FLUSH GORGON

FLASH GORDON (1980)
dir: Mike Hodges

FLUSH GORGON
Crazy #75, June 1981
w: Paul Kupperberg
a: Bob Camp

Based on the comic strip, which had inspired an earlier radio show and movie serial.

The tagline for the movie was "Puny earthlings... Who will save you now?"

We begin with Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow), emperor of the planet Mongo, causing disasters on Earth just because he can. On Earth, Flash (Sam J. Jones) is a Jets football player flying a plane with Dale Ardor (Melody Anderson) and they have crashed into a meteor. When they notice the pilots have been lost, Flash tries to land the plane and crashes into the laboratory of Dr. Hans Zarkov (Topol). This is where our parody begins.

Zarkov's assistant has refused to come aboard his spaceship where he plans to investigate these disasters, so when Flash and Dale conveniently crash land into his lab, he forces them to come with him.

Flash Pilots the ship and lands on Mongo...

...where they are captured by Ming.

The first panel refers to Topol's role as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, the MAD parody of which we printed pages from last week.

Ming has forced Dale to marry him. Flash has been rescued by Ming's daughter, Princess Aura (Ornella Muti).

Flash is forced by Vultan of the Hawk-men (Brian Blessed) to fight Prince Barin of Arboria (Timothy Dalton) in a death match, but after Flash saves Barin from falling into a deadly pit they all form an alliance to overthrow Ming.

Ming is about to blow up the Earth and marry Dale but Flash, with the help of the Hawk-men and Prince Barin's army, who feature prominently in the movie but not as much here, swoops in and stops both. He has saved the universe, but him and Dale plan to go back to New York.

The Flash Gordon strip was probably best known for the Buster Crabbe Saturday matinee it was adapted into...

...which was parodied by MAD

FLESH GARDEN
MAD #11, May 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

There was a recurring bit on the National Lampoon Radio Hour called Flash Bazbo, Space Explorer. This one you can tell was actor Christopher Guest improvising.

There was a porn version of the classic movie serials. Pornographic for 1974 at least. I saw it in high school but I bet if I looked at it now it would be a hard R at most.

UPDATE:
FOUR-FLUSH GORDON: ACE OF SPACE
Get Lost #1, March 1954
a: Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

Not of the 1980 reboot, but why not.