Introducing my Son to the 1980 Flash Gordon Movie

I had a busy day yesterday so I wasn't able to prepare today's post. As I detailed yesterday, I always have several drafts going. At night is when I usually pick one of them to finalize for posting the next day. Last night, however, my brain just wasn't working, so I ended up staring mindlessly at the Bro discord for awhile and talking trash with some of the people within, and then I crashed.

Due to that, I'm up extra early to try to get something ready before the kids wake up. I'm in the writing mood right now, so instead of going to one of my drafts, I'm just going to wing it on something new. Let's see how it goes!

I'm going to share this in the SIlver Bloggers community. I think it fits since it's a Gen X memory and sharing it with my kids. Hopefully you guys agree.

Yesterday while I was on the move, I happened to hear a note or two at the supermarket that immediately put the Hawkmen Theme from 1980's Flash Gordon movie in my head. You know the one. It's when the Hawkmen show up during the final battle. The first few notes of that theme are iconic.

It's funny how that works, how a completely unrelated note can pull up a memory of a movie from childhood and all related memories. Despite it being a great movie, I haven't even watched or thought about it for years, making the fact that it instantly came to be even more strange.

Usually we experience this with smells most of all. We smell something and it instantly throws us back into a memory. The first time I visited Japan, a few years before moving here twenty years ago, I went to Kyoto and stayed in a weekly apartment. There was a certain unique smell there that I smelled everyday. I don't know what it was. A certain mixture of asphalt and traditional Japanese sweets and rain and the freshness of morning. Randomly I will occasionally smell something similar enough now to throw me back into that memory.

But I digress.

Anyway, with thoughts of Flash Gordon in my head, I decided to introduce it to my oldest. He is ten, plenty old enough to handle the campy violence of the movie. I kind of think all his Japanese shows (Ultraman & Kamen Rider, most of all) are much more violent anyway. Especially the old Ultraman shows from the 70s (which he also watches) that involved much more gruesome monster deaths, with their head or body being cut off and blood going all over.

He loved it! And I loved watching it with him. Often when I revisit films I loved as a kid, I don't really enjoy them as much. The movie isn't as good as my memory of it, you know? But with Flash Gordon, it was just as good as I remembered. Silly, campy, but a hell of a lot of fun. This is what a movie should be. Campiness can obviously be overdone. The 1960s Batman crossed the line. As did the Christopher Reeve Superman for the two of them that Richard Lester did (he added many campy scenes to #2 when he took over from Richard Donner and he did the incredibly campy #3 by himself). But when done well, such as in Flash Gordon, it works really really well.

And my god—Brian Blessed! The man can make any line sound brilliant, regardless of how silly it is. He was obviously enjoying every scene he was in. From interviews I've read over the years, this is one of his favorite films that he was in. I remember reading an interview where he told how Queen Elizabeth also loved the film (he said it was her favorite film) and watched it every year. When he met her, she asked him to say a line for her. You know the one; his most famous line from the movie. Evidently a lot of people ask him to say it:

“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, horses and queens, and Prime Ministers, they all want me to say ‘Gordon’s alive!’, it’s their favourite film.”

As a kid I was always disappointed they never made a sequel. The last scene teases one, but nothing ever came. I've read many reasons over the years. One of them is that evidently Sam Jones who played Flash Gordon had a fight with the director and refused take part in post production, resulting in most of his lines being dubbed by another actor. Jones was so angry when he discovered someone dubbed his lines that he refused to do any sequel which effectively killed the idea. Another reason I've seen given is that it simply didn't make enough money.

But we know most sequels stink, so it's probably for the best that we never got one. The lack of any further adventures makes us appreciate this one all the more.

My son begged to watch it again as soon as we finished. I didn't allow that, but I will probably be watching it again with him soon. This could be a new father-son tradition. I did try to get my 6-year old interested, but he isn't much for TV at this point in his life and prefers to go play outside. Oh well. Maybe it a few years all three of us can watch together.

Boy writing this has made me excited for the film again. Maybe I'll write a review for those CineTV guys later on.

What do you think? Do any of you also love this film?