Flash Gordon (serial)

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Flash Gordon

Directed by	Frederick Stephani Ray Taylor (uncredited)
Produced by	Henry MacRae
Written by	Basil Dickey Ella O'Neill George H. Plympton Frederick Stephani Alex Raymond (based on the comic strip by)
Starring	Buster Crabbe Jean Rogers Charles Middleton Priscilla Lawson Frank Shannon
Cinematography	Jerome Ash Richard Fryer
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	1936
Running time	245 min (13 episodes)
Budget	$350,000^[1]
IMDb profile

Flash Gordon is a 1936 film serial which tells the story of three people from Earth who travel to the planet Mongo to fight the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless. Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson and Frank Shannon played the central roles. This serial has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

This first Flash Gordon serial has been called "the American Siegfried", referring directly to Fritz Lang's 1924 silent movie from the personality of its title character, its costumery, intensity, and special effects, as well as many plot similarities; and indirectly to Richard Wagner's Ring cycle because of its (sensational but admittedly lesser and imperfectly cued) music — a collection of the science fiction and mystery theme music from the feature films of the Universal Studios. The archetypal plot points common to both legends include the personality differences of the two main female characters, the monarch's desire for one of them and her magical seduction, and the hero's invisibility and his fight with a giant lizard.

The Flash Gordon serial was the most expensive of them all, the only serial advertised in some theaters above the name of the feature presentations, and probably the serial with the greatest attendance. It was the only sound serial with sexual tension, and it has become the best-remembered serial of them all.

Years later, in a television appearance in his native Oakland, Crabbe told an inteviewer that he was unhappy when Universal insisted on coloring his hair blonde to match the comic strip character.^[2]

Flash Gordon was followed by two more serials, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940). During the 1950s, the three serials were shown on American television. To avoid confusion with a made-for-TV Flash Gordon series airing around the same time, they were retitled, becoming respectively Space Soldiers, Space Soldiers' Trip to Mars, and Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe. All three serials were later heavily edited and released on home video.

The theme tune is an excerpt from Franz Liszt's Les Preludes.