It's been a day for being useless... I seem to be coming down with the cold that's going around, starting with the sore throat (about 3 this morning) and headache.
This sounds like an occasion for some mindless entertainment, right? Like some old B movies?
Luckily, I'd just bought a three-pack of Flash Gordon serials. I hadn't seen those since... well, since Bob Wilkins showed them on Creature Feature.
So, I watched the first one. It looked remarkably unfamiliar. As in, I guess I hadn't in fact seen that one at all.
The hopelessly unconvincing special effects were all there. (Remember, kids, this was originally meant for the big screen, not the teevee.) The incidental music has hints of Les Preludes, as well as (I wouldn't have noticed this when I was a kid) snippets of Parsifal, and, unless I was imagining it, something by Sibelius that I couldn't quite place. The costumes are as ludicrous as one would expect. But don't I recall Barin being younger and thinner in a sequel? (Guess I'll find out when I get around to watching the sequels.)
Those Mongonians sure have a lot of sacred beasties and gongs and whatnot, don't they?
And, speaking of sacred beasties, what is it with these places that have rocks, and sand, and an assortment of large predators, and no sign of the sort of ecosystem it takes to support large predators?
Oh, and the people. There are Lion Men (they have long hair, and their prince has a beard), and Shark Men (they have tinfoil swim caps), and Hawk Men (they have immobile wings on their backs, and wear equally useless wings on their helmets).
And... the plot! The dialog! The tactics! The way Flash holds a dagger! The expendable minions! (There must be an expendable minion training center somewhere, for Ming's palace guards, Imperial storm troopers, and suchlike.*)
And why does a technologically advanced society need slaves to shovel radium into the atomic furnaces, anyway? Don't they have electric motors? And how does the radium get delivered to the piles whence it gets shoveled? And what's the point of whipping slaves who are working to a pace set by the guy who turns the big dial to make the furnace doors open and close? And....
Well, it is better done than Radar Men From the Moon. But, arguably, so was Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Next up, Ming tries to steal our nonvolatile memory!
(Sorry, no link for that one. Once upon a time, there was a company called Nitron that made nonvolatile memory. This was back in the days when chips still died of Purple Plague. Update: patent, datasheet.)
*Afterthought: Suppose you were a minion, and an invisible Earthman was strangling your Emperor. Would you: (a) stand around helplessly because you couldn't see the enemy, or (b) start waving your sword everywhere the Emperor (or any other visible person or object) wasn't? If you answered (b), report to the disintegration chamber; you have too much initiative for a minion.
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