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In 1934, Alex Raymond started creating Flash Gordon comic strips, which were released in competition with Buck Rogers. The selling of the movie rights in the 1970s to Dino De Laurentiis, with the intention of turning it into a movie, almost sparked a war with George Lucas. He altered his scripts to try and leverage this loss and put his love for the character into creating Star Wars. De Laurentiis had screenwriter Michael Allin work for him and contacted Federico Fellini, Nicolas Roeg, and even Sergio Leone for directing but neither of them was able to keep up to the Italian’s expectations. This much I knew.
From the eye-opening Lost In Space documentary (disc1), I learnt that the writer’s imaginative story originally began with Adam And Eve battling the Ultimate Evil, and Ming trying to use a selected female member from each planet to bear children, so he could reproduce just like him and ultimately destroy all other life. However, De Laurentiis wanted a different approach which was comedic and did not exist in the original comics, which caused Allin to leave the project, and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (the Batman series from the 60s) to take over. Following that, Mike Hodges was also brought on board to direct after he released Get Carter in 1971 and worked uncredited on Damien: Omen II.
Much has been reported about the underperformance of Flash Gordon’s box office returns, but honestly, it made a little bit back and was one of Great Britain’s most popular films in 1980, coming in second to The Empire Strikes Back. Since then, the movie has cultivated a strong cult following due to the confusing dialogues, overly dramatic acting, blasting Queen music, explorable Peter Duncan’s cameo role, and of course, Brian Blessed.
The first disc of this release has the film itself, restored from the original 35mm negative and enhanced sound, along with VFX adjustments. The disc also contains an in-depth documentary about the virtual cut-off narrative, audio commentaries along the usual ad sequences.
The second disc has an interview with Mike Hodges where he comes off as a well-liked really deepened character and a skilled practitioner alongside the cartoon snippet of the New Adventures of Flash Gordon (1979-1982) which I still have a soft spot for. Two geeks from Entertainment Earth talking about the merchandise, and a segment called Bob Lindenmeyer discusses deleted scenes and original endings where they don’t show any deleted content. In addition, there are numerous bits like the 35th-anniversary featurettes and more interviews like Brian May talking about his gratitude towards Howard Blake along with some really funny stories from Blessed.
This massive five-disc Collector’s Edition comes with a bonus disc that includes Life After Flash (a 2017 feature-length documentary by Lisa Downs), the original soundtrack, assorted booklets, a replica comic strip, artwork and even a sew-on patch! To be completely honest, if you are an obsessive Flash fan like myself then this collection is pretty difficult to beat in regards to value. But for more casual viewers, the one or two-disc versions may be the way to go as they include most of the interesting information.
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