Lands Floating in the Skies

A year later, Flash Gordon was released. This direct remake of the original 1936 Universal production was so superior to Star Wars there was no comparison. Rockets in red, gold and royal purple, akin to Zeppelins, battled amid the surreal skies of Mongo. The lasers did not look like 20mm AA guns, but more like Victorian telescopes or H.G. Wells' Heat Ray projectors. It was a relieving change from the sterile polystyrene fighters so common from Star Wars and its clones. Being in an atmosphere, rocket noises and gun flashes were mandatory. The sets and interiors were from the grand old tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars stories, with their techno-Byzantine architecture. Lands floating in the skies, as in a Roger Dean painting, were a fresh and exciting change from the endless string of Tunisian deserts and Norwegian ice caps so common in other films.

The film had certain elements of humour, such as the line from Melody Anderson, playing Dale Arden: "Flash, I love you ... but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!

hours to save the Earth!" The intention was to portray the original comic strip and as such the film was excellent. The only draw back was that sixty percent of the special effects, and models such as a ship graveyard, were not included in the final print.

Alien, Flash Gordon, The Black Hole and the few others I have mentioned were the cream of the Sci-Fi boom. The remainder were generally pathetic trash, seldom worth the celluloid they were printed on. Science fiction is not the medium with which anti science philosophies should be transmitted. Mankind can - and will - ultimately understand the universe, by its own initiative. People don't need magical voices whispering in their ears before they can act. Science fiction is the vehicle with which this statement is emphasised, over and over. Of course, Star Wars and its ilk certainly provided entertainment, and escapism, and the technical effects were excellent. But they bore about the same resemblance to science fiction that the Reagan administration does to disarmament.

Matthew Wright