Flesh Gordon (1974)

This movie was one of the first made after the MPAA rating system replaced the Hayes code, and people could make porn commercially. Originally, it got an X rating, and they trimmed it down a bit to give it an R.Basically, it parodies the Flash Gordan serials of the 1930's, with stop-motion animation monsters and cheap space ships. The jokes aren't really funny, the sex isn't very passionate, the acting is awful and the special effects are cheap. Yet, oddly, it is unintentionally funny. The scene at the end with the jive-talking giant monster is probably the best part. worth watching for a laugh... maybe once.

For years, I've read of this soft-porn parody of Flash Gordon since it was advertised as one of several midnight movies listed as being at the (now defunct) Cinema 8 at the (also folded) Bon Marche Mall. While I've had it on tape for years, I've only now gotten to seeing it. The verdict: While there were some amusing scenes and dialogue and maybe some good nude scenes, I found most of it a bore. The acting, direction, and script had such an amateurish feeling that after a while I just simply wanted it to end. I did like many of the stop-motion creatures that recall Ray Harryhausen and his mentor Willis O'Brien at their most creative. I guess overall, this was too silly for my tastes. Worth a look at least once is all I can recommended for Flesh Gordon.

A nice, light spoof of the old Flash Gordon serials combined with silly, soft porn. I think I saw this flick in drive-in theaters about six different times.You get to the point where you are lip-syncing all the words of Dr. Flexi Jerkoff and warning people to watch out for the Penisaurous's lurking outside the snack bar.The settings of the film were somewhat reminiscent of Jane Fonda's "Barbarella." The acting is "stiff" as it should be. Both for the serial plays and the soft porn. The dialog is clever without being pornographic. It would elicit the same "groaning" from teenage viewers as is heard when they watch the original "Reefer Madness" in modern day settings.

Probably in part due to the success of magazines such as Playboy during the 1960's, the 1970's became a decade when numerous rather indifferent sex comedies that exploited nudity - (principally female) were released. Few made any pretence of being erotic, although "Emmanuelle" (1974) was one exception; and most had virtually no plot, although again there were exceptions such as "Victorian Fantasies" (1975) which made gentle fun of Victorian hypocrisy whilst showing clearly that the young Victorian woman had more command of her own life than is generally appreciated today. Collectively these films were an often depressing group which found ready audiences among teenage youths when first released but have now mostly disappeared without trace, except for a few of the best that have survived and can still be purchased on videotape or, more surprisingly, DVD. (Some have even attracted quite charitable comments on this database from viewers who remember how bad the worst of them used to be.) Flesh Gordon was primarily produced to parody the worst of the releases of this type which were concurrent in 1974.Simultaneously this film is also a delightful parody of the cartoon hero film featuring Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, which was immensely popular when released in 1936. For those who remember this original work, and who are not upset by a little nudity on the screen, it provides compulsive viewing; but for anyone who wants to view an orgy, or is attracted by the prospect of seeing a highly erotic work, the best advice is to keep well away. Its main appeal lies in the clever way that the episodes of the original Flash Gordon film (which were featured in some cinemas as a serial) are reproduced, with a relatively small degree of parody, so as to create a very amusing sex comedy that exactly parallels the original teenage thriller. Thus Flash Gordon undergoes remarkably little change in becoming Flesh Gordon and Emperor Ming, the ruler of planet Mongo, can be clearly recognised in Emperor Wang who rules planet Porno. Dr Zarkov is closely mimicked by Dr Jerkoff, and there are of course many other parodies the keen film-goer will appreciate - for example in a well made step motion animation sequence, Emperor Wang's giant metal monster captures Dale Ardor (nee Arden) to mimic the famous sequence in which Fay Wray was captured in the 1933 version of "King Kong".In principle this film is a pure fantasy which is fairly timeless - the space travel theme is of course a feature of the original Flash Gordon series that dates back to a time when space travel was regarded as only achievable in some very distant period far into the future; whilst the name penisauraus, given to one of the stop motion creations, is clearly intended to convey a close link to the distant past. In isolation, some of these names and other connotations may give the impression that this is a fairly racy film, but in practice this is not so. Many of the sequences would be somewhat interminable, but for the humorous links which are so enjoyable for those who saw the original film, and which fully earn this film its reputation as a classic. At the moment both the original teenage cartoon film and its definitely adult Flesh Gordon counterpart are listed as DVD's; but early teenage films do not sell well today. Whilst there still appear to be enough of us old fogies who remember the cartoon to maintain reasonable sales for its parody, this may not continue much longer. Once my generation has passed into history there will be very few buyers who, without having seen the original film, would experience any great pleasure from watching a 1974 parody of it. Perhaps however both these films will continue to be sold - with the original 1936 version and its 1974 parody paired on opposite sides of the same disk. This would surely be sensible, such a combination would provide an ideal nostalgia disk, ensuring both a continuing income for the two distributors and ongoing recognition that the later film, whilst certainly not a masterpiece, has become a classic example of parody in the cinema.