Flash Gordon (1936): A Dusty Trip to Mongo

Is it worth your time?

If you like old, dusty things that creak when they move, you’ll probably have a blast with this. If you need your sci-fi to have a coherent budget or actors who aren't just shouting at walls, stay far away. It’s a relic, plain and simple. 🚀

Watching this feels a bit like digging through a box in an attic you forgot you owned. You find these strange, flimsy props that were supposed to be futuristic back in the day. Now, they just look like painted plywood and glitter.

Buster Crabbe as Flash is something else. He’s got that jawline that could cut glass and the acting range of a very earnest golden retriever. He’s always just kind of there, looking bewildered but ready to punch someone if the script demands it.

The pacing is genuinely baffling. It’s a serial chopped into a feature, so the story just jumps around like a caffeinated rabbit. One minute they are escaping a room, and the next they are halfway across the planet fighting a guy in a lizard suit. It never stops to breathe. Honestly, it’s refreshing in a way.

Odd little things:

• The special effects are mostly just smoke machines working overtime.
• I’m pretty sure one of the alien monsters is just a guy in a carpet remnant.
• The dialogue is so dramatic it borders on poetry, but the bad kind.
• Notice how nobody ever actually looks at the person they are talking to? They just stare off into the middle distance.

I couldn't help but compare the general 'everything-is-falling-apart' vibe to The Cheyenne Kid, which has that same sense of a production running on pure willpower and coffee. At least here, the costumes are way more flamboyant. Ming the Merciless is basically wearing a fancy bathrobe and a massive collar, and he owns every single scene he walks into.

There’s a moment where a ship lands, or maybe it explodes? It’s hard to tell because the film stock is so scratched it looks like it’s raining inside the cockpit. I watched it three times and still don't know what happened. I didn't care either. 🤷‍♂️

It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s got guts. It doesn't care if you think the sets look like they’ll blow over in a light breeze. It just keeps marching forward, swords swinging, capes fluttering, and everyone yelling about the fate of the universe like it’s no big deal.

Don't look for logic here. Just look for the guy in the lizard suit and hope he trips. It’s exactly the kind of mess that makes movie history interesting.