Sam J Jones as Flash Gordon, football quarterback and saviour of the universe!
“This was the first $27 million movie ever improvised!”
Mike Hodges
Pulp had scored with the critics but failed commercially; The Terminal Man was a disaster, critically and at the box office; and to most people it looked like Hodges had been fired from Damien: Omen II, even though his departure was, in fact, an amicable arrangement. All in all, it looked like his career was in very bad shape.
Flash Gordon, a movie update of the 1930s’ comic strip, was the film that put him back on the rails.
Out of the blue, Hodges received a call from his filmmaker friend Nic Roeg, who was originally lined up to direct the movie.
“Nic called to say that Dino de Laurentiis was anxious to meet me, and could I come to the Connaught Hotel. When I got there, Dino took me to one side and explained that they were looking for a director to do Flash Gordon 2. Nic was doing the original but they wanted to capitalize on the expensive sets being built and shoot the sequel back to back. He asked if I would write and direct it. I turned it down. I’d just had a bad experience doing the Omen sequel, and wasn’t interested in doing sequels anyway.
“Not long after this meeting Dino and Nic fell out. Nic left the film, and for reasons known only to him, Dino came back to me. This time it was to do the original Flash Gordon. I still resisted. I didn’t know anything about Flash Gordon, or about making a special effects movie. It was a big project and I really had no idea how to go about it. In the end, it was my kids who got me to say ‘yes’! Dino immediately flew me out to New York on Concorde.
“The plane was full of businessmen, all with briefcases. They were all poring over important-looking documents and computer read-outs while I was clutching my bumper volume of Flash Gordon! The other passengers looked at me like I was retarded.
“The first person I met was Danilo Donato, Dino’s Italian production designer. Danilo had designed many of Federico Fellini films, including my favourite, Casanova (1976). The only problem was that he spoke no English at all!
“Donato had already completed drawings of the planets Mongo and Arboria and Frigia. He had two minions unroll them and that completely freaked me. They must have been about 10 feet high by 20 feet wide. Dino’s office was high up in a skyscraper overlooking Central Park, and when they held them up, these drawings literally blocked out the light. It was crazy and left me even more daunted by the prospect of doing the film. But by then, I had already accepted.”
The original script, written by Michael Allin, was soon abandoned. Another was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr, the creator of the 1960s’ television series Batman. Semple, with encouragement from Hodges, went back to the original source material, the strip cartoon. The only concession to the contemporary was making Flash a quarterback with the New York Jets.
Semple had Flash Gordon, beautiful reporter Dale Arden and eminent scientist Alexis Zarkov getting sucked through a black hole into the pantomime galaxy of Mongo, from which Ming the Merciless is trying to destroy the world. And of course, only a football star can save the universe from destruction.
“Disco in the sky”
Pauline Kael on Flash Gordon
Hodges worked with Semple on the revised screenplay and then began shooting some of the model work.
“After I shot some of this early model material, I found out that Dino had looked at the rushes without me being present – which is a cardinal sin. A producer never looks at rushes without the director being present. If I’m honest I think I’d realized I was completely out of my depth and wanted out. So, using his breach of the rules, I told him I was quitting. I heard later, from other sources, that he immediately told his line producer to bring in his list of directors. It was bizarre because he’d kept calling me Nic ever since we’d started. Now I knew why! When he looked down this list, he pointed to a name and said ‘get me that one’. Well the name he’d pointed to was ‘Mike Hodges’. Now the line producer had to tell him this was the director who’d just left! That was Dino for you.
“But, needless to say, Dino and I made it up. We agreed that if he had any grievances he was to talk to me in private and not in front of the crew. And he certainly wasn’t to look at rushes without me being present. We didn’t have any further bust-ups. I even grew to love the monster.”
It was difficult casting Flash, according to Hodges:
“The character of Flash is really as thick as a plank. There’s an innocence about him that’s difficult to find these days. All the people we saw – all these name stars – were not right, physically or otherwise. I suppose they were too knowing.
“I remember Kurt Russell was a contender and he did a camera test. He wasn’t right, though – well, I didn’t think so at the time. Dennis Hopper was considered for Zarkov, which also didn’t materialize. But Topol was perfect casting for that role. Anyway, Dino’s mother-in-law, Silvana Mangano’s mother if you will, spotted Sam J Jones on the television game show Hollywood Squares. She suggested him. Sam was working for Blake Edwards in Hawaii on the film 10 (1978). We got him in for a screen test, dyed his hair blond, and that was it. End of search. He got the part.”
With Sam J Jones as Flash, Hodges’ next task was to cast the female reporter Dale Arden:
“We also had problems casting the Dale Arden part. A Canadian actress was chosen. She was good but the deal fell through – mainly because Dino had decided she was too thin! At first he thought pasta would do the trick but then decided she didn’t have enough fun about her. Dino’s thinking process is very distinctive.
“As it happened our first casting trawl included Melody Anderson and she’d already done a camera test for us. So we switched to her, and I’m pleased we did. She did a fantastic job and looked very like Dale in the original strip.
“Next in line was Ming the Merciless. Max Von Sydow was a friend of Dino’s and agreed to play Ming. I’d only seen him in Ingmar Bergman’s films. My God, I’d get to chew the fat with Death from The Seventh Seal. Another casting coup was Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin. Tim with his moustache looked amazing – just like Errol Flynn. Back then, before he got to play James Bond, I think I’m right in saying he was mainly employed as a character actor. I remember him being terrific as Colonel Christie in Agatha (1979). As I watched I couldn’t work out why he hadn’t already become a big star. He really did have the quality of Flynn.
“I was also pleased when John Osborne agreed to play a small role. If you look carefully you’ll see he’s the high priest in Arboria. He’s the one banging his staff up and down and looks like he’s masturbating. We’d become good friends since Get Carter. John was always happy to escape writing chores. There’s a lot of hanging around in filming and he was always wicked company.”
Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) rules the jungle kingdom of Arboria
Shooting Flash Gordon took 10 months to complete. Hodges found the process both amusing and bizarre:
“It was like surfing. From the casting, through the filming, in and out of the editing rooms and around the dubbing theatre, the ride was completely manic and totally improvised. Every day I and crew, especially my operator, Gordon Haymen, were dancing on our feet, making it up as we went along. It was great.
“I honestly thought the film would never see the light of a projector because it was so chaotic. One day, in the middle of the madness, I turned to Dino and asked him why he’d chosen me to direct the movie. I’d assumed he’d say it was because of Get Carter or The Terminal Man; instead he just said: ‘I a-like-a-your-a face!’ Here I was directing this blockbuster because the producer liked my face! Dino’s primitive belief in the phizog revealing all didn’t stop with me! During casting, if I met someone promising, my secretary would alert his secretary at the other end of the corridor. He would come to my office, take one look at the actor in question, nod or shake his head, grunt and walk off! It always made me laugh but was disconcerting for the actors.
“It didn’t help that my Italian was non-existent; on a par with Danilo’s English. And the same applied to most of his design team! There was this huge team of Italian artisans housed around Shepperton studios. They were talented, warm and smiling, brilliant in everything except English. I just had to relax and let it all happen. Once I did that, every day was like Christmas.
“Danilo, although creating some amazing costumes, wasn’t the most pragmatic designer. I don’t think he ever read the script so he never knew the functional aspects of the costumes or sets. I remember the ‘pig men’ coming into Ming’s palace for the first time. They had to be led on the set like blind people. They had no way of seeing through Danilo’s costumes! It was so weird watching them bumbling around, bumping into each other, trying to work out where the hell they were, that I made them sightless in the film! But then I used everything that happened to our advantage.
“There was another scene where Dale had to beat up several ‘pig men’ with karate chops followed by a somersault. She arrived on set in a metal dress that weighed a ton and she was wearing high heels! The poor girl could hardly walk. It looked great but was completely impractical. So I had her take the high heels off, put them down like outside a hotel door, beat up a ‘pig man’, move the shoes, beat up another ‘pig man’, do the somersault, pick up the shoes and exit. I turned what potentially was a disaster into a whole new comedy sequence with the damn shoes! It wasn’t in the script, of course. Stuff like this would be a daily occurrence.
“At one point I really had to put my foot down with Danilo. Many people say how camp Flash Gordon is and, although I can see what they mean, I really didn’t intend for the character of Flash to be camp or gay in any way. But Danilo, who was gay, had designed this diamante T-shirt for Flash to wear. It was this tank top with a plunging neckline! That’s when I put my foot down.
“In the end, I had no alternative but to improvize. There was no way I could control it. Until Flash Gordon I’d always managed to keep a tight rein on all my films, but not this one. It must be the most expensive film improvized ever! I made myself relax with it. I’d turn up, look at the set and the costumes and make use of whatever was there. It was a great learning curve for me. And this relaxed atmosphere extended to the script. Again we would adapt it to the circumstances, changing or adding dialogue as we went along.”
And some of those dialogue exchanges were extremely funny.
Flash and Dale are reunited on the Hawkmen’s City in the Sky.
Dale: “Oh Flash, I’ve got so much to tell you.”
Flash: “Save it for our children.”
And in another scene.
Dale (as she’s pulled away from all the fighting): “Please. Can’t you see I’ve just got engaged?”
And how about the scene in the dungeon where Prince Barin and Zarkov are chained to a wall together.
Prince Barin: “Tell me more about this man Houdini?”
“Dino took it all so seriously, and I could never quite get to grips with that. He once said to me, ‘Remember, Michael, Flash-a-de-Gordon, he save-a de world!’ He really did think we were making a serious film and kept asking why the crew laughed every morning when we watched the rushes. So I had to ask them not to laugh! What else are you meant to do but laugh at a comic strip? When Alex Raymond had first created the strip in the 1930s man was a long way from landing on the moon. But by 1980 we’d been there, done that! So here we have in our film Zarkov building his space rocket in a conservatory! It had to be tongue-in-cheek.”
Principal photography ended after 17 weeks and the crew broke for Christmas. Around this time there was a fall-out between Dino de Laurentiis and Sam J Jones’s management, and Hodges was told that his star wasn’t coming back. This meant he had to employ a stunt double in second unit shots including Flash on the space bike. He also had to find someone to impersonate Jones for those lines that had to be re-voiced.
Because Jones had departed, it also meant Dino de Laurentiis and Universal studios were left without the star to publicize the picture. Instead they tried to build the campaign around Max Von Sydow as Ming: “which is ridiculous. You can’t have a film called Flash Gordon with posters that major on Ming. It was a great shame because Sam worked hard on the film, and had a nice personality. He was Flash, the all-American boy. He would have gone down a storm on all the chat shows there.” Continues Hodges:
“Nevertheless, throughout all of this chaos, I had the best time of my life. It was absolutely wonderful. It was like cooking a soufflé. Whenever I watch it, I recall the fun we all had doing it – and you can see that sense of fun up there on the screen. It was hard work and a long process but worth it. It did well at the box office and people around the world love it. I often meet fans who know every line. Unfortunately some of those lines are embarrassing.”
Critics, however, have been blunt about the film’s flaws. Many criticized the special effects which were admittedly primitive compared to today’s standards. “We had no computer imagery whatsoever,” says Hodges. “It was all done against blue backgrounds and then superimposed. Although we tried to make it look moderately real I never wanted it to look slick. With a film like Flash Gordon, that would have been disastrous because it wasn’t a realistic film to begin with!”
George Lucas had originally wanted to make Flash Gordon but when he couldn’t obtain the rights he made Star Wars (1977) instead. There’s no doubt that elements from Alex Raymond’s comic strip feature prominently in both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
“George Lucas had originally wanted to make Flash Gordon but when he couldn’t obtain the rights he made Star Wars (1977) instead.” Mike Hodges
Perhaps if Lucas had got his hands on Flash Gordon, he’d have turned it into one of his usual strait-laced affairs. Mark Hammill as Flash, Harrison Ford as Barin, Alec Guinness as Dr Zarkov, Peter Cushing as Ming and Carrie Fisher as Princess Aura … And still Lucas makes out that Star Wars is an original story.
Hodges’ film is the perfect antidote to formulaic sci-fi epics, an alternative to the Lucas–Spielberg approach. Shamelessly entertaining, Flash Gordon is sexy, lavish, wild and absurd – and comes with a perfect pounding rock soundtrack by Queen.
While films such as Superman – the Movie (1977) tried to distance themselves from their original source material, Hodges and his team embraced it and recreated the visual atmosphere of Raymond’s comic strips. Years later, capturing the visual style of original comic book material would come into vogue again with Batman, Dick Tracey and The Shadow to name but a few. Flash was there first!
In the end Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon can be watched at various levels. At one level, it’s a non-stop adventure for the kids. On another, there is hidden sexual innuendo and jokes for the adults. Hodges undoubtedly did a great job of treading a fine line between sexy tongue-in-cheek laughs and Saturday morning cinema.
The psychedelic art-deco sets make up for any glitches in the effects and the general sense of fun makes up for the odd spot of wooden acting! It’s easy to see how much Hodges loved making this film and how it helped make up for his previous Hollywood nightmares. And of course, bearing in mind his views on Uncle Sam’s foreign policies, it must have been quite rewarding to be able to portray this hero as such a stupid oaf!
