They Live: Obey!

The movie is a bit of a hash, and Carpenter didn't have much of a budget to play with. The underlying ideas and themes, however, are powerful stuff. I feel like they could have really expanded upon them. Sure, it may seem cheesy and didactic now, but when I first saw it, I loved it.

Don't look at that totally gratuitous, five minute long alley fight!

Never mind the deflating ending!

The best part, for me, comes after Rowdy Roddy Piper (I have no idea what his character's name is) discovers a box of sunglasses. He has no idea what they do, but he knows they're important. Cops trashed a homeless camp searching for them. He buries the box in a trash can, and slips a pair of the cool shades on. 

Then he walks out into a street transformed.

What he beholds is not our usual world of slick advertising, with beautifully lit beautiful models surrounded by elegantly framed products. 

Instead, he sees a stark world in black and white, filled with messages like: 

Obey.

Marry and reproduce.

Stay asleep.

Consume.

Conform.

Watch TV.

Buy.

Roddy can't believe his eyes.

Then he sees a man buying a magazine, only this guy's face is stripped of the flesh, and has weird orb like eyes. It's a nightmare visage, skull like. And this horror reacts to Roddy's incredulous stare with indignation, and says, "What's your problem?" 

Good ol' Roddy can't believe his eyes.

Without the glasses though, rich douchebag looks like a normal human being: 

BAM! 

It's wonderful stuff, poking fun at not only our own larger social foibles, but the empathy challenged psychopaths who often dominate corporate board rooms and slip into police forces despite psychological checks. 

Those without empathy are the true reptilians in our society. 

Keep your bubble gum supplies at hand, for They live... among us!

Magnum Thrax: Future Fossil, Part 1 of 5

I wrote this Magnum Thrax short story as an action piece. In hindsight, it may have a bit too much action. Live and learn. The story's set in a satiric sci-fi trope fest, a post-modern post-apocalypse. I'll be posting some notes on the why's of Magnum Thrax after the story concludes.

Enjoy!

The leopard spotted tank raced across the searing hot salt flats, pulling a train of wagons loaded with oak barrels. A large, Vegas-style sign spun atop the turret, emblazoned with ‘Pleasurepit Five’ in neon pink. 

The vehicle slowed as it approached a rock formation that jutted out of the salt ocean. Their it paused for a moment, engine revving. 

The ruin of a big purple transport rig lay forlorn in the sand to the right. The front windshield was shattered, and the glittering purple paint was streaked by ragged claw marks. 

Far above, in the crystal blue sky, advertising clouds drifted, shilling products that hadn’t been made for a thousand years.

The tank's cupola swivelled towards a cleft in the rock to the left, wide enough for a vehicle. There were signs on either side of the entrance, promising water and goods for gold, and death for those who couldn’t pay.

The engine roared. Greasy smoke belched from rusted exhaust pipes. The tank charged up into the narrow passage, clipping the sides of the granite canyon. Sparks and stone chips sprayed out form each impact as the tank raced recklessly forward. 

Several harrowing hairpin turns later, the metal beast pulled out of the canyon’s cool shadows into a gloriously sunlit sand cove. The walls were lined with stacked, makeshift residences constructed out of salvaged materials looted from ancient buildings. Along the north face, cog wheels mounted on steel supports suspended a rickety freight elevator over a thirty-foot wide hole in the ground. Above it was a wooden sign that proclaimed, "Welcome to Utan Oasis."

The top turret hatch popped open, and an impossibly good looking man stuck his head out, with a full head of glorious hair, sharp cheek bones and square jaw. Obviously genetically enhanced. He wore wrap around sunglasses and a Seventies-style white disco suit that never, ever got dirty. 

His name was Magnum Thrax. He was eighteen and he still had zits.

“Kal!” he called. “Kal! Where are ya, buddy? It’s Thrax!”

Silence. 

“KAL!!!"

Thrax swore. It’d been a week since he’d last had radio contact with his friend. He bit his lip and scanned the compound.

No one in sight.

Dust blew. An unsecured door clattered in the wind.

Thrax tapped the tank’s top with the butt of his rifle, and hauled himself out. “C’mon, ladies. Time to play hide and seek.”

Other hatches clanged open and five impossibly beautiful women, wearing skimpy outfits of latex, fishnets, and camouflage, clambered out. They hefted incongruously large energy weapons that hummed with gigawatt-voltage menace. 

“Hi Mr. Thrax; no sign of your friend, then?” asked one wearing classic Iris van Herpen boots. She wore a white armband with a red cross on it. Thrax struggled to remember her name. Candy. That was it! The team medic.

“Nope, nada. I gotta find him,” proclaimed Thrax, roughly running a hand through his hair. "I just gotta!" 

“Aw, hey, hey now,” soothed Candy, her voice welling with empathy. "It'll be okay, you'll see.” 

“Damn well better,” growled Thrax. “If he’s lost Lil’ Eastwood, I’m gonna kick his ass!”

Candy scrunched her pert nose and gave him a confused look. “Eastwood?”

“Thrax's gun,” explained Kitty, leaning over Candy's shoulder. She squinted up at Thrax, who was backlit by the summer sun. “You and that stupid magnum. Who names a gun, anyway?” 

Thrax bristled. “Everyone names guns. It happens to be very common.” He looked to the others for confirmation. “Am I right? Like naming a sword, or a hat.”

Kitty shut off her mobile entertainment unit and slipped it into her back pocket. The latex sucked it tight to her skin. “It’s still dumb. And we’re here for the zinc load, not Kal, and not your gun.” 

“Wait.” Thrax was still hung up on the naming thing. “I seem to remember it was you who named the tank, ‘Big Bad Bitch’.” 

Kitty gave him her zinger look. “Well, yeah. It’s a tank. Anyway, Kal should never have gone ahead in the first place. That’s his bad move and he should suck up the consequences. We just need to find the zinc for our reploboxes and split.”

Thrax ignored her and pointed at the tallest, most regal of the androids, his squad sarge, Andromeda. “Andy, take Sister Cinnamon and check the church. Could be a, you know, service or somethin’ goin’ on.”

“Yessir!” Andromeda levelled her weapon and headed off, followed by Cinnamon. Their six-inch high combat boot heels scuffed up dust as they skittered sexily away.

Thrax scanned the otherwise empty compound. “Where are all the Utans?” he muttered. The place was usually crawling with the ugly fellas. He lit an atomic cigarette, took a deep drag, and hopped off the tank’s hull. If the residents weren’t in church, in bed, or at work, they'd be drinking, belching, and barfing in Betties’ Norstar Bar. 

He strolled towards it, puffing on the glowing green atomic cig.

Three androids, Kitty, Miss Jade, and Thumper, spread out and followed behind him, weapons at the ready. Candy stayed with the tank, which was just as well. As a medbot, she wasn’t a fighter.

Thrax leapt up the steps and barged inside.

He wished he hadn’t: the stench of decaying flesh inside was overwhelming. Bodies were strewn all over: sprawled over tables, on the floor, or disemboweled where they’d sat. Entrails were smeared on the bar. Thrax spat out the cig and covered his mouth with a handkerchief. Working quickly, he walked by the bodies, checking faces. 

Kal wasn’t among them. 

Whew!

Bile rose in his throat. He began to gag, and there was no stopping it. 

He stumbled out, vomiting as he went, adding to the colourful crimson mess. As he stood panting and trying to recover his equilibrium, he noticed that the door and surrounding corrugated metal sheets were riddled with bullet and energy bolt holes. 

Thrax heaved up more food bits. The sun beat down on his back as the last remnants of his lunch splattered over cracked wood boards. He sighed, wiped the drool from his lower lip and straightened up. 

The team was standing before him, expressions of disgust written all over their pretty faces. 

Crap.

Well, screw’em. Who cared what a bunch of synthetics thought, anyway?

He jerked a thumb at the bar. “All dead.” Drinking at Betty's would never be quite the same again.

“Oh, man, now that’s just nasty,” said Kitty, looking at Thrax’s well digested lunch. “Why didn't you just turn off your sense of smell, boss-man?”

Dammit, thought Thrax. Kitty was right: like the androids, Thrax wore an invisible, full body nano-suit that protected him from radiation and contamination. But it was on manual. With a thought, he activated the auto-defenses. Next week he’d get one of those virtual avatar assistants to keep track of these things. Maybe the Monroe AI model. She had a sexy voice. “Okay, olfactory sensors blocked. Now: Kitty, Miss Jade, I want you to sweep and clear. Hostiles could still be here. Thumper, you’re with me.” 

“Wait, hold on there, kiddo,” groused Kitty. “You're sending me with Jade? You know she’s the newbie, right? I just don't think that’s happening, unh-unh.”

“Shut it, trooper,” snapped Thrax, regretting that he’d sent off Andromeda, his squad sergeant. It was only his second mission, though. He'd just turned eighteen, so Kitty-Big-Mouth wasn’t about to acknowledge his authority without a fight, despite Thrax being rated fully human, and then some. He had good genes. Amazingly good genes, as a matter of fact. Everyone in The Pit knew it. Meanwhile, her android code was dodgy. These androids weren’t military grade, just sexbot models repurposed for combat by self-taught coders out of pure desperation. They were the defenders of Pleasurepit Five Sex Emporium, the last bastion of human civilization. It wasn’t a great museum, or a university, or a monastery. It was just a sex emporium.

Thrax wondered if that was ironic.

“Bad enough I’m here at all, and ya’ll know it, too. I was supposed to be guarding the grain silos back at The Pit. No way I'm going with Jade into some monster buffet,” said Kitty defiantly, doubling down. “She's a desk jockey, and she never shuts up, either. Give us totally away. No offence, girl.”

Miss Jade bristled. “Seriously? That… that is totally unfair. I earned the right to be here. I studied combat manuals for weeks, and I completed all the basic firearm regulation and maintenance simulations.” She tugged her micro mini dress down and smoothed the plastic. “I happen to have been going over mission relevant background.”

"Uh-huh. The Big Bang?”

Jade shrugged and looked at her immaculately buffed boots. “I wanted context.”

“Whatever,” groaned Thrax, bored of their bickering. He reached over and snapped a switch on Jade’s bulky laser rifle. “It helps if you turn the safety off.”

Miss Jade blushed beat red. “I knew that, Mister Thrax, I was just diligently waiting for the right moment. And, point of fact, regulations specifically state that weapons should be kept on safety until–”

“Oh, bull, girl!” Kitty got in her face and wagged a finger. “Regulations get people killed, ya know, which is why you shouldn’t be here. And why I’m not going with you.”

“Enough!” Thrax restrained the urge to pop an artery. “You two got your orders, I’m not changing them, so make the best of it. Go. Now!”

Kitty blew a gum bubble at him, then popped it. “Fine. Make ya feel big, does it?”

“And go left,” added Thrax. “Check the living quarters. Me and Thumper will check the warehouses.”

“‘Thumper and I’,” Jade corrected, prissily. “Precision in all things, Mister Thrax. Holistic nature of life.”

Thrax ignored her. Foxy librarian sexbots like Jade were extremely punctilious. Great at planning, and organizing your archaic book collection, but damn annoying in the field. And she was always trying to get him to read. Read! What era did she think they were in? No one did that crap anymore! If it wasn’t text in a video game, or on a piece of munitions, Thrax wasn’t interested. Reading was for old people. Everyone used neural taps, anyway. Jade’s saving grace? Her base model was the Foxy Librarian, so she followed orders and procedures, wasn’t nearly as annoying as Kitty, and had a head full of facts, figures and obscure knowledge, which came in handy at the oddest of times.

Thrax spat and trotted over to the first warehouse, followed by Thumper. It was a big ugly thing, mostly embedded in solid rock. He motioned for the voluptuous android to pull back the door. It slid easily on greased tracks. 

Thrax scanned the interior with his weapon’s sensors.

Empty. 

No life form readings, and even worse–no zinc. 

“You are soooo screwed, mission leader,” observed Thumper. “If you go back empty handed, they’re gonna–”

Thrax spun about, anger and expletives flooding his adolescent brain. He kicked the dirt and had a little spastic frustration fit. “Damn freakin’ fubarks!” he swore through gritted teeth, trying to keep his volume down. “So unfair!” 

“So’s the lot of an android,” said Thumper dryly. Her model was athletic, rambunctious, and not very tactful. 

But neither was Thrax.

Thrax took a few deep breaths and calmed himself down. Thumper had a point. “True. The humans at The Pit, all of us would be dead without you. We owe you androids everything.”

“Huh,” said Thumper, taken aback. She started to say something, then stopped.

“What? Spill it,” said Thrax. 

“I just… don’t think any human’s ever bothered to tell me that before. Thanks. I always thought you were dicks.” 

“Dicks? That’s what you think of your creators?”

“Well… I mean, yeah. It’s egocentric to create entire species who’s only purpose is to fulfill your sick, twisted, depraved fantasies. Honestly, the stuff with the plastic and the fish and those rings–”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture. No need for details.” His future was on the line with this mission. The Sex Emporium’s Grand Council of Elders, Protectors of the Ancient Enlightenment, had made that real clear. For an element so rare, Zinc was essential for their reploboxes to make vital equipment.

If he didn’t get that zinc, his ass was grass!

*****

For more Magnum Thrax, see the novel, Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom. 

Available on Amazon. 

starsIt's Mad Max on crack – Glen Conley

"Underneath this outlandish story’s brash exterior lies astute social commentary and sharp, unapologetic humor." – Kirkus Reviews

Retro-review: Revisiting Flash - a-ah - Saviour of the universe!

Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?

For pure, ridiculous fun, nothing beats Flash Gordon. It's sugar saturated sci-fi cheese. You couldn't, survive on a diet of such fare, but it makes for a great treat after a season of, say, The Wire (which is so grim it's like beating your hopes with a two by four for an hour), or a grueling day in the corporate trenches fighting rival fiefdoms. I mean departments. But enough of reality.

Every now and then you want leave all your concerns behind, slip the surly bonds of earth and flit about in the stratosphere of juvenile silliness.

If such is your desire, I humbly recommend the critically savaged 1980 Flash Gordon.

It's right up there with delights like Army of Darkness and Galaxy Quest.

Based on the comic strip by Alex Raymond (which was King Features Syndicate's answer to Buck Rogers), this movie doesn't just indulge in tropes, it revels in them. It's like someone sent the writer's internal sophistication censor packing and let his inner ten year old run riot: there are Hawkmen, an entire people of Robin Hood look-a-likes in tights (honestly, is there only one clothes manufacturer in Arborea?), floating cities, ray guns, sword fights, rocket cycles, hideous monsters, beautiful maidens and seductive femme fatales.

What's not to like?

According to the director, Mike Hodges (who also directed Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man), it's "the only improvised $27 million dollar movie ever made."

In one early scene, our eponymous hero actually identifies himself to the alien Emperor Ming as 'Quarterback, New York Jets' as this would have meaning to an alien overlord. Then he plays 'irresistible force' linebacker to Ming's flat footed Imperial Goon Squad lineup, and starts tossing about a metal egg like it's a football, all while Dale Arden cheers him on from the sidelines.

Flash shows aliens how it's done football style.
All astronauts in future should be NFL quarterbacks.

It's gob smacking, high octane kitsch and it's totally awesome.

That's the miracle of Flash Gordon.

You know immediately it wasn't made in the USA: European DNA suffuses the flick and there are few Americans in the cast. In particular, the over-the-top art direction (What isn't over-the-top about Flash Gordon?) is more reminiscent of Barbarella rather than Star Wars.

And then there's the sociopolitical subtext. It's most obvious in the hero and the villains, who embody stereotypes from the mid-Twentieth Century.

Ming's control panel of Dooooooom:
complete with hail, earthquake, and volcano options!
Does Walmart carry these?

Flash Gordon (Sam Jones), the all American football quarterback hero, simply put, is America: bright eyed, naive, idealistic, and brimming with hope and positivity. He's eager to stand up for what's right while being utterly oblivious to larger political ramifications. His exhortations to team up and fight Ming ("Ming is the enemy of every creature of Mongo! Let's all team up and fight him.") are so simple minded as to seem childish to the jaded barons of Mongo. These lords cannot even conceive of playing a positive sum game, so broken is their sense of altruism and justice.

Nor do they even know how to cry or feel empathy. So sad.

Outer Space Eurotrash Sophisticates. 'Pitiful earthlings, who can save you now?'

Flash's idealism stands in sharp contrast to these inhabitants of Mongo, who are all played by Europeans: Max von Sydow (Ming), Timothy Dalton (Barin), Brian Blessed (Vultan), Peter Wyngarde (General Klytus), Mariangela Melato (Kala), and Ornella Muti (Aura). They're sophisticated, cynical, duplicitous, Machiavellian, and engaged in endless, internecine struggle. They'd stab their own mother in the back. Dominated by their tyrannical Emperor Ming, they believe one can only win if others lose. Their hearts have been hardened by despotism and oppression, and they exist without hope or belief that things can be different.

It's a planet of narcissistic manipulators who lack all empathy. But they have sex appeal to make up for it.

Idealize, devalue, discard, baby.
The Mongons (?) lecture with sophisticated British or Italian accents, while Flash sounds like he just left a farm in Kansas. Ming is verbally dexterous, spinning webs with seductive words, while Flash uses them with the finesse of a Big Bud 747 tractor. Naive, honest, direct vs. seductive, beguiling, deceitful. Which would you prefer? Think of it as a self-revelation test.

Casting the urbane Max Von Sydow as Ming was a stroke of genius. The veteran actor contrasts beautifully with Sam Jones' Flash. Sydow's Ming is a brilliant, charistmatic megalomaniacal, narcissistic psychopath.

Flash identifies Ming's true nature within the first few minutes of encountering the dictator. It isn't hard: Ming is busy demanding a subject fall on his own sword to demonstrate his loyalty when our heroic trio of daring earthlings arrive. Flash rather unwisely identifies Ming, out loud, as a psycho (Speak truth to power!), which is overheard by a security robot. This inevitably leads to Flash being sentenced to death.

Rulers of the Universe don't like hearing the truth from alien country bumpkins.

Physcially, the pair are opposites: Flash has youthful good looks and great hair, while Ming is old and chrome dome bald. You know who the good guy is with a glance. Cinema short hand in action.

Flash himself goes through the film actually labelled, "Flash". In the font of the movie's logo. So Meta.

It's no surprise that the 25 year old Sam Jones, who did most of his own stunts, is outclassed by his European counterparts, most of whom were experienced stage actors. But it works: he's meant to be simple, all the better for sophisticates to look down upon. Flash is the American interloper, the earnest G.I., the bourgeois American, blundering about with a surfeit of good will and helpfulness while the shocked Mongo elites stand agog at his lack of manners and insight. Doesn't he know it's a dog eats dog world? That you cannot trust anyone? Cooperation and compromise is for rubes.

Wake up! Remember Munich!

Which brings us to Dr. Hans Zarkov (Topol). Zarkov represents The Jewish Other, for, despite his European accent, he's not from Mongo. It's no coincidence Flash is accompanied by a Jewish scientist: hundreds fled Europe to escape persecution by the Nazis. Ming's minion Klytus, head of Mongo's secret police, even praises Hitler.

Yet Zarkov doesn't fit in on earth, either, where his theories got him expelled from NASA, America's science Mecca. He's a one man diaspora, who doesn't fit in anywhere, not quite. But he does work well with Flash, the living embodiment of the American Superego. Jim Crow and the uglier aspects of America couldn't fit on Zarkov's rocket, and didn't make it over to (European) Mongo. Resourceful, intelligent, and moral, Zarkov's a slice of Einstein mixed with secret agent. He's the brains of the trio.

Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) is the perfect female compliment to Flash, all earnest and well meaning American pie. She's also proves resourceful and spunky, as a New York gal should.

The film could be said to work on another level still, with Flash representing American entertainment, Hollywood, penetrating into Europe's higher brow but fractured cultural milieu. Hollywood was overwhelming European studios and establishing huge sci-fi blockbuster beachheads with hits like Star Wars in 1977.

Now it was time for The Europeans Strike Back. Many attempts have been made to mimic Hollywood's sci-fi success, such as the batsh*t insane LifeForce, but Flash Gordon is the one that successfully fused European and American DNA.

The capital looks like a great big red wedding cake.

Thoroughly tongue in cheek, and all the better for it, Flash Gordon knows it is silly and preposterous, like the fevered dream of a ten year old boy, a spiritual ancestor of Axe Cop, yet also manages to also be relentlessly fun and enjoyable.

The screenwriter,  Lorenzo Semple, Jr., also wrote for the Sixties Batman TV show, and it shows. Batman and Flash share a similar, campy sensibility, although Flash is buoyed by a far bigger budget and has better action sequences with real tension. That so much money was thrown at such an eccentric script can be disconcerting for some audience members who are more fiscally responsible.

In fact, Semple himself didn't want to make it a comedy:

"Dino wanted to make Flash Gordon humorous. 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. That was a catastrophic thing to do, with so much money involved... I never thought the character of Flash in the script was particularly good. But there was no pressure to make it any better. Dino had a vision of a comic-strip character treated in a comic style. That was silly, because Flash Gordon was never intended to be funny. The entire film got way out of control." 

And Dino only read Semple's scripts after they were translated into Italian:

"He reads English better than many people realize, but translates all of his scripts into Italian. We were living in Nantucket at the time, and his translator was a woman whose name I forget. She could barely translate the scripts; if it said, 'The tall, beautiful woman walked into the room,' she'd say, 'Oh, what a beautiful cat.'"

It just gets more absurd: on set, not only could many people not communicate on essential matters due to language barriers, not everyone was even on the same page regarding the tone of the film, at least according to Melody Anderson (Dale Arden):

"The director said, 'I want you and Sam to try to go for a relationship, make this as human as possible. Don't camp it up or go for laughs.' That's why the movie's so funny, because we didn't try to make it campy. In fact, 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. In fact, he re-did the cheerleading scene. He wanted it to be serious...with macho man out there. Play it very straight, the more you play it straight, the funnier it is. I think that's why Flash and Dale work, because of the way we played it."  

"I'm supposed to serious here, right, guys?… I'll just play it straight."

Sometimes when you skirt the edge of The Abyss of Total and Utter Catastrophe you wind up escaping with something unexpectedly, accidentally wonderful.

Personally, I love the film's humour and unrestrained, campy joie de vivre style, and wouldn't have it any other way.

The sets and costumes look like they were designed by a madman, something Dali might dream up, and the film has aged better for it. The art director, Danilo Donati, outdid himself with his grandiose, operatic sets and sexy-silly costumes of gold trim and spandex and guaze. There's just nothing out there to really compare it to, other than, perhaps, Barbarella or Fellini's pictures. Sadly, those are virtually unwatchable today. Frighteningly, executive producer Dino De Laurentiis actually wanted Fellini to direct originally.

Brrr.

Bullet dodged, there.

Lava lamp skies of pink, white, and purple swirl over the jagged gold and red capital of Mongo City, while ginormous trees stretch up to infinite heights in Arborea. Everything is warped and exaggerated, like in a fun house mirror. Mongo City is machined oppression, the fantasy of a control freak, while Arborea is nature run amok. It's a spiritually empty but scientifically advanced urban state vs. rural tree hugging druids who dress like Robin Hood. There is even a court jester of sorts in Arborea, a wise counsel for the stiff, Prince Barin. Barin doesn't like what his spirit guide says, but knows he needs to hear it. Techno-Emperor Ming would have such an insolent figure executed before breakfast. The Hawkman's floating sky city is airy and dream like, detached from the concerns of the rest of the world, their isolationist 'I stick my neck out for no man' position delivering them inevitably into subservience to Ming.

For divided the kingdoms of Mongo are easily dominated by the Machiavellian despot. As Princess Aura observes, "Every moon of Mongo is a kingdom. My father keeps them fighting each other constantly. It's a really brilliant strategy."

Sound familiar?

It should.

Flash and Barin face off on a spinning disk with extendable steel spikes.
Because… everything is better on a wobbly, spinning disk
covered in sharp spikes over a bottomless abyss.
Try it with your next company meeting!

There are great action sequences, and yet the goofiness is never allowed to undermine them or rob the film of (admittedly lighthearted) dramatic tension. It's a cartoon struggle for an alien world, but still a struggle, and not quite so wink-wink that you're thrown out of the adventure aspect entirely.

Most of the characters get at least a few instantly classic lines:

Princess Aura: But my father has never kept a vow in his life!
Dale Arden: I can't help that, Aura. Keeping our word is one of the things that make us better than you.

Ming: It's what they call tears. It's a sign of their weakness.

And then there's the kick-ass theme song. It was the first time a rock band scored a major picture (they'd follow it up with Highlander's score), and Queen threw themselves into the task with gusto. Dino had never heard of them before, but he was nothing if not willing to experiment. They came back with a soundtrack that makes you want to stand up and cheer, it's that feel good.

The lyrics bear repeating:

Flash - a-ah - saviour of the universe
Flash - a-ah - he'll save everyone of us
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Flash - a-ah - he's a miracle
Flash - a-ah - king of the impossible
He's for everyone of us
Stand for everyone of us
He'll save with a mighty hand
Every man every woman
Every child - with a mighty flash
Flash - a-ah
Flash - a-ah - he'll save everyone of us
Just a man
With a man's courage
He knows nothing but a man
But he can never fail
No one but the pure in heart
May find the golden grail
Oh oh - oh oh
Flash

Yeah. Go, Flash, go!

Flash is sentenced to death for defying Ming, while Dale is sentenced to… marry the lecherous despot. Hard to say which would be worse. Zarkov is shuttled off to be brainwashed and turned into an agent of the secret police.

Saved by a lustful and slinkily seductive Princess Aura, Flash must then endure the machinations of a jealous rival, the Prince Barin. Oh, those silly blue bloods. She's a little bit wanton, he's a little wooden woodie.

"You mean you two… and he… and I'm… Oooh, that's not good. Can you say, 'Triangulation'?"

Flash even has a nice, quiet one-on-one chat with Ming the Merciless along the way. Ming weaves verbal rings around him, and tempts Luke – I mean Flash – to The Dark Side by offering the young man a kingdom of his very own: the earth. After, that is, Ming's finally finished 'toying' with it. Which is a polite way of saying 'kicking the planet about and killing billions'. Ever noble, our man Flash turns the offer down and flies a battlecruiser into Ming's wedding.


It's a move right out of G.R.R. Martin's playbook.

Ming's minions are so decadent, so used to being on top and facing little to no real resistance, that when the revolution arrives they are poorly prepared for it and start to fold like cheap chairs.

Of course, Flash saves the universe in the end, as your inner 10 year old would expect. The naive young do-gooder and all American boy unites cynical, decadent alien aristocrats in opposition to real evil and triumphs in spectacular fashion. A new, better day dawns.

Boo-yah, baby!

The film's tone is supercharged feel good, and this is reinforced by the rocking sound track and zany dialogue.

The climax reunites the characters from earth (who, oddly, are rarely in each others' physical presence after the first third of the film) and Flash delivers all Mongo from Ming's oppressive grasp. Mortally wounded, the weakening emperor vanishes into his power ring, which clatters to the floor. Flash is informed the earth has been saved and jumps for joy into a freeze frame.

As the credits roll, Ming's ring is picked up by a mysterious, black gloved hand. We hear Ming's laughter, and the words, 'The End' appear on the screen, followed by… a question mark.

Is it really the end, after all?

Yeah, pretty much.

At least for this iteration of the franchise. Which may be just as well. Given the haphazard way it came together, recapturing the original's unintentionally madcap magicwould have been a very difficult task indeed. This was a freakish, one-of-a-kind happy accident.

But what we have is pretty awesome.

"Give me the sugar, baby!"

Flash delivers.