Album Review

Flash Gordon – Blu Ray –

• 9th Aug 2010

I keep claiming that some films from yesteryear are just perfect for the Blu-Ray treatment. Hitchcock most recently was under inspection – but can you think of a film full of such colour that would look so well on a big flat screen that Mike Hodge’s Flash Gordon!

And here it is, in all its Technicolor glory! Red’s have never looked so red, Greens have never looked so green. Listening to the directory’s commentary you’d swear he happened upon all these ideas by complete accident!

But regardless of how it all come together, Flash Gordon remains a cult classic – and in no small part to some game support from Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, Ornella Muti and a genuinely frightening Max Von Sydow. But let us also not forget the complete music score by Queen. It’s almost a shame the band didn’t do more scores (as their Highlander one is also a highlight in their career).

For those not familiar with Flash Gordon – we see football player Flash Gordon, being whisked away to a foreign galaxy along with love interest Dale Arden, by a crazed doctor (Topol) only to find herself the victim of the follies of many different cultural aliens – not least the emperor of the entire lot, Ming the Merciless (Sydow).

It’s a hoot, it’s a laugh, it’s unapologetically camp in places and by its own cult standards has withstood 30 years of being a guilty pleasure.

The Blu-Ray comes with pretty much the same extras as the DVD release, with Hodge’s Commentary being the highlight – but oddly they have left out the commentary by Brian Blessed (which is odd cause his voice track was pure evidence of how crazy he really is).