Flash Gordon Blu-ray Review

• 1st Sep 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 better on a big flat screen than Mike Hodge’s Flash Gordon?

Here it is in all its technicolor glory! Red’s have never looked so red, greens have never looked so green. Listening to the director’s commentary you’d swear he happened upon all these ideas by complete accident!

Regardless of how it all came together, Flash Gordon remains a cult classic and in no small part due to some game support from Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, Ornella Muti and a genuinely frightening Max Von Sydow – but let us 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 himself 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 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!).

Steven Hurst