Flesh Gordon
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Flesh Gordon was a 1974 science fiction and comedy adventure film. It was an erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serial films from the 1930s. The screenplay was written by Michael Benveniste, who also co-directed the film with Howard Ziehm. The cast included Jason Williams, Cindy Hopkins, and William Dennis Hunt.
The film reportedly had an MPAA rating of X, but was edited for a reduced rating of R. It had a run time of 78 minutes, and the collector's edition released later ran for 90 minutes. The dialogue was in English, the picture was filmed in color, and the sound was mono. A sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, eventually followed in 1989, and a one-off comic book by Matrix Graphics in 1992 (which seemed to be an alternate ending to the first film).
The storyline is familiar to anybody who has watched the original Flash Gordon works, but with a generally campy sexual flavor to it. The character names are weak sexual innuendo, with the hero Flesh Gordon (Williams), his lust interest Dale Ardor (Hopkins), the evil Emperor Wang the Perverted (Hunt), as well as names such as Dr. Flexi Jerkoff and Amora, Queen of Magic.
The plot has the Emperor Wang aiming a "Sex Ray" at the Earth from his home world of Porno. The entire planet becomes hopelessly sexually obsessed, and it is up to Gordon to save the day. The film generally has nudity whenever possible, and the scenes are shot in a style that is nearly identical to the original black & white Flash Gordon serials. A sample of the humor style of the dialogue: The rocket ship has just landed on the planet Porno. A long necked, sauropod dinosaur with a glans-like head is seen out the window in the landscape. Flesh asks Dr."J", "What's that"? "Must be some kind of penisaurus", Dr. "J" replies matter-of-factly.
A towering, demonic-looking monster (voiced by Craig T. Nelson) brought out of hibernation by Emperor Wang steals the show with his brief appearance, muttering all manner of obscenities in a very unmonster-like velvety voice. Example: Flipping the bird at the title character and grumbling, "Up yours, Gordon!" The monster's fate is a major plot point.
[edit] Production
The film employed a number of young special effects artists who would go on to greater notoriety, among them Mike Minor, Greg Jein and John Dykstra. The film's low-budget effects were achieved through the clever use of some very old-fashioned techniques. For instance, the model of Wang's palace was created using everyday objects like drinking glasses, and was designed to resemble Griffith Observatory so that footage of actors shot at the base of the observatory could be blended in with the model.
The film's climactic monster was not originally designed with a voice, but proved so expressive during animation that one was dubbed in later, with dialogue devised to match his pre-existing mouth movements.
