kosmasp More or less that is. There is a disclaimer at the beginning that tells the audience, that this has nothing to do with the "real" Flash Gordon. Something I only realized when I got the DVD that I bought blindly on ebay. I thought two Gordon movies for the price of one, is excellent. But that is not the reason, I only gave it a weak rating. Nor the fact that this was actually meant to be a porn movie did influence my vote. You can still see the bad cutting away from some scenes, though it seems those explicit scenes might be "lost" forever due to cuts the director had to make, because of an impending lawsuit back when they released it.No, the movie did age badly and while some humor still works, most of it doesn't. I love the passion (no pun intended) that they showed (there is also an audio commentary), but the performances just don't cut it and the story is too paper thin to really work. I guess you can watch it once out of curiosity, but you might not have the strength to watch it through

BA_Harrison In the early 80s, when I was a spotty adolescent with a burgeoning interest in the female form, I would secretly cast my eye over the 'special' section in my local video shop—the one which contained such 'interesting' titles as Dracula Exotica, Lemon Popsicle, and The Amorous Milkman. Amongst these tempting (but ultimately rather disappointing) titles was the legendary Flesh Gordon, a movie I had heard about from school pals (whose parents were obviously a little more lax in policing their kids' viewing than my own), but one that I found it impossible to see myself (try as I might, the shop owner wouldn't let me rent it!).Now, nearly 30 years later, I have finally caught up with this elusive soft-core sex comedy, and whilst it's hardly shocking or particularly titillating to a man of my advancing years, I found it to be a very entertaining piece of trash. Made in the sexually liberated 70s, this knowingly daft take on the cliffhanger serials of the 30s is silly, saucy fun featuring plenty of full-frontal nudity, some pretty good effects (considering the limitations of the budget), loads of smutty humour, and a shed-load of phallic imagery.In a story that bears many similarities to that of the major Flash Gordon movie of 1980, nasty dictator Emperor Wang attacks earth with a deadly sex ray that turns the population of Earth into uncontrollable nymphomaniacs. Hunky Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams), accompanied by beautiful sidekick Dale Ardor (the gorgeous Suzanne Fields) and scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins) travel to the planet Porno to try and destroy the ray and free its people from the tyranny of Wang.With such delights as one-eyed stop-motion monsters called Penisauruses (or is that Penisauri?), rapist robots, an animated bug-creature, a tribe of lesbian warriors, several orgies (which look rather racy from a distance, and lend credence to the rumour that this was originally a hardcore movie), a penis shaped spaceship, and a huge, but rather erudite beast at the end of the film, Flesh Gordon is a hoot from start to finish.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

iago-6 Hey, I like good, sleazy fun, so I thought I couldn't go wrong with renting Flesh Gordon, which I have heard about for years without really knowing much about. The movie itself is mildly amusing, but what's really wonderful abut this disc is the commentary track, which is TEN TIMES more interesting than the movie itself. The Movie We open with a LONG title about how this is a tribute to the adventure serials of the 20s and 30s… we find out on the commentary that this was added to avoid a lawsuit, because they were unaware that their writer had taken an episode from Flash Gordon and reproduced it nearly exactly. Anyway, so it seems that the good citizens of Earth are suddenly bombarded by the sex ray, which makes them crazed to have sex with the first person they see (and I wonder: what would David Cronenberg make of this?). This is a big problem, so Flesh Gordon, who soon meets Dale Ardor, are going to travel to the planet Porno to find out what's going on. They meet Flesh's pal Flexi Jerkoff (one of those jokes that, the more you think about it, the more absurd and funny it gets), who has a spaceship that oddly recalls the shape of a penis, and they take off. By now you will have noticed the radical differences in quality and apparent budget from scene to scene. For example, later in the film we have some very nice, nearly-academy award nominated stop-motion animation, and yet when Flesh and co. are on the plane at the beginning, it's quite clear that the walls are made of stapled-on packing material.So Flesh and pals travel through the moronosphere to the planet Porno, where they crash land. Meanwhile, the evil Emperor Wang has noticed their presence, and sent out guards, who obsequiously refer to him as "Your Protuberance," "Your Sickness," and "Degenerate One." The guards go after our trio who are having their own problems with the Penisauruses, which are giant stop-motion animated uncut penises with horns and one vertically-blinking eye. This affords viewers the sight of the comely Dale being rubbed all over by a dickhead the size of a hippo. They escape, and are soon awarded the power pasties by someone or other, which will give them the decisive edge. Anyway, so it goes on, even going so far as to include an intermission and cliffhanger as tribute to the original series. Later our heroes are menaced by giant robots with spinning drills where their dicks would normally be, and finally Dale (whose bush is the size of Nebraska, by the way) is taken by this giant monster to the top of a tower, in an unlikely tribute to King Kong. Things go on and soon they end.This movie is clearly part of the mix that resulted in the Austin Powers movies, and it has a similar effect as so many of the jokes are so juvenile and moronic that eventually they become kind of funny. I was especially laughing at the guards saying things like "Right away, degenerate one" to Emperor Wang. The problem is that NO ONE in the movie is attractive, so although there's lots of randiness and softcore excitement going on, there was no one I was really interested in.The Commentary I popped in the commentary while I was assembling some furniture, really just wanting to know WHAT the director could possibly have to say about this piece of work. What I got was a totally fascinating tale of low-budget grindhouse film-making in all its glory. The producers made porn films, and that was all. But at this time, some porn films were getting shown in legitimate theaters, so they decided to make a porn film that had more to it than sex, and hired various people and got started. One of the interesting aspects of the whole story is that the producers have no idea what the screenwriter or special effects people are doing while they all work separately. These were people with absolutely no experience in making a film, suddenly trying to do it. They face associates baldly trying to cheat them, police harassment, a few rounds through the judicial system… it's an incredible story. For a while the director is followed by the police until they locate the set, then the police confiscate the film, and then the director has to prove in court that the film is NOT pornographic, which helped determine why this movie came out as a softcore comedy "tribute" to the old serials, instead of a real porn film as was originally intended. Remember how I said that some of the special effects are very good? Well, turns out that a then-unknown Dennis Muren, who would later become the lead man at ILM and win academy awards for Star Wars, E.T., Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, you name it, worked on this film (and had such a bad experience he didn't want his name on it). Since there were only two other films that year that HAD special effects, this one was almost nominated for an Oscar—but the Academy decided not to have the category that year instead of even considering this film. The film itself I worth seeing, at least for a quick fast-forward, but if you're interested in the behind-the-scenes of low-budget and porn film-making, but the commentary here is one of the most interesting stories of low-budget film-making you'll ever hear.--- Hey, check out Cinema de Merde, my website devoted to bad and cheesy movies. You can get the url from my email address above...

L. Denis Brown Probably in part due to the success of magazines such as Playboy during the 1960's, the 1970's became a decade when numerous rather indifferent sex comedies that exploited nudity - (principally female) were released. Few made any pretence of being erotic, although "Emmanuelle" (1974) was one exception; and most had virtually no plot, although again there were exceptions such as "Victorian Fantasies" (1975) which made gentle fun of Victorian hypocrisy whilst showing clearly that the young Victorian woman had more command of her own life than is generally appreciated today. Collectively these films were an often depressing group which found ready audiences among teenage youths when first released but have now mostly disappeared without trace, except for a few of the best that have survived and can still be purchased on videotape or, more surprisingly, DVD. (Some have even attracted quite charitable comments on this database from viewers who remember how bad the worst of them used to be.) Flesh Gordon was primarily produced to parody the worst of the releases of this type which were concurrent in 1974.Simultaneously this film is also a delightful parody of the cartoon hero film featuring Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, which was immensely popular when released in 1936. For those who remember this original work, and who are not upset by a little nudity on the screen, it provides compulsive viewing; but for anyone who wants to view an orgy, or is attracted by the prospect of seeing a highly erotic work, the best advice is to keep well away. Its main appeal lies in the clever way that the episodes of the original Flash Gordon film (which were featured in some cinemas as a serial) are reproduced, with a relatively small degree of parody, so as to create a very amusing sex comedy that exactly parallels the original teenage thriller. Thus Flash Gordon undergoes remarkably little change in becoming Flesh Gordon and Emperor Ming, the ruler of planet Mongo, can be clearly recognised in Emperor Wang who rules planet Porno. Dr Zarkov is closely mimicked by Dr Jerkoff, and there are of course many other parodies the keen film-goer will appreciate - for example in a well made step motion animation sequence, Emperor Wang's giant metal monster captures Dale Ardor (nee Arden) to mimic the famous sequence in which Fay Wray was captured in the 1933 version of "King Kong".In principle this film is a pure fantasy which is fairly timeless - the space travel theme is of course a feature of the original Flash Gordon series that dates back to a time when space travel was regarded as only achievable in some very distant period far into the future; whilst the name penisauraus, given to one of the stop motion creations, is clearly intended to convey a close link to the distant past. In isolation, some of these names and other connotations may give the impression that this is a fairly racy film, but in practice this is not so. Many of the sequences would be somewhat interminable, but for the humorous links which are so enjoyable for those who saw the original film, and which fully earn this film its reputation as a classic. At the moment both the original teenage cartoon film and its definitely adult Flesh Gordon counterpart are listed as DVD's; but early teenage films do not sell well today. Whilst there still appear to be enough of us old fogies who remember the cartoon to maintain reasonable sales for its parody, this may not continue much longer. Once my generation has passed into history there will be very few buyers who, without having seen the original film, would experience any great pleasure from watching a 1974 parody of it. Perhaps however both these films will continue to be sold - with the original 1936 version and its 1974 parody paired on opposite sides of the same disk. This would surely be sensible, such a combination would provide an ideal nostalgia disk, ensuring both a continuing income for the two distributors and ongoing recognition that the later film, whilst certainly not a masterpiece, has become a classic example of parody in the cinema.