Monday, September 10, 2012

Musical Monday - Flash by Queen


Last Wednesday was Freddie Mercury Day, the day on which former Queen front man Freddy Mercury would have turned sixty-six. So in honor of that day, I'm putting up the theme song to the 1980 schlock fest Flash Gordon. Although the movie has many devoted fans, it is really a terrible movie, but it is terrible in the most deliciously campy way. Queen wrote the entire soundtrack for the movie, and as one can see from the video above, incorporated several snippets into their official music video for the song, which turned out to be much more popular than the .movie itself. There are apparently many people who know and love the song Flash but have never seen any part of the movie.

The movie was clearly inspired in look and tone by the Alex Raymond comic strip, and uses several images from the strip in its opening credits, which also end up in Queen's video. Despite the campiness of the movie, and the silliness of the song, I think both capture the essence of early twentieth century comic strip science fiction, and on that basis they are oddly brilliant.

I am also using this post to announce that over the next couple weeks I will be reviewing all three of the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials (Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe), as well as the Flash Gordon movie starring Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol, Max von Sydow, Brian Blessed, and Timothy Dalton.

Subsequent Musical Monday: Our Biggest Challenge by Symphony of Science

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