1980 Week: Flash Gordon

          For many geeks of a certain age, Flash Gordon conjures warm memories of seeing the film in theaters, listening endlessly to the soundtrack LP featuring original songs by Queen, and revisiting the picture during its regular airings on cable. Over the years, the movie has generated not only a large cult following but also plentiful ancillary material—action figures, DVD reissues, a loving tribute nestled inside the comedy blockbuster Ted (2012), directed by Flash Gordon superfan Seth McFarlane. That’s quite an afterlife for a flick that producer Dino Di Laurentiis extrapolated from on old Saturday-matinee serial in order to capitalize on the success of Star Wars (1977). Even though Di Laurentiis spent lavishly on costumes, sets, and special effects, Flash Gordon originally seemed destined for oblivion after its lukewarm box-office reception. Many critics and fans embraced the picture as a kitschy delight, but others merely rolled their eyes at the silliness of the enterprise.

          After all, it’s hard to take a movie seriously when it includes corny dialogue, one-dimensional characterizations, and a terrible leading performance by former Playgirl model Sam J. Jones. But then again, that’s the weird fun of Flash Gordon—the movie embraces its own goofiness, in essence presenting an outer-space adventure while simultaneously satirizing outer-space adventures.

          Flash Gordon’s plot recycles narrative elements from the original serials, so the story begins when outer-space tyrant Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) rains catastrophic ruin onto Earth for sport. Through convoluted circumstances, eccentric scientist Hans Zarkov (Topol) kidnaps New York Jets quarterback Flash Gordon (Jones) and stewardess Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) for a trip to space, because Hans plans to confront Earth’s tormentor. Upon reaching the planet Mongo, which comprises several distinct realms (each with its own climate), Flash pisses off Ming but wins the favor of Ming’s slutty daughter, Princess Aura (Ornella Muti). She frees Flash from Ming’s prison even as Ming prepares to marry Dale, with whom he’s become smitten. After several death-defying adventures, Flash rallies several “princes of Mongo,” including the Robin Hood-like Barin (Timothy Dalton), for a revolution against Ming’s oppressive rule.

          The filmmakers’ tongue-in-cheek approach doesn’t always work, but Flash Gordon has a vibe uniquely its own. The juxtaposition of ’30s-style production design with ’70s-style arena rock is bizarre, the clash between bombastic supporting performance by classical actors and inept work by Anderson and Jones is jarring, and the presence of the great Von Sydow lends something like credibility to certain scenes. Plus, to give credit where it’s due, some of the movie’s ridiculous action scenes are genuinely exciting, such as a mano-a-mano duel that takes place on a giant revolving disk filled with spikes and an epic air battle involving flying “bird men,” souped-up “rocket cycles,” and phallic-looking spaceships. Best of all, perhaps, is the movie’s opulent color scheme, since Di Laurentiis went to the same pop-art well from which he drew the look of Barbarella (1968).

          Ace screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who earned nerd-culture immortality by writing the pilot for the 1966 Batman TV series and thus creating she show’s campy style, brings a playful sensibility to his script for Flash Gordon. The plotting is deliberately adolescent, with heavy play given to the boy-friendly themes of heroism and lust. Semple also jams the script full of jokes, some cringe-worthy and some sly. Meanwhile, director Mike Hodges—a hell of a long way from the gritty noir of Get Carter (1971)—mostly tries to mimic the way George Lucas mimicked serials while shooting Star Wars.

Flash Gordon: FUNKY

The Terminal Man (1974)

          The innate cinematic potential of the late Michael Crichton’s novels, from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park and beyond, stemmed from the author’s style of blending provocative scientific concepts with potboiler storytelling, essentially delivering highbrow content in lowbrow wrapping. That being the case, it’s interesting to check out The Terminal Man, one of the few Crichton adaptations more suited to the art-house than the cineplex; writer-director Mike Hodges’ movie is a cerebral meditation rather than a visceral thriller. Though admirable, the approach simply doesn’t work, because while The Terminal Man has all of the requisite ethics-and-morality philosophizing that distinguishes the best Crichton stories, it lacks any excitement whatsoever, dragging along at a sluggish pace before transitioning to a violent but pretentiously orchestrated finale.

          It certainly doesn’t help that the central narrative hook is obscure. Harry Benson (George Segal) has a cerebral abnormality that causes him to periodically lapse into violent seizures, so medical geniuses including Dr. Ellis (Richard Dysart) and Dr. McPherson (Donald Moffat) invent a risky solution: With Harry’s consent, they implant electrodes in his brain, powered by an atomic battery in his chest, to override the seizures when they manifest. Crichton’s fanciful subject matter is that of high-tech alternatives to lobotomies, and there’s undoubtedly a bracing suspense story to be made from this source material. Unfortunately, Hodges bypasses thrills in favor of chilly Kubrickian observation, resulting in a flat wash of antiseptic surfaces and soft-spoken interactions.

          The movie goes wrong immediately, because Harry is already preparing for surgery when the story begins; we neither see him suffer the brain injury that led to his condition nor see him experience one of his murderous rages. As a result, we have no real sense of the hardship he’s trying to overcome. Then, just before the surgery, Harry’s girlfriend (Jill Clayburgh) brings him a disguise with which he plans to escape postoperative police custody. This murky plot ploint makes the whole story confusing: Does Harry plan to embrace the cure, or not? And if not, why is he going through with the surgery? Harry’s flirtations with sympathetic Dr. Janet Ross (Joan Hackett) further muddy the waters, because we can’t tell if his affections like with the doctor or his girlfriend.

          Worst of all, the first hour of the movie unfolds like a medical documentary, with barely any dramatic conflict in evidence. And then, once Harry escapes and (predictably) experiences rages because the surgery didn’t work, the movie becomes a trite killer-on-the-loose story delivered in ridiculously genteel style, via touches like a slow-mo stabbing montage set to melancholy Bach music. The Terminal Man has interesting ideas and thoughtful performances, but Hodges doesn’t even come close to approximating Crichton’s usual balance of intellectualism and escapism. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Terminal Man: FUNKY

Pulp (1972)

          After scoring critically and commercially with the vicious crime thriller Get Carter (1971), star Michael Caine and writer-director Mike Hodges reteamed for a more playful look at the crime genre with Pulp, a darkly comedic romp that pokes fun at hard-boiled detective fiction and old gangster movies. Unfortunately, tonal problems prevent the duo from achieving their goals as effectively as they did in their previous collaboration: Whereas Get Carter starts slowly and builds steam but always relentlessly pursues the goal of generating violent intensity, Pulp never finds its footing in terms of mood or pacing. Yet even though Pulp drags during many flatly informative sequences and suffers from a remoteness that makes it difficult to get emotionally involved with the characters, the picture boasts swaggering style and mordant wit.

          Caine stars as Mickey King, a English author of déclassé detective fiction living in Italy. He’s hired by a mysterious benefactor to travel to Malta, where he’s expected to ghostwrite his employer’s autobiography. Intrigue and murders that happen along the way to Malta show King that he’s in over his head, and his suspicions are confirmed when he meets his bizarre boss: faded movie star Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a onetime leading man in gangster flicks. Turns out Preston plans to use his memoir to reveal a scandalous secret involving several powerful muckety-mucks, which makes him a target and puts his ghostwriter, King, squarely in the crossfire.

          Especially when viewers discover Gilbert’s unpleasant secret, it’s difficult to find much humor in Pulp’s storyline, which is nearly as nihilistic as that of Get Carter. So the fact that Hodges and Caine play the piece like a comedy, right down to Caine’s trenchantly funny noir-style voiceover, creates a jarring dissonance. In fact, watching Pulp is rather like listening to a sadist roar with laughter while describing an atrocity: The storytellers clearly find this stuff terribly droll, but their laughter isn’t contagious.

          Still, the Malta locations have a vivid, sun-baked authenticity, Caine is his usual watchable self, and some of the dialogue exchanges and voiceover remarks are memorably tart. (“It was a ghost town,” Caine narrates at one point. “Two crossed coffins in the Michelin guide.”) Rooney, however, is insufferable, so amped-up and overbearing that he’s exhausting to watch, and among the supporting players, only gravel-voiced Lionel Stander is quasi-memorable as Preston’s hair-triggered manservant. As a result, Caine’s star power is the most consistently pleasurable element of this strange movie.

Pulp: FUNKY

Get Carter (1971)

          Years before Charles Bronson went on a rampage in Death Wish (1974), Michael Caine turned vengeance into an art form with his chilling performance in Get Carter. Playing a cold-blooded London gangster investigating the mysterious death of his brother, Caine is like a deadly automaton in this picture, using intimidation, murder, sex, and torture to uncover the truth. Based on a novel by Ted Lewis and written and directed by British journeyman Mike Hodges (who covered similar terrain in the ’90s movie Croupier), Get Carter is a quietly stylish affair, with atmospheric long-lens shots and sharp editing creating a vivid milieu of seedy criminality.
          Much of the picture takes place in the industrial town of Newcastle, and Hodges revels in finding the grimiest locations possible, literally surrounding his morally bankrupt characters with filth and urban decay. Better still, the metaphors implied by the visuals are allowed to percolate below the surface, so Get Carter can be watched as an action picture or, for viewers looking for more, something deeper.
          The movie is way too long and also way too slow getting started, but the second hour is relentless—some of the violence contained therein is genuinely shocking. Again demonstrating the picture’s commitment to disquieting mood over vulgar obviousness is the fact that Hodges mostly eschews gore; the creepiest images in the picture are often Caine’s haunted eyes as he obliterates an opponent. Adding to the film’s insidious potency is a thread of reckless carnality: At one point, Caine has phone sex with a gangland moll (Britt Ekland) while glaring at the horny middle-aged landlady who’s eavesdropping. So in addition to being an avenger, Caine’s character functions as an observer gauging the moral fiber of everyone he encounters, and they all fail the test miserably. 
         Caine is compelling throughout, whether icily delivering lines like “Do you wanna be dead, Albert?” or racing around with frothing-at-the-mouth rage. Like the movie itself, he’s merciless. Not coincidentally, he also delivers a master class in understated performance style, proving that if an actor has the right vibe churning behind his eyes, little more need be done to get the appropriate message across. (Caine recaptured the same vicious intensity for several subsequent pictures, notably the 2009 pensioner-on-a-rampage flick Harry Brown.) Thanks to the effective convergence of the right actor, the right director, and the right material, Get Carter is so consistently cynical that it makes a bleak sort of a statement even though it’s a straight-up revenge flick, elevating pulp to moments of poetry.
         Proving how difficult it was to get things to converge perfectly, however, two remakes of Get Carter came and went with little notice: Bernie Casey starred in a blaxploitation riff called Hit Man (1972), and Sylvester Stallone headlined the flop retread Get Carter (2000), featuring Caine in a supporting role.

Get Carter: GROOVY