Strange Dreams

This is my entry in the Secret Places and Trippy Houses Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

 

 

Alone at night in the shadows of my room,

I drift inside of a magical view.

Strange dreams invade my sleep at night! 

 

"Strange Dreams" by Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush 

 

Your dreams are the realm of fantasy. In your dreams you can be an amazing superhero, saving the world just by wagging your pinky finger. Or you can be the cock of the walk, getting the best looking girl (or guy, as the case may be...) in town. Those are what we might call "good" dreams.

 

On the other side of the coin you could be haunted by some pretty bizarre circumstances. Who among us hasn't had a dream where you were caught at school in your pajamas, or underwear, or even naked in front of your classmates? That is just a mild nightmare, as far as nightmares go. A few years ago I related a story about dreaming that flying monkeys were out to get me after watching The Wizard of Oz on TV. (A Nightmare in Oz) 

 

But the nightmares that  haunt some people are even more devastating. Again, on a personal note, I have dreamed, on several occasions of being in a terrible accident, usually while driving. To have nightmares where your actions within the dream sequence not only affect you, but also affect others, can be a cause of distress.  

 

Take for instance the dream of a world leader. God only knows what kind of sick dreams a wacko like Adolph Hitler or Kim Jong Un had or has.  But even world leaders who have some semblance of rationality, such as the President of the United States, can be a bit off kilter.  In this movie the President, played by Eddie Albert, is still holding on to a tenuous hold on rationality, but is still plagued by a recurring nightmare.

Dreamscape is a film that sometimes seems to be unsure of what it wants to be.  Is it a horror movie? (Some scenes may just scare the pants off of you).  Is it a science-fiction movie? (The idea of being able to enter the dreams of another person and interact with them is the stuff of geek sci-fi fantasy). Is it a political thriller? (The main baddie has some ulterior motives for his trying to get the President some help with his nightmares). There is even a not-so-subtle romance going on in the movie, so a case could be made for a romance movie. To top it off, the movie poster (see below) clearly tried to make a connection to the adventure film, a la Indiana Jones, although there is not much in it that could remind you of that adventure type of movie...

Besides the focal "star" of the film, (and, at this point, Dennis Quaid was just getting started, since he had only a few big roles under his belt by this time, Tough Enough, Jaws 3D and The Right Stuff, and had still not achieved the "familiar face" status he would later get), you also got some superstar talent in the form of Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer, as well as Kate Capshaw, who had just earlier this year gained some recognition for her role in the second Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The highlight of the film, for me, though, was David Patrick Kelly, who had a few years prior made his film debut in what will probably end up being his most memorable role, as Luther in The Warriors.  

Additionally, there was also George Wendt ("Norm" from Cheers), who throughout the 80's got parts as subsidiary characters in films, and Peter Jason, whose name may not be familiar, but his face surely will be if you watched many 80's movies (in particular, he was the leader of the resistance movement in They Live and was also the bartender who was the recipient of the classic line delivered by Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs... ""There's a new sheriff in town.. and his name is Reggie Hammond!") .  

Dreamscape came out in 1984 and faced the daunting competition of  such blockbusters as Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Fortunately the studios didn't actually try to pit it against those monster moneymakers:  The early summer gave the public the big guys, and let Dreamscape have the luxury of coming to the big screen in late August. It still had the opportunity to have a semi-decent draw, garnering $12 million against a (astoundingly) low budget of $6 million. (The movie LOOKS like it costs more than that, since the special effects are pretty decent...) Note: Elsewhere I have read that the producer claims ticket sales reached upwards of $25 million, take that as you will.

 

 

 

 

Dreamscape (1984):

A key recurring theme in the 80's (and beyond) is that anytime there are potential psychics involved in the story, there is ALWAYS some secret government group seeking to have control over these talented individuals. It was true in Firestarter, and it is true here also. At the beginning of the movie, Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) is discussing with Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow), pointing out that a former associate of Novotny's, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid), is just the sort of man that Blair is looking for for his project.  The project at hand is a program that purports to use psychics to enter the dreams/nightmares of patients at the institute to help them overcome the nightmares that plague them.

 

Blair wants a good talented psychic to help relieve the President of the United States (Edward Albert) deal with a recurring nightmare he has been having about causing the coming of World War III.  But Blair's motives are not altruistic. See the President (whose name is never given, but at one point he is called "John") is determined to go to a Geneva Peace Conference and try to negotiate a disarmament or at least a reduction in the available nuclear weapons stash of the country. See, the President is not only haunted by thoughts of an imminent nuclear war, but he is still dealing with the trauma of his recently deceased wife. (Thus his wife plays a prominent role in his nightmare as she is frantically running from the blast of an exploded nuclear weapon).

 

Blair, the essence of a "hawk" thinks this is a bad idea. And, as it turns out later, his plan is to kill the President in his dreams. This would have the effect of killing the President in real life, because it is established that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life, too.

But Alex has skipped out of the limelight, living basically in the shadows, using his psychic abilities to win at gambling.  When bookies show up to wrangle him into helping them Alex is not very receptive. But when some guys from his former boss's institute show up Alex uses the opportunity to escape from the bookie and his henchmen. But, when it turns out that Alex finds out his newly acquired saviors intend to basically "kidnap" him for Novotny's program, he is not entirely all that gung ho about it. Even when he finds out they intend to try to use him in the dream scheme. 

That is, until he meets Dr. Novotny's colleague, Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw). Alex is, among other things, a womanizer (and with Capshaw as his new potential conquest, who could blame him...?) So he agrees to hang on for just a little bit longer. At least until he can get Jane to agree to a romantic interlude...

 

Blair's prize psychic is Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly). Tommy Ray is the ultimate in "I'm just in this for myself" kind of thinking. It turns out that Tommy Ray is not entirely as innocent as anyone may think. Alex eventually finds a file in the offices of Blair that reveal that Tommy Ray had killed his own father.

   

As usual, when the government has it's hand in the pie, it turns out that not all is what it seems, even though Blair manages to put up a front to keep the secret agenda hidden away from Alex as well as Novotny and Jane. Before we get to that final combat in the nightmare of the President, however, we get to see Alex work his magic at helping a young boy overcome is nightmare of a boogeyman, Or, in this instance, a snake man... (By the way, the kid is played by Cory Yothers, whose sister had a bit more success in Hollywood, mainly by playing the younger sister of Alex Keaton in Family Ties).

There is also a pretty funny sequence where Alex helps out a man who is having trouble with his sex life with his wife. It turns out that he is haunted by his own "nightmare". I won't give this part away because a: it's well worth seeing on screen and b: it's just too funny to describe anyway.

Alex and Jane end up together in a dream she is having, but since Alex entered the dream without her knowing about it first, or even her acquiescence, she is understandably a bit annoyed with Alex. But she had an attraction to Alex in the first place, so she is not all that incensed by his intrusion. (Unlike other bloggers I am not going to address the non-PC issue that this scene might be looked at in today's world. I try to look at movies in the context of the time they were made, not whether they would fly today).

Alex meets up with a writer of potboilers, Charlie Prince (George Wendt), who is investigating the mysterious goings on at the institute, and eventually turns Alex on to the fact that Blair may not be all the altruistic figure he seems to be trying to promote himself as.

 

Most of the dream sequences are a bit on the low budget side (that snake man, for instance, is not really all that scary, just made more so by the music accompanying the scenes). But, considering, the time, they are pretty decent. I found out in doing research that the low quality of the dream sequences was due to the fact that the producers underestimated the time they would need. Apparently, they thought 2 months would be plenty of time. Imagine what they could have accomplished if they had given themselves at least double that... 

Ultimately, the best sequence is the final scene in which Alex and The President have to fend off Tommy Ray, who as I mentioned earlier is Blair's number one boy for dispatching the President. 

The post holocaust scenes in the President's nightmare, although not much different from any other post-nuclear war scenes depicted in movies and TV shows down through the ages, can be pretty nerve-wracking, and were probably even more so during the mid-80's when the threat of nuclear war with the Russians still loomed on the horizon. And here that filter that the camera man uses to give it an odd unworldly feel of the dream world makes the scene work all that much better.

A note here about the content: Red Dawn, which had been released earlier in 1984, was the first movie to ever receive the newly created PG13 rating, movies that weren't too graphic in other areas, but might be to violent for a standard PG rating. Dreamscape became the second. You parents with small children might keep that in consideration...  

If you decide to take the leap in to the dream world of this movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed. When I originally saw it in the theater back in 1984, I think I would have given the film an 8 rating. Here, in the retrospect of the past, and having seen many more films with an apocalyptic scene or two, made much better due to a bigger budget, I would be remiss to say it didn't drop a peg or two, but I think I could still rate it a 7.

Well, time to fire up the old Plymouth and head back home. Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

 

 

Gold Gems

This is my first entry in the Vincent Price Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis

From the TV cartoon series Pinky and the Brain:

Pinky:  "What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
The Brain: "Same thing we do every night, Pinky...try to take over the world!"
























Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966):


The essence of American International's Dr. Goldfoot movies is parody.  The hit movie series of the 60's was Sean Connery and his James Bond films.  The most recent one of these had been Goldfinger (1964).  Dr. Goldfoot was an evil scientist, who like many of Bond's nemeses, had a goal to try to take over the world.

In the first outlet for the series, Dr. Goldfoot's nefarious plan is creating girl robots who entice rich men, marry them and then drain them dry financially, to the benefit, of course, of Dr. Goldfoot.

In the second entry, Dr. Goldfoot, in cahoots with the Chinese, endeavors to start World War II between the Russians and the Americans, the ultimate goal being to destroy the two superpowers and divide the spoils between the Chinese and our "hero", Dr. Goldfoot.  To enable this, first Dr. Goldfoot sends his newly developed girl robots, accompanied with bombs, to blow up the NATO generals.  Then he hijacks an American plane with a hydrogen bomb, to blow up Moscow.

The agent, if you can call him that, is from Security Intelligence Command (S.I.C., which is pronounced "sick", leading to a couple of snickering moments when the agent says he is a "S.I.C. agent").  In the first film, the agent is played by Frankie Avalon and in the second the agent is played by Fabian, both heralding back to American International's popular "beach movies".  (In fact, in one scene in Bikini Machine, Annette Funicello makes a guest cameo.)

Both movies are highlighted by an elaborate slapstick chase.  In the first movie it is Dr. Goldfoot chasing the agents and in the second it is the agents chasing Dr. Goldfoot and his cohorts.  In both the chase is just a ploy to extend the length of the movie with numerous sight gags, regardless of the plausibility.  (i.e. a streetcar that leaves its rails and rolls down the highway or a hot air balloon that manages to keep pace with a jet airliner.)

In between you get Vincent Price at his campy best.  Sure, Price made a great evil villain, but he could pull off comedy pretty damn decently, too.  Neither of the Goldfoot entries are anywhere close to classics in the comedy realm.  And there are some flaws in the second entry.  For one thing the Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs film serves not only as a sequel to the first movie, but it was also made as a sequel to a favorite Italian series.  Hence the appearance of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrrassia as a pair of Italian dolts who help our secret agent in his quest to stop Goldfoot.

For those Mario Bava fans in the crowd, it may disconcert you to know that Bava was the director of the second feature.  Definitely not up to the standards of Black Sabbath or Kill, Baby, Kill, and maybe Bava fans have a right to be disappointed.  It would be the only time that classic horror actor Price teamed up with classic horror director Bava and that's a shame.

These movies are fun, but I highly doubt they are re-watchable, even for Price fans.  But since you are probably qurantined at least for part of the day right now, it can make for a somewhat enjoyable break from all that housekeeping or whatever it is you are doing to keep active.

Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

Little Green Men

This is my second entry in the Great Villain Blogathon hosted by Silver Screenings, Speakeasy and Shadows and Satin.

It's no wonder Martians are always trying to invade the Earth.  We Earthlings have a greener more hospitable planet conducive to life.  We have resources out the wazoo for making life more comfortable.  And we are definitely in a warmer space zone.  Which everyone and their brother seems to want.

But also it might be because they have an inferiority complex.  Most of them are as ugly as sin, which probably makes date night at the local Martian singles bar a pain in the ass.

Even I could get a date compared to those mugs.

Tim Burton must have had a long list of "favors" in order to garner the cast he got for this movie.  The long list of names above the title include such luminaries as Jack Nicholson, Rod Steiger, Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short and Danny DeVito.  It also includes Natalie Portman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lukas Haas, Jim Brown, Pam Grier and, believe it or not, Tom Jones.

Mars Attacks! (1996):

When the Martians finally decide to come to Earth (although God only knows why they would really WANT to), I only hope we are more prepared to meet them than the Earthlings of this movie.   An indecisive President James Dale (Jack Nicholson in one of two roles) can't decide whether to approach the oncoming entourage of Martians with trepidation or with enthusiasm.

Even with advisers like the renowned scientist, Professor Kessler (Pierce Brosnan) urging that they must be coming in peace because, after all, truly intelligent races are not warlike (...are we, Earthlings?  Earthlings...?  Anybody there?  Is this thing on?).

Or General Decker (Rod Steiger) who urges to be wary of them because they are coming in droves and must therefore have nefarious purposes in mind.

Dale's Press Secretary, Jerry Ross (Martin Short) has only the President's popularity in mind, so he can't be counted on to give an opinion that doesn't involve the bottom line of how the President will appear to the people.

And Dale's wife, First Lady Marsha Dale (Glenn Close) is only concerned with how it will look if she is seen with such ugly specimens of interstellar life forms.  Especially if she has to serve them on the Van Buren china.

Meanwhile in the real world (or as real as it gets in Tim Burton's reality), the common people deal with the inevitable realization that we are not the only life in the universe.  In Las Vegas, Art Land (Jack Nicholson again) deals with how he can make a profit off of the coming Martians, while his wife, Barbara (Annette Benning), a new age recovering alcoholic is ecstatic with the idea of how life will improve with the coming of an enlightened race.

In a remote BFE part of the country, Billy-Ray (Jack Black) prepares to be a part of the armed forces who will be present to greet the aliens in Nevada. While his little brother, Richie (Lukas Haas) and the rest of the family send him off.  Billy-Ray and Richie's grandmother, Florence (Sylvia Sidney) is only concerned with getting back to the nursing home and her collection of Slim Whitman records.

Back in Las Vegas, Nathalie Lake (Sarah Jessica Parker), the host of a cable fashion show, finds herself at the front of the pack when she lands an interview with Professor Kessler, despite her boyfriend Jason Stone's (Michael J. Fox) insistence that he and his legitimate news network should be given this plum job.

And former boxing superstar, (now just a glorified bouncer and attraction at one of the gambling casinos), Byron Williams (Jim Brown) is dealing with a less than accommodating boss as well as his estranged wife, Louise (Pam Grier) who is having problems of her own trying to raise their two boys.

Into this mix, bring on the Martians.  When the Martians declare they "come in peace", the hippies in the crowd release a dove, which the Martians incinerate.  And then lay waste to the assembled crowd.  Giving lie, it would seem, that they came in peace...don'tcha think?

But the ever positive crowd behind President Dale insist that the Martians may have just misread the dove factor, that maybe to the Martians a dove meant war.  So what does Dale do?  He invites the Martian ambassador and his coterie to appear before Congress.  Which the Martians waste with gusto.

President Dale: "I want the people to know they still have 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for them, and that ain't bad."

The Martians have everything going for them.  If you've seen War of the Worlds or Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, you know that alien technology almost always trumps whatever feeble attempts the earthlings can pull out of their proverbial pockets.  (Can't we all just get along...?)

But just when it seems like we might all have to die (or at least learn how to say "Yassuh, Massa!" in Martian), the bizarre wit of Tim Burton comes into play.  How the Martians are defeated is well worth sitting through this film. If that sounds as a bit like the film is a drag before the ending comes, it's not.  This is one of Burton's funniest films and is cool on so many levels.  The CGI Martians not the least of them.

But just when you think the nightmare is over, along comes Tom Jones, crawling out of a cave to sing "It's Not Unusual"...  (Hey, I warned you Tom Jones was in this thing at the beginning...)

Well, folks, time to head home.  The world is safe once again from those disgusting Martians.  Now if someone could just do something about all those politicians...  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Road Rage

This is my first entry in the Great Villain Blogathon hosted by Speakeasy, Silver Screenings and Shadows and Satin

Here he comes!  Machine Gun Joe!  Loved by thousands, hated by millions!

Yessiree!  They don't come any badder!  Darth Vader eat your heart out.  Machine Gun Joe Viterbo could run rings around your black-caped ass and have time to eat a stromboli or two in between acts.

Machine Gun Joe, who has the second best record in the annual Death Race runs has a deep and abiding hatred of his rival Frankenstein, the only other two-time winner of the Death Race and the only one who has a better record than Viterbo.  But Viterbo hates being second best in anything.  (Which is why I won't even put him below Darth Vader on the bad guy list.  Strangulation I can deal with.  But a couple hundred machine gun bullets?  That'd hurt...)

Death Race 2000 (1975):

In the year 2000, the world is a vision of dystopia that seems somewhat familiar today.  Albeit one in which America has somehow garnered a President-for-life dictator. The President, in all his magnanimous glory, has established an annual race in which all of the racers are given the task of racing across the United States from New York to Los Angeles.  The first one to arrive in Los Angeles is not necessarily the winner, however.

Because in the violence loving future, the racers have an added goal of running over any civilians they can find in their path.  Points are given based on the age of the victim and these are accrued to their score.  So technically, a racer could arrive in LA first, but still be second in the winner's bracket because he or she didn't kill enough people en route.

The racers are a hodgepodge of tropes, much like the WWF of today.  And each racer has their own navigator/sidekick who helps the driver achieve his or her goal.  .You have Matilda the Hun ( Roberta Collins) and her second, "Herman the German" (Fred Grandy; Gopher from "The Love Boat") who are a Nazi-themed duo.

You have Nero the Hero (Martin Kove) and Cleopatra (Leslie McRay), who are Roman gladiators.

You have Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov) and Pete (William Shephard) who are Western heroes.

You have the favorite star Frankenstein (David Carradine), who in the tradition of all Frankenstein's is supposedly pieced together with spare parts after numerous accidents in previous races, along with his navigator, Annie Smith (Simone Griffith).

And then you have Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), a gangster with his moll, Myra (Louisa Moritz).

Frankenstein, for his part, is just another driver, although he has been saddled with a new navigator.  Unbeknownst to him, Annie is the granddaughter of Thomasina Paine (Harriet Medin), the leader of a resistance group determined to bring down the Death Race and to overthrow the rule of the President.

The race begins with a real bang as Viterbo shows up, and hearing the cheers for Frankenstein and boos for him opens up fire on the stadium.  Those kills don't count, Joe.  You gotta run them over, not shoot them...  Joe does have some sense of the rules though.  And at one point he takes out his own pit crew.  Which the judges determine counts in the total of his "kills".

The race takes off, and Joe scores first.  But the fly in the ointment is the resistance group who aren't above setting up traps to kill the drivers in order to achieve their goals.  They lure the drivers into apparently easy kills only to have them blown up or drive off a cliff (through a fake detour tunnel, shades of Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons!)

Eventually, of course, it comes down to our two "heroes"; Frankenstein and Viterbo.  And with Frankenstein apparently swayed over to the side of the resistance by Annie, that leaves only Viterbo to fight for for the good old American Way of violence at all costs.

Some of the better side scenes come from the trio of commentators who give the play by play action.  Harold (Carle Bensen), a Howard Cosell knockoff, gives a straight forward no-nonsense account.

Grace Pander (Joyce Jameson) is the on the scenes girl, with a penchant for calling all the riders "a dear dear friend of mine".

And Junior Bruce (played by disc jockey "The Real Don Steele") is a riot as an over the top play-by play guy.

The dark comic aspect of the film may be missed by some due to the bloodshed on screen, but Paul Bartel, the director of the film, as an eye for real black comedy.  You should check out Eating Raoul, another of Bartel's genius black comedies, for a true look at his bizarre wit. Lust in the Dust is also worth a look.  Bartel only directed a handful of films, and may be more recognizable as a character actor.  (he has 91 credits as an actor).  But among Roger Corman's impressive list of "discoveries" in the field of directorship, Bartel stands out as one of the best in  my opinion.

Stallone was still a year away from true stardom with his role in Rocky, but this movie  represents an excellent window into the kind of character with which he would make a name for himself, as a gung-ho don't give a rat's ass about the rules type of guy.

Well, folks, that revving sound you hear is me firing up the old Plymouth.  Drive safely, folks.  (After all, this is only a movie.  We don't actually have  a Death Race...yet...)


Quiggy

 

Martian Menace

This is my entry in the Made in 1938 Blogathon hosted by Pop Culture Reverie and In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. 




Back in the 30's and 40's, a trip to the movies was like an all-day sucker.  You got more than just one film (and I don't mean an interminable series of coming attractions).  You got a newsreel (this being before television nightly newscasts), a cartoon, maybe even a second feature, but you also sometimes got what were referred to as serials.  Usually these would be a 15 part series that continued weekly, and you had to go back every week to see how the serial hero (or heroine) got out of the last cliffhanger predicament.

Hank Davis in his excellent two part book series Classic Cliffhangers describes the serials as as "classic examples of early low-budget filmmaking."  He even credits the bad ones as "silly and stilted, but always charming and sometimes bizarre."  The serial actually got it's start in the silent film days, mainly with a 1914 series called "The Perils of Pauline", but it really took off in the early 30's.  You could go see many of the action stars of the day in a weekly recounting of an adventure, which almost always ended with the hero in some predicament that left the audience anticipating how he or she would get out of it, thus insuring a return next week.

The serials weren't always well-acted, which explains why a lot of the serial stars never made the transition from serials to major motion picture star status.  (John Wayne being one of the exceptions, who got his start in three serials from the 30's; The Shadow of the Eagle, The Hurricane Express,  and The Three Musketeers.)  Serials are something that I think could improve the movie experience today  I find them enjoyable, and although I tend to watch them all in their entirety in one sitting, I think I could enjoy a weekly ongoing adventure if one were done right.

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938):

Firstly, one of the neatest things about this serial is the opening.  If you are familiar with serials, each episode, after the credits, usually included an encapsulation of what has gone on before.  In some serials this was a voice over and in others it was just a text on screen.  In this serial they added a twist that I hadn't seen in other serials I watched.  A Martian guard appears before a screen and adjusts the screen which segments through four visuals on the screen.  It looks like a comic strip panel from the Flash Gordon comic strip, and to my untrained eye, it looks like they might have even been drawn by the artist, Alex Raymond, who actually drew the comic strip at the time.

Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe), accompanied by Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) and Dr. Zarkov (Frank Shannon) are returning from having defeated the evil megalomaniacal Ming the Merciless (in the 1936 serial Flash Gordon). But the Earth is in serious danger.

A series of devastating earthquakes and floods and other natural disaster is wreaking havoc on the planet.  Initially it is thought that the planet Mongo, which is still in proximity of the Earth, is the source of the havoc.  Flash, along with Dale and Dr. Zarkov head off to find out what's going on.  Unfortunately they have a stowaway in the persona of Happy Hapgood (Donald Kerr), a reporter who has managed to insinuate himself on to the ship.

 But it soon becomes clear that Mars is the actual culprit, emitting a beam that is sucking all the nitron (which I think may be movie-ese for nitrogen) from the Earth's atmosphere. And while the Queen of Mars,  Azura (Beatrice Roberts), is behind the evil plan, Ming (Charles B. Middleton) is also helping.  Which becomes a surprise to Flash (and anyone who watched the first serial), because at the end of the last adventure it seemed apparent that Ming had perished.  But as anyone can tell you, you can't keep a bad man down.

 The reason behind the nefarious plan to steal the Earth's nitron is Azura needs it to defeat the Clay People, a race on Mars that refuses to bow down to Azura's rule.  Azura is an expert of magic, which allows her to change recalcitrant subjects into Clay People and also to disappear at will.  (You would think if she had that kind of magic she could just eliminate the threat of the Clay People with a wave of her hand, but if she could, there would be no adventure...)  Azura's magic derives from a white sapphire which she is never without.

Flash and company land on Mars, but not without consequence.  The rocketship they used to get there is destroyed, so there is apparently no going back.  But Flash is unperturbed, as is usual for a hero.  His only goal is to save the Earth, and nothing is going to stop him from completing his mission.  That is unless Ming and Azura can prevent him from doing so.

Over the course of the 15 episode serial, Flash and friends continually find themselves gaining the upper hand, only to find the advantage disappear with alarming regularity.  Of course, as was necessary with the cliffhanger theme, each episode ends with Flash apparently finally defeated, only to have some twist of fate (or deus ex machina) appear to save him from his imminent demise.

Some things that appeal to me are:  One, the Clay People, although initially distrusting of Flash, eventually become his ally when they realize that he really intends to try to help them.  (The Clay People are, for some reason, not able to do much against Azura on their own because part of their curse is they cannot leave the cave in which they dwell.)  Montague Shaw as the king of the Clay People and his tribe eventually do come around to Flash's way of thinking, however.  And Prince Barin (Richard Alexander, who looks like he could have been a professional wrestler), who had allied with Flash on Mongo in the previous serial appears on the scene to help Flash in his quest.

Eventually it becomes evident that Ming is working at cross-purposes.  He is supposed to be helping Azura in her quest to defeat the Clay people, but what Ming really wants is to take over Azura's throne.  (you didn't really expect a guy like Ming to be a supportive ally, did you?) 

The fight scenes are the only down-side to this serial.  They look entirely fake, and some look like those fake moves they pull in the WWF.  Which makes Alexander all the more possible as a pro-wrestler in a previous life. Even the special effects look positively new age by comparison.

 Of course, I don't need to tell you that Flash and company are victorious in the end.  And I probably don't have to tell you that Ming is once again vanquished, apparently for good.  (But since he is once again the villain in the third serial, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, that should come as no surprise either.)

Flash Gordon not only became an icon in the 30's serials and in comic strips, he became, briefly, a hero on the radio, and when television was in its infancy, a television star.  He was also the star of a series of novels back in the 70's.  A feature film in 1980 reintroduced Flash Gordon to a new generation.  And recently the SYFY channel tried its hand ant producing a new TV series.  It certainly appears that Flash is still an attractive commodity, even if he doesn't quite become the franchise that a Superman or a Batman might have become.  But he does have some appeal.  Primarily, at least for me, that he relies on his athletics and wits, rather than his extraterrestrial strength or his cache of rich man's toys.  And as long there is an evil megalomaniac from Mongo around, he won't be without a foe to pit them against.

Well, folks, time to fire up the retro rockets on the Plymouth (I wish).  Drive home safely.

Quiggy