Far away on the gray planet Uxor the Emperor Zung, with evil incarnate written all over his goatee, is confronting the luscious Velma Suttee, U.S. space-traveling sex object. Yes, space fans, it is 1937 and we are watching a Saturday afternoon movie serial, and we know what is about to happen now, do we not?
Emperor Zung’s dilated nostrils leave no eleven-year-old in doubt about what is on his mind, but Velma, apparently unaware of the effect a miniskirt and tight silk can have on an imperial libido, has to inquire, “What do you want of me, you swine?”
At this point, let us interrupt the action for a nostalgia quiz. What, in fact, does Emperor Zung want of luscious Velma Suttee, space fans of 1937?
To help you toward the answer, here are some additional facts. Velma is not only bound in chains but also surrounded by four Nubian slaves. Velma obviously thinks Zung wants her to ask why he imports slaves all the way from Nubia, especially when he has such a surplus of chains, but she is determined not to give him the satisfaction.
Moreover, Aces Norton, U.S. space hero with whom Velma travels from galaxy to galaxy to make the universe safe for democracy, is at this very moment drugged and shackled in an impenetrable dungeon crawling with man-eating bill collectors. Zung has just explained to Velma that she is completely in his power and that Aces Norton will not live to see the dawn.
In Star Wars, which does a creditable job of re-creating the feel of these Saturday afternoon thrillers, Velma’s plight is recapitulated in the character of the captured princess, but what happens to the princess is odd and disturbing. The evil powers which have her at their mercy have no desire to do anything but pick her brain for secrets and then kill her.
The people who made Star Wars are very young, and so, while they have otherwise done a fine job of re-creating Saturday afternoons in 1937, they have failed to include one ingredient that made those afternoons so delicious. They have left out the sex.
This may result from the natural tendency of the very young of all generations to assume that sex was not invented until they came to puberty. In fact, however, sex already existed even in children’s entertainments in 1937, having been invented during the previous year. And, of course, it was a prime ingredient of such space thrillers as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and all the other films in which square-jawed heroes wandered the cosmos in form-fitting union suits in company with ladies of ample bosom and graceful calf.
When the Emperor Zung leered at the helpless Velma we all knew too well what he wanted. He wanted to get married. This news invariably produced pandemonium in Velma’s breast, signified by enchanting heavings of same, and all over the theater eleven-year-old boys briefly forgot to chew their Jujubes.
Nowadays it will strike eleven-year-olds as odd that anyone could have regarded getting married as the equivalent of a fate worse than death. The contemporary moviegoer, accustomed to more directness in libidinal transactions, could understand Emperor Zung indulging in a brisk bout of rape, but would be flabbergasted if the old rascal ordered Velma to prepare to get married at once.
In 1937, however, nobody in the audience was in any doubt about what was going on. By threatening to marry the poor girl, Zung was—in the movie code of the time—declaring his intention to have his way with her.
Dale Arden, who traveled with Flash Gordon, seemed forever to be threatened with marriage, as did Wilma Deering, Buck Rogers’s spaceship companion. Curiously, although Buck and Wilma presumably lived together constantly in their travels, as did Flash and Dale, no one ever suspected them of being up to anything for the simple reason that they were not married. It wasn’t until late in life when Dick Tracy finally married Tess Truehart that it even occurred to any of Dick’s fans that he might be capable of a sex life.
On occasion, space emperors had luscious daughters—always brunettes—who plotted on marrying the captive hero. Though memory may trick me here, I seem to recall one instance when Emperor Ming threatened to marry Dale Arden and his daughter threatened to marry Flash Gordon in the same adventure.
One reason marriage may have seemed such a dreadful fate to audiences of that day may have been the clean-movie code, which specified that once a movie character got married, she or he could never get divorced, or, if they did, that they would have to die at the end of the show.
Whatever the reason, the moment when marriage threatened the helpless female lead was indispensable to a well-rounded Saturday afternoon adventure thriller, and Star Wars would have been even better than it was if its makers had realized that even to the kiddies the prospect of sex is almost as interesting as a talking robot.