Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
All three Flash Gordon serials in one box! “Space Soldiers” (1936, 245 min., 13 episodes) – Internationally renowned polo player and Yale graduate Flash Gordon and the lovely Dale Arden are enlisted by Dr. Hans Zarkov on his quest to save Earth from being destroyed by the runaway planet Mongo. “Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938, 299 min., 15 episodes) – A mysterious beam of light emanating from Mars is sucking the nitrogen from the Earth’s atmosphere, and only Flash Gordon can stop it, battling
Rating:  List Price: $ 19.99 Price: $ 10.45 |
(out of 67 reviews)
Review by Loring Ivanick for Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
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All three Flash Gordon serials with all the episodes intact. Well-transferred to DVD. Buster Crabbe is handsome, even with the bleached blond hair, earnest, strong and unflappable: all you’d expect in a comic strip hero. To be honest, all the actors seem to take their work seriously, even if there was an occasional lapse of continuity in the story. No serial villain comes up to the level of Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless (although I feel Henry Brandon as Fu Manchu comes close), and he is ably supported by numerous lackeys. Middleton and Beatrice Roberts, as Queen Azura of Mars, manage to pull off a tandem villain performance that works, in the middle film of the trilogy, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, my favorite. Flash too is helped by a strong supporting cast of comic book-like characters. Most of the special effects are very hokey, making the films all the more fun, though. There is plenty of suspense, both from the cliffhanger endings of the episodes and the evolution of the relationships between the characters. Several villains turn fairly plausibly into good guys by the end. The second and third serials have good music too, including Liszt’s Les Preludes, if I remember the title of the piece correctly. The first serial is in the National Registry of Film, along with Citizen Kane, Maltese Falcon and The Godfather. I enjoy other sci-fi serials like Undersea Kingdom and Crabbe’s Buck Rogers, but these are real classics.
Review by Jmark2001 for Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
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If you are looking for high quality transfers of the Flash Gordon series, Image Entertainment is the best. Sound is clear, images are crisp and focused. The box set is by Image.
Review by Midwest Book Review for Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
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Bridgestone Multimedia Group is a premier packager of nostalgic television shows and family-friendly movies for the home and community library video market. Their combination of highly quality programming and budget friendly pricing make their videos a “must” for collectors, fans, and patrons of public library video entertainment collections. One of their very best is the Flash Gordon Trilogy that starred Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, Frank Shannon as Dr. Zarkov, and Charles Middleton as the unforgettable galactic villain, Ming The Merciless. The original Universal Studios Saturday afternoon movie serial was based on a Hollywood adaptation of the popular newspaper comics science fiction adventurer, his steadfast friends and colorful foes. Volume One (Flash Gordon, 1936, 246 minutes) is the complete serial and takes place on Planet Mongo, introducing the Hawkmen, Sharkmen, and Lionmen. Volume Two (Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, 1938, 280 minutes) finds Ming allied with Azura, Queen of Magic and a colorful storyline involving the Clay People, the forest savages, and nothing short of the survival of earth is at stake! Volume Three (Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, 1940, 235 minutes) finds Ming once more back on Mongo and introduces the kingdoms of Aboria and Frigia with earth about to be destroyed if Flash and his allies fail. For the movie buff it is very interesting to see how the quality of sound, photography, and set designs improved so rapidly every two years. The cliff hanger nature of each serial episode was edge-of-your-chair thrilling to their original audiences, and are works of pure nostalgia for we who are old enough to remember them still! Highly recommended!!
Review by Benjamin J Burgraff for Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
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Universal was the “black sheep” of the major studios in the 1930s, with ‘horror’ classics like “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, and “The Mummy” as their major claim to fame, but with the “Flash Gordon” trilogy, they turned low-budget serials into campy ‘high art’!
Who can forget blond Buster Crabbe, forever wide-eyed and stalwart, Charles Middleton’s eminently hissable Ming the Merciless, bullet-shaped rockets on strings doing endless circles as smoke trailed behind them, the clunky costumes, Art Deco-inspired Imperial Palace, and a musical score frequently ‘lifted’ from Lizst’s “Les Preludes” and Franz Waxman’s “Bride of Frankenstein”? Creaky, to be sure, but great fun, if you don’t take things seriously!
While “Space Soldiers” has gotten the most attention over the years, as the first of the serials, the second and third, “Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars”, and “Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe”, offer better production values, and more confident performances by Crabbe. Universal, while surprised and pleased by the popularity of the serials, never utilized the actor to his fullest potential, but as Gordon, he achieved a kind of immortality many higher-paid stars could only dream of.
I was first introduced to the series in the 1950s by a local TV station, airing chapters each Saturday morning, as a kid’s show. What a joy it is, to finally see each episode, without commercial interruptions!
If you are a fan of the 1980, Queen-scored big-screen version of “Flash Gordon”, and HAVEN’T seen this collection, what a treat you have in store! Max von Sydow’s Ming is a campy homage to Middleton, and even the rockets keep the quaint, 1930s ‘look’. Sadly, the producers couldn’t find a lead with Crabbe’s stature and charisma, but he was one of a kind, to be sure.
Do yourself a favor…buy the collection, pop one in your DVD, and let the kid in you come out to play!
Review by Cheryl T. & Roger A. Meyer for Flash Gordon: Box Set (Space Soldiers/Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars/Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) (3DVD)
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Where would science fiction films be today if there had been no Flash Gordon comic strip or movie serial. Yeah, those rocket ships and “Strato-Sleds” look pretty comical shooting out sparks and sounding like over strained electric orange squeezers. But those who remember seeing Flash Gordon in the movie theaters will tell you, these serials had kids sitting on the edge of their chairs and bursting to see what was “to be continued” next week. I first saw my first Flash Gordon serial on T.V. in the early 1950′s and I’ll tell you, I found it exiting then. Now we can laugh about much of the bad acting and the “odd” mistakes now and then, but this is real film history folks. Check out the titles on the intro of “Space Soldiers” and see if you notice where George Lucas got the idea for the intro titles for his “Star Wars” films. I give this collection four stars for it’s worth to any collection! RAM.