Muti), Ming’s daughter, who becomes mildly aroused when Flash employs some of his gridiron moves to best a few of Ming’s finest troops in a wonderfully cheesy sequence that involves Dale doing her best cheerleader impression and Zarkov employing slapstick comedy to end the struggle. As a result, Dale becomes Ming’s concubine and Flash is imprisoned, scheduled for execution. He must figure out a way to escape and free Dale while convincing Barin and Vultan to unite against their common foe.

The tonal shifts among the cast are illogical and could almost give the viewer whiplash, but they only add to the wonderfully absurdist vibe of Flash Gordon. God bless ‘em, Sam Jones and Melody Anderson play their characters with aw shucks earnestness right out of a 1950s sci-fi movie while Chaim Topol and Brian Blessed ham it up for the cheap seats with the latter looking like he’s having the most fun of anyone in the cast. Max von Sydow and Peter Wyngarde play it absolutely straight almost as if they’re reciting Shakespeare with the former perfectly cast as Ming and making the most of hi s character’s evil plans monologues. Part of the fun of watching this movie is to see these contrasting performances bounce off each other as the cast try to spout the ridiculous dialogue convincingly. It makes for a heady experience that you either submit to or reject – there is no middle ground with Flash Gordon.

At times, the dated special effects, especially the extensive use of rear projection, look pretty bad and yet there is something authentic about it. The old school effects and astounding sets have a tangible quality that is missing from a lot of contemporary SF epics. In particular, the effects for Mongo’s atmosphere are quite breathtakingly beautiful and one has to admire the filmmakers’ audaciousness. The movie also has several exciting action sequences, including a surprisingly bloody gladiatorial battle between Flash and Barin on a platform that is constantly shifting and with spikes emerging and disappearing with unpredictable frequency creating a real sense of danger. Seeing this fight play out at a young, impressionable age scared and thrilled me in equal measure. Along with David Lynch’s Dune (1984), Flash Gordon is one of the most distinctive-looking SF movies to come out of the ‘80s.

Flash Gordon’s weakest aspects are the obvious attempts to ape Star Wars with nods to stormtroopers, a flying droid and General Klytus (Peter Wyngarde), Ming’s second-in-command, serving as a poor man’s Darth Vader. He gets little to do except bark orders and supervise torturing Princess Aura. The movie is at its best when it subverts aspects of Lucas’ film, like taking the earnestness of Luke Skywalker and placing it in a football player’s body or splitting Princess Leia into two characters – the bland eye candy that is Dale Arden and the duplicitous Princess Aura who has a kinky streak (what’s up with her pet dwarf Fellini?) and the hots for Flash.

After writing the screenplay for a remake of King Kong (1976) for legendary Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis, Lorenzo Semple Jr. was given a coffee table book of the Italian translation for the Flash Gordon comic strip and told that it would be the basis for his movie. He was told to make it funny: “At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic.” Semple admitted that he didn’t think the character of Flash in the script was particularly good, but that “there was no pressure to make it any better.”

Initially, Nicolas Roeg was hired by De Laurentiis to direct Flash Gordon. He had just come off another science fiction film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) when the producer approached him to direct. He wasn’t sure and took some time to read Raymond’s comic strip. Roeg came to the conclusion that Raymond was a “genius, an absolute genius.” He became really excited at the prospect of making a Flash Gordon movie and went off to write the screenplay. His concept for the movie was Flash as a “metaphysical messiah.” Roeg spent a year writing and showed it to De Laurentiis who didn’t want to make that version. He wanted to make his version and Roeg left the project.

Mike Hodges was approached to direct the sequel and turned down the offer but when Roeg left the project, the former changes his mind because “it was totally different from what I had previously done.” The director admitted that he was not a fan of the science fiction genre and didn’t consider the movie to be part of it but instead wanted to “keep to the comic book version.” According to Hodges, Raymond’s original comic strip became the bible that was referenced while making the movie.

One of De Laurentiis’ family members saw Sam J. Jones on the Dating Game show and from that he received the call to meet the producer. The aspiring actor consulted a few friends that were fans of the old Flash Gordon serials and they brought him up to speed on the character. He was flown into London and interviewed by De Laurentiis. Soon afterwards, he was cast in the movie and almost immediately immersed in rehearsals, costume fittings and daily workouts in order to prepare for the role. In addition, his hair was dyed blonde and he tried on blue contact lenses but they hurt so much that he did not end up using them. Lacking in experience, Jones worked with an acting coach on the set every day. Jones not only did most of his own stuntwork but also helped choreograph all the action sequences.

Melody Anderson was set to appear in a television series when she received a phone call from De Laurentiis who proceeded to convince her to do Flash Gordon instead. She flew all night from New York City to London only to be taken immediately to the studio where she had her blonde hair changed to brown, costume fittings, screen tests and a meeting with Hodges. Twelve days later, she found herself in Scotland with filming starting the next day. “We didn’t have any preparation time at all … It’s such a large special effects picture, the actors really are secondary in it.”

The massive production was spread over six sound stages at Shepperton Studios, the Star Wars facility at Borehamwood, and an aircraft hangar at Brooklands. Principal photography was synchronized with the special effects department because most of the live-action footage would be matched with opticals in post-production. To add to the chaos, the crew was a mix of Italian and English crew members who did not know how to speak to each other.” Anderson said, “The actors were caught in the middle.” Semple blamed the chaos of the production on the “great leeway given to the art director, Danilo Donati,” who had worked with Frederico Fellini, among others, describing him as a “crazed Italian who literally never read the script, but instead went off on his own.” Semple said that an example of the rampant spending on the production was the $1 million Donati spent on the Arboria set, which was only used in one shot!

Jones and the rest of the cast were instructed to play their parts seriously and he said, “When the crew watched the rushes and were laughing hysterically, Dino said, ‘Why are you laughing?’ And they discovered they had a comedy.’” Anderson backs up Jones’ approach to acting in Flash Gordon: “I’m surprised that (people) are laughing, because we weren’t out to make a funny film. In fact, De Laurentiis was very upset when he showed the film and people started to laugh, because he thought they were laughing at it and not with it.” Semple said, “And Dino, especially, had no idea what he wanted. He wanted something Flash Gordon, and I adored Dino, but he didn’t have much idea about the difference between sort of camp and Star Wars.”

For the movie’s score, Hodges persuaded De Laurentiis to take a chance and have the popular rock band Queen compose it. Lead guitarist Brian May said, “As I remember the film’s producer, Dino De Laurentiis, was not convinced that rock music could work as score i.e. as background music for a film that was not about rock music!” The band spent a week creating demos of all the themes for the movie and played them for De Laurentiis. May recalled, “He was pretty stony-faced. At the end, he said something like, ‘I don’t think this music is right for my film,” and left. The band was understandably crest-fallen as a result, but Hodges assured them that it would work out. A couple days later, they heard that their music was approved.

Unfortunately, the experience of making Flash Gordon was a bittersweet one for Jones who was sued by De Laurentiis for breach of contract. He, in turn, counter-sued, claiming that he hadn’t been paid according to the original agreement. This, and the movie’s poor performance at the North American box office, doomed any prospects of a sequel.

Flash Gordon does what a movie of this kind should – transport us to strange new worlds that don’t resemble our own. The movie is pure escapist entertainment. Cinema needs more ambitious oddball movies like it that refuse to play it safe and dare to risk failure. These fascinating trainwrecks are often more memorable than the ones that adhere to the same old tired formulas. In retrospect, the ‘80s was a great time for eccentric genre movies with the likes of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) managing to navigate their way through the studio system and find their audience thanks to home video where they could be rediscovered and watched repeatedly. Watching this movie again, it really is amazing that something like this exists. Only a European sensibility fused with the desire to ape the success of an American blockbuster could result in something like Flash Gordon and the world is a better place for its existence.

SOURCES

Brender. Alan. “Mike Hodges: Director of the New Flash Gordon.” Starlog. March 1981.

“Flash Gordon and the Storyboards of Mongo.” Prevue. September-October 1980.

Kennedy, Harlan. “Bad Timing.” American Cinema. January-February 1980.

Khoury, George. “Hail Flash Gordon!” SFX. February 2008.

Swires, Steve. “Lorenzo Semple, Jr.: The Screenwriter Fans Love to Hate, Part Two.” Starlog. September 1983.

Willson, Karen E. “Melody Anderson.” Starlog. December 1980.

Willson, Karen E. “Sam J. Jones.” Starlog. December 1980.

The Parallax View

The 1970s was an era where disco tortured our eardrums and nihilistic cinema ruled an American landscape riddled with a deep distrust of the government brought about by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X, which were still fresh in people’s minds. When The Parallax View was released in 1974, America had just come out of a long and costly war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal would soon leave the Richard Nixon presidency in tatters. It would be the second film in an unofficial trilogy of paranoid thrillers made by director Alan J. Pakula that included Klute (1971) and All the President’s Men (1976). With these films he was commenting on the times in which he lived – dark and rife with fear and loathing. And Pakula wasn’t alone. The ‘70s was an era that featured some of the best political thrillers ever made with the likes of The Conversation (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Winter Kills (1979). Arguably, The Parallax View is best of the bunch as it incorporated affectations of a surrealistic style with archetypal thriller conventions to produce a film where nothing is what it seems and good doesn’t always triumph over evil.


Senator Charles Carroll (William Joyce) is an ambitious independent politician rumored to be seeking the Presidential nomination in the coming year. It is July 4 and he’s doing a meet and greet at the Space Needle in Seattle when he’s shot and killed by two assassins dressed as waiters. One of them is killed trying to escape while the other (Bill McKinney) sneaks off in the ensuing chaos and confusion. After months of investigation, an unidentified government committee releases a report that states Carroll was killed by a lone assassin with no evidence of a conspiracy. At the time, this must have reminded people of the findings by the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which found Lee Harvey Oswald to be the only gunman acting alone.

Three years later, we meet muckraking journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) as he disrupts a police bust in order to get the inside scoop on a story he’s been working on for weeks. His editor, Bill Rentels (Hume Cronyn), refuses to publish the article because, as he tells Joe, “We’re in the business of reporting the news not creating it.” Out of their discussion we learn that Joe had a drinking problem and it got him fired from his job at the newspaper. He appears to have gotten it under control and has since been rehired. Joe lives in a motel where he meets Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), a television reporter that witnessed Carroll being assassinated. She claims that someone is trying to kill her.

Lee and Joe had been romantically involved in the past and have a long history as evident by the way they interact with one another. Initially, he doesn’t believe her despite claims that six people who witnessed the Carroll killing have since died. Lee seems genuinely upset but Joe remains unconvinced. That is, until Pakula cuts to the next scene and we see her dead body in a hospital, bathed in a sickly blue-green light. A doctor informs Joe that she died from a possible alcohol and drug overdose. However, to someone like him, it is too much of a coincidence and so the newspaperman does some digging, starting with Carroll’s former aide Austin Tucker (William Daniels) who Lee believed was living in the small town of Salmontail, the kind of place where a city slicker like Joe sticks out like a sore thumb with its honky tonks populated by cowboys and running afoul of a belligerent local deputy and the sheriff (Kelly Thorsden) who tries to kill him. Joe survives and uncovers a conspiracy that involves the Parallax Corporation, an enigmatic organization that recruits political assassins.

Throughout the film, Pakula obscures what we are seeing as he plays with the notion that things aren’t always what they seem. Early on, Lee is doing a story on Senator Carroll and a parade goes on in the foreground. When the senator is killed it occurs in the background behind a pane of glass. In another example, Joe observes a police bust behind patio doors. Later in the film, Joe is visited by a representative from the Parallax Corporation and during the scene Pakula frames the shot so that the man is obscuring our view of Joe. By doing this visually, Pakula forces us to question what we see much like Joe is forced to as he digs deeper into the Carroll assassination.

Warren Beatty had just come off a three-year break from acting when he appeared in The Parallax View. He had been working on George McGovern’s campaign for President. The actor is excellent as investigative journalist Joe Frady, a man who gets in way over his head with a story that has far sinister implications then he initially suspected. The actor plays a flawed character but one that we empathize with once people he knows start dying off while others are trying to kill him. Beatty conveys a shrewd intelligence that is quite believable. At first, Joe comes across as an arrogant journalist but as he gets involved in the Carroll assassination and the conspiracy that surrounds it, he becomes much more responsible because he realizes how much is at stake – not just his life but that of others.

He’s helped immeasurably by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Giler’s tightly-constructed screenplay, which presents a complex conspiracy that is never difficult to understand but rather becomes more fascinating and involving as Joe uncovers layers upon layers over the course of the film. Some of the best moments are the brief insights we get into the Parallax Corporation and how they select certain people to become assassins. Ironically, the script was never completed before filming and was largely a rushed patch job by Pakula and Beatty!

The Parallax View features some incredible cinematography by Gordon Willis who expertly uses the widescreen format, like in a scene where Joe searches the sheriff of Salmontail’s house and one of his deputies enters. On the left side we see Joe snooping around in one room and the deputy enter the house on the right side. The tension in this scene is accentuated by the fact that we can see both men in the same frame while only one of them is unaware of the other who is trying to escape undetected. This is also captured in one, uninterrupted take! It is also worth noting that Pakula refreshingly relies on very little music and instead uses ambient sounds in this scene and it only puts us more on edge because we don’t have a musical cue to tell us how to feel.

Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Papillion) adapted Loren Singer’s 1970 novel The Parallax View into a screenplay and gave it to executive producer Gabriel Katzka. He in turn gave the script to Warren Beatty and Alan J. Pakula, who liked its “bold sketches and almost expressionist quality.” The director was drawn to the project because he felt that America had “become a world in which heroes didn’t necessarily win … We live in a Kafka-like world where you never find the evil. It permeates the society.” He was also drawn to the film because it afforded him the opportunity to make an action film (a genre he had yet to tackle) while also incorporating elements of surrealism into the film’s style. He wanted to contrast this with realistic performances from his actors.

At some point, David Giler (Alien) was hired to work on the script but he was unable to finish the job because of a Screenwriters Guild strike. Pakula wanted to delay filming until the script was completed but Beatty’s salary was guaranteed regardless of whether the film was made or not and he was set to make Shampoo (1975) next. Feeling the pressure, Paramount Studios insisted Pakula begin principal photography in order to capitalize on the actor’s window of availability. He only had a few scripted sequences and was forced to work with Beatty on scenes in the morning and then use them during the afternoon’s filming.

This resulted in several departures from Semple’s original script. At Beatty’s request, Joe’s profession was changed from a police officer to a newspaper reporter. Originally, the Carroll assassination was not shown and instead it referenced the JFK killing but Pakula did not want to mix reality with the fiction of the film he was making. The role of Lee Carter was originally written as a tough, older woman but Pakula was impressed with the young Paula Prentiss’ vulnerability and cast her in the part.

The film’s centerpiece is a famous sequence in which Joe infiltrates the Parallax Corporation as a potential recruit and is subjected to an audio/visual slide show reminiscent of the one in A Clockwork Orange (1971) – albeit with very different intentions – in that the images start off pleasant enough, categorized in groupings entitled, FATHER, MOTHER, COUNTRY and ME, but get gradually more disturbing and provocative. In the original script, it was just a simple test and Pakula even shot a sequence where Joe was interviewed by a Parallax employee but the director wasn’t happy with the result. The actual five-minute montage was assembled in post-production over four months. Pakula asked his assistant to collect photographs for him that would provoke all kinds of emotional responses and once he had a decent collection the director spent a long time trying all kinds of sequences of images.

Pakula had previous worked with Gordon Willis on Klute and wanted to take his dark, shadowy cinematography even further in order to evoke the felling that “the unknown is indeed threatening, that there is something out there that you can’t see that could destroy you.” One gets this feeling in a scene where Joe encounters one of the Parallax representatives at his apartment and, at times, we only see the protagonist in silhouette. Pakula and Willis also decided to play with scale, showing Joe being dwarfed by his environment, like the scene where he narrowly escapes being drowned by a dam flooding or the climax in the convention center. This is done to symbolize just how much the film’s protagonist is at the mercy of his surroundings, which along with its inhabitants are out to destroy him at every turn.

The Parallax View received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “It tries to entertain instead of staying behind to argue. And the ending has an inexorable logic to it.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “The movie, which was directed by Alan J. Pakula, never rewards the attention we give it with anything more substantial than a few minor shocks.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, "We would probably be better off rethinking—or better yet, not thinking about—the whole dismal business, if only to put an end to ugly and dramatically unsatisfying products like The Parallax View.” Even though the film divided critics at the time, it only took two years before it began to enjoy reappraisal, starting with Film Comment’s Richard T. Jameson who felt it was Pakula’s “most adventurous [film] in its exploration of the medium itself as an event.” Now, it has become regarded as an established classic with Entertainment Weekly calling it “a mother of a thriller. There are some kick-ass suspense set pieces, including one with a bomb on a plane that would make Hitchcock plotz.”

The Parallax View was not a commercial success. At the time, Beatty was busy making Shampoo and unable to promote the film. Paramount Studio head Bob Evans was more interested in promoting the film he had produced, Chinatown (1974), then Pakula’s. In retrospect, a film that featured such a nihilistic ending wasn’t going to appeal to a mainstream audience and so it really isn’t surprising that it failed to connect with audiences.

While The Parallax View was not a commercial hit one can see its influence in later films like The Star Chamber (1983), Arlington Road (1999), quoted to comic effect in Zoolander (2001), and, more recently, The International (2009) – all of which owe a debt to Pakula’s film. The notion of a shadowy corporation employing assassins to alter domestic and foreign policy was ahead of its time and seems prescient with scandals like Iran-Contra that came to light years after the film’s release. And yet, the events in it never seem unbelievable thanks to Pakula’s grounded direction and the well-written script. In keeping with the pessimism prevalent in a lot ‘70s American cinema, The Parallax View ends on a downbeat note as the conspiracy is not exposed and the system triumphs over the individual. The film’s ending reflected the prevailing mood in the United States at the time as many people felt betrayed by the government – that our best and brightest leaders were being killed for trying to change things. The film ends much as how it began with the same anonymous government committee stating that another political assassination was the result of a lone killer, the only difference being that we now know the truth because we’ve witnessed all the events leading up to it. It leaves one slightly depressed but also oddly empowered with knowledge.

 
NOTE: Most of the production information in this article comes from Jared Brown's excellent book, Alan J. Pakula: His Films and His Life.