Flash Gordon (1980)

I did actually have something half-decent lined up to write about for you today, but then computer issues got in the way and oops, suddenly I found myself on Saturday morning frantically scanning the listings for anything that wouldn't be too unbearable to watch. And there it was, sat in a comfortable 10.45am slot, Flash Gordon, shiny and ripe for the panning. In my Queen-mad teenage years I had a recording of it from the TV sat more or less permanently in my VCR, but up until today, I don't think I'd seen it in about twenty years.

My expectations, diplomatically put, weren't exactly the highest.

Let's start by getting the obvious stuff out of the way, then. The acting stinks, to the point where as Flash, Sam J. Jones reputedly had to have his dialogue overdubbed by somebody else. As a fix, though, this proved about as effective as putting a sticking plaster on the puffy, gangrenous leg that can serve us nicely as an analogy for the script itself. It's awful, curl-your-toes-so-hard-they-cramp awful, and it's left to Brits Brian Blessed and Timothy Dalton to give it life through a level of am-dram enthusiasm it doesn't really deserve.

And yet. And yet.

Did I have a bad time watching? Absolutely not. The storyline itself is a fun one, in the old-fashioned sort of way you'd want from something based on a 1930s comic strip, with an array of colourful characters and shifting alliances that gradually  unite in a way that only recalls colonialism and the British Empire if you're having a particularly cynical day. The costumes and the music are both gleefully over the top, but thankfully without the sort of migraine-inducing jump cuts that can make Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge such hard going. And then there's the set design, which I never really noticed when I was a kid. This time round, however, I was struck by all the art deco-styled features and furnishings, and what a lovely nod they were to the film's original inspiration.

It's not art. It's absolutely not craftsmanship. Damn, though, I wish somebody from Marvel would watch and take notes.