Flush Flash!

Flash a-ah

Savior of the Universe

Flash!

He save everyone of us

Flash!

He's a miracle

Flash!

King of the impossible

Upbeat lyrics, full of hope, promise and daring do . . that’s what Flash Gordon is about. Instead of fun, cheesy camp played to the hilt by a motley band of actors making questionable choice, the SciFi channel has produced an ongoing series full of total crap!

When I heard last year they were going to be making a new Flash Gordon weekly series I said to myself, “Self, that just might be cool. Go set the DVR.” Ever compliant, I immediately leapt into action, picking up the remote and pressing a few buttons. A few days later I was watching the pilot of the new TV series. It sucked! It’s like it was all taking place in someone’s back yard and some leather dudes would pop in and look around menacingly. No Hawkmen. No Ming. No spaceships. Just lots and lots of crap.

I don’t actually remember much of the details of the show, having done my absolute best to block out the vapidness. My brain has precious few places enough to store information as it is without wasting the space on that turkey. I turned in over the next few weeks but saw no sign of improvement.

All this is a pity. I’d love to have a good weekly Flash Gordon series. He’s a cool character. American alpha male getting yanked from his everyday life to go on wild galactic adventures with all sorts of odd aliens and terrible, weirdo villains. It’s a great concept. I don’t want to see Flash making dinner for Dale Arden though, I want to see him flipping over a gaggle of flying monkies and saving the girl.

SciFi whines they don’t have any budget for that? All they can afford to do is set up a camcorder in the producer’s back yard and have some actors mill around? Crap, I say! Did that piece of cheese-tastic awesomeness of the 70’s have a budget? No! The Hawkmen’s wings didn’t move! They were tossed around on cables in front of a terrible green screen. The evil robot was just some old dude wearing a mask. The effects were horrible! And yet the movie was great.
Sam Jones was heroic taking out bad guys and shouting Dale’s name ever 10 minutes. Max Von Sydow was great letting his deep, rumbling voice drip with venom as he delivered his immortal line . . “I like to play with things a while before I destroy them.” That was basically the sum total of his menace, saying evil things. And it was great! We loved it! One of those crappy middle James Bond’s played the prince and he was great! And Ming’s daughter . . she was a totally hottie. When Ming had her disciplined and her top got ripped, we all thought we might get to see a little boobie. And it was great! She was a total sex kitten!

You don’t need a big budget to make an entertaining Flash Gordon! You need to have some fun though and at least try to create some exotic locales. Hopefully SyFy won’t pain us with a pitiful attempt at the other great sci-fi serial, Buck Rodgers. Let JJ Abraham do that.