''Flash Gordon'' is a 1936 superhero

serial film A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, gene ...

. Presented in 13 chapters, it is the first screen adventure for

Flash Gordon Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' ...

, the comic-strip character created by Alex Raymond in 1934. It presents the story of Gordon's visit to the planet Mongo and his encounters with the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless. Buster Crabbe,

Jean Rogers Jean Rogers (born Eleanor Dorothy Lovegren; March 25, 1916 – February 24, 1991) was an American actress who starred in serial films in the 1930s and low–budget feature films in the 1940s as a leading lady. She is best remembered for ...

, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson and Frank Shannon portray the film's central characters. In 1996, ''Flash Gordon'' was selected for preservation in the United States

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Cast

* Buster Crabbe as

* Charles B. Middleton as Ming the Merciless *

as Dale Arden * Priscilla Lawson as Princess Aura * Frank Shannon as Dr. Alexis Zarkov * Richard Alexander as Prince Barin * Jack Lipson as King Vultan * Theodore Lorch as Second High Priest *

James Pierce James Hubert Pierce (August 8, 1900 – December 11, 1983) was an American actor and the fourth actor to portray Tarzan on film. He appeared in films from 1924 to 1951. Background Pierce was born in Freedom, Indiana. He was an All-American ...

as Prince Thun * Duke York as King Kala * Earl Askam as Officer Torch * Lon Poff as First High Priest ''(uncredited)'' * Richard Tucker as Professor Gordon * George Cleveland as Professor Hensley * Muriel Goodspeed as Zona Cast notes: * Eddie Parker served as a

stand-in A stand-in, sometimes a lighting double, for film and television is a person who substitutes for the actor before filming, for technical purposes such as lighting and camera setup. Stand-ins are helpful in the initial processes of film and tele ...

and

stunt double In filmmaking, a double is a person who substitutes for another actor such that the person's face is not shown. There are various terms associated with a double based on the specific body part or ability they serve as a double for, such as stunt ...

for Buster Crabbe. * Crash Corrigan, who would later star in other serials, wore a modified gorilla suit to portray the "orangopoid" seen in chapters 8 and 9. *

Glenn Strange George Glenn Strange (August 16, 1899 – September 20, 1973) was an American actor who appeared in hundreds of Western (genre), Western films. He played Sam Noonan, the bartender on Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS's ''Gunsmoke'' televisio ...

in uncredited roles wore the "Gocko" lobster-clawed dragon costume and also appears as one of Ming's soldiers. * Richard Alexander helped to design his own costume, which included a leather chest plate painted gold. * Early film fan historians claimed that actor Lon Poff, playing the first of Ming's two high priests, died shortly after production began and was replaced by Theodore Lorch. In fact, however, only Poff's character died, or rather was killed by Ming in an act of fury and replaced by Lorch's High Priest, but the scene was cut from the final print. Poff did not die until 1952.

Production

* According to Harmon and Glut, ''Flash Gordon'' had a budget of over a million dollars. Stedman, however, writes that it was "reportedly" US$350,000 (equivalent to $ million in ). * Many props and other elements in the film were recycled from earlier Universal productions. The watchtower sets used in ''

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...

'' (1931) appear again as several interiors within Ming's palace. One of the large Egyptian statues seen in '' The Mummy'' (1932) is the idol of the Great God Tao. The laboratory set and a shot of the Moon rushing past Zarkov's returning rocket ship from space are from '' The Invisible Ray'' (1936). Zarkov's rocket ship and scenes of dancers swarming over a gigantic idol were reused from '' Just Imagine'' (1930). Ming's attack on Earth is footage from old silent newsreels, and an entire dance segment is from ''The Midnight Sun'' (1927), while some of the laboratory equipment came from ''

Bride of Frankenstein ''Bride of Frankenstein'' is a 1935 American Gothic science fiction horror film, and the first sequel to Universal Pictures' 1931 film ''Frankenstein''. As with the first film, ''Bride of Frankenstein'' was directed by James Whale starring ...

'' (1935). The music was also recycled from several other films, notably ''Bride of Frankenstein'', '' Bombay Mail'', '' The Black Cat'' (both 1934), ''

Werewolf of London ''Werewolf of London'' is a 1935 horror film directed by Stuart Walker (director), Stuart Walker and starring Henry Hull as the titular werewolf. The supporting cast includes Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, and Spring Byington. ...

'' (1935), and ''

The Invisible Man ''The Invisible Man'' is an 1897 science fiction novel by British writer H. G. Wells. Originally serialised in '' Pearson's Weekly'' in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man to whom the title refers is Griffin, a s ...

'' (1933). * Crabbe had his hair dyed blond to appear more like the comic-strip Flash Gordon. He was reportedly very self-conscious about this and kept his hat on in public at all times, even with women present. He did not like men whistling at him. Jean Rogers also had her hair dyed blonde prior to production, "apparently to capitalize on the popularity of

Jean Harlow Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the ...

". Brunette was actually the natural hair color for both actors. * According to the reference ''The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury'' (1973) by

Jim Harmon James Judson Harmon (21 April 1933 – 16 February 2010), better known as Jim Harmon, was an American short story author and popular culture historian who wrote extensively about the Golden Age of Radio. He sometimes used the pseudonym Judson Gre ...

and Donald Glut, Ming's makeup and costuming were designed to resemble

Fu Manchu Dr. Fu Manchu ( zh, t=傅滿洲/福滿洲, p=Fú Mǎnzhōu) is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character f ...

, a fictional "supervillain" popularized in earlier Hollywood films and in a series of novels first published in England in 1913. * Exterior shots, such as the Earth crew's first steps on Mongo, were filmed at

Bronson Canyon Bronson Canyon, or Bronson Caves, is a section of Griffith Park in Los Angeles that has become known as a filming location for many films and television series, especially Westerns and science fiction, from the early days of motion pictures to ...

Release and reception

Universal hoped to regain an adult audience for serials with the release of ''Flash Gordon'' and by presenting it in many of the top or "A-level" theaters in large cities across the United States. Multiple newspapers in 1936, including some not even carrying the Flash Gordon comic strip, featured half- and three-quarter-page stories about the film as well as copies of Raymond's drawings and publicity stills that highlighted characters and chapter settings. The film was the first outright science-fiction serial, although earlier serials had contained science-fiction elements such as gadgets. Six of the fourteen serials released within five years of ''Flash Gordon'' were science fiction. For syndication to TV in the 1950s, the serial was renamed ''Space Soldiers'', so as not to be confused with the newly made, also syndicated TV series, ''

''. The serial film was also edited into a 72-minute feature version in 1936, which was only exhibited abroad, until being released in the US in 1949 as ''Rocket Ship'' by Sherman S. Krellberg's Filmcraft Pictures. A different feature version of the serial, at 90 minutes, was sold directly to television in 1966 under the title ''Spaceship to the Unknown''. ''Flash Gordon'' was Universal's second-highest-grossing film of 1936, after '' Three Smart Girls'', a musical starring

Deanna Durbin Edna May Durbin (December 4, 1921 – April 17, 2013), known professionally as Deanna Durbin, was a Canadian-born American soprano and actress, who moved to the U.S. from Canada with her family in infancy. She appeared in musical films in the 1 ...

. The Hays Office, however, objected to the revealing costumes worn by Dale, Aura and the other female characters. In response to those objections, Universal designed more modest outfits for the female performers in the film's two sequels. In his review of the film in the 2015 reference ''Radio Times Guide to Films'', Alan Jones describes ''Flash Gordon'' as "non-stop thrill-a-minute stuff as Flash battles one adversary after another", and he states that it is "the best of the Crabbe trilogy of ''Flash Gordon'' films".

Chapter list

#"The Planet of Peril" #"The Tunnel of Terror" #"Captured by Shark Men" #"Battling the Sea Beast" #"The Destroying Ray" #"Flaming Torture" #"Shattering Doom" #"Tournament of Death" #"Fighting the Fire Dragon" #"The Unseen Peril" #"In the Claws of the Tigron" #"Trapped in the Turret" #"Rocketing to Earth"

Sequels

Two sequels to ''Flash Gordon'', also in serial form and starring Buster Crabbe, followed the popular 1936 production: '' Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars'' (15 chapters) in 1938 and ''

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flas ...

'' (12 chapters) in 1940. Between the releases of those two later productions, Crabbe starred in an entirely separate but similarly structured Universal science-fiction serial portraying

Buck Rogers Buck Rogers is a science fiction adventure hero and feature comic strip created by Philip Francis Nowlan first appearing in daily American newspapers on January 7, 1929, and subsequently appearing in Sunday newspapers, international newspapers, b ...

, another popular character also featured in magazines, comic strips, and on radio in the late 1920s and 1930s.

References

External links

* ''Flash Gordon'' essay by Roy Kinnard at

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* ''Flash Gordon'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010, , pages 240-24

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Flash Gordon (serial) 1936 films 1930s science fiction action films 1930s science fiction adventure films 1930s superhero films American black-and-white films American science fiction action films American space adventure films American superhero films 1930s English-language films Flash Gordon films Films based on comic strips Films directed by Ray Taylor Films set on fictional planets Films set in New York City Live-action films based on comics United States National Film Registry films Universal Pictures film serials Films with screenplays by George H. Plympton 1930s American films Superhero film serials English-language science fiction adventure films English-language science fiction action films