Flash Gordon (The 1936 Serial)

Flash Gordon (1936)

Runtime: 245 minutes

Directed by: Frederick Stephani/Ray Taylor

Starring: Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson, Frank Shannon

From: Universal

Flash... AAAAAAAHHH!

Recently I was struck with the realization that sometime in my life, I should finally view one of those serials from a movie era long since passed. For a long while now I have pondered what it would have been like to have gone out for a night at the local cineplex back in the 30's to 50's. It would typically be a double feature (an A movie then a B movie) along with some combination of a newsreel, a cartoon like something from Looney Tunes or Disney, a comedy short like The Three Stooges, and a serial divided into 15 or 20 minute segments that is shown each week. In the case of Flash Gordon, this has 13 chapters so it would take audiences a few months to see the entire story. I picked this out in particular because it was available in full and is among the most famous of its type. As I'll mention later, it inspired several beloved franchises.

Those that have seen the 1980 movie will be familiar with the general plot of Flash and Dale Arden tagging along with Professor Zarkov to the planet Mongo where they have to stop Emperor Ming from ruling the universe & his daughter Princess Aura has taken a shine to Gordon. There is also Vultan and his Hawkmen, Kala, Barin... however, new to me were Shark Men, which were actually humans wearing what appeared to be gold caps and were obviously “inspired” by Egyptian iconography. Lion Men look even less different; the leader of that tribe was an older man with a huge beard. Ming's look here: it was copied exactly for Max von Sydow's appearance as the character a few decades later. The first twelve chapters had a cliffhanger and 2 through 13 began with an opening text crawl which stated what happened in the previous chapter as a reminder or an info dump for those that missed the last installment. It is indeed true that Lucas and Spielberg took the idea of serials like this and updated it to create Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

This was made on the cheap, reusing sets, music, and at times entire scenes from previous Universal productions. Most of the action is not what you'd call spectacular and it is campy as hell. I mean, there is a guy in a gorilla suit who has a unicorn horn, and a giant octopus which is tragically known as an OCTOSAK. Yet, that is a big part of its charm, the silliness of this epic adventure. Olympic medalist in swimming Buster Crabbe at least looked the part as the hero and the cast as a whole was acceptable... although for many of them, I won't be forgetting those who played the roles a few decades later. Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton in 1980) was a chubby middle-aged guy with a mustache who dresses like a gladiator, and most of the time wears a helmet as he's a balding gentleman. For me that made his lust towards the lovely Princess Aura all the more amusing. Personally, Priscilla Lawson as Aura was the most memorable aspect both in performance and how conniving the lady was... “the thirst was real” when it came to her and Flash.

This was released in a 72 minute feature length version in '36 and a 90 minute version for TV back in the 50's; I don't know if those two or a two hour fan edit that some random person uploaded on YouTube are preferable to the whole shebang... viewing it in the span of a little more than 24 hours was a little much as some segments could easily be taken out. Be that as it may, I can still say it was good overall. One day I imagine I'll see the other popular genres of the serial era, such as Western, crime and jungle settings.