I clearly need to ramp up quickly on all things Flash Gordon that have been committed to film! 
4 Likes
Hahah that’s awesome. I’d go gay for Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, that is, if the female lead hadn’t been quite so my type. 
(I hope this isn’t offensive!)
4 Likes
The 1936 serial was one of the most expensive of its kind at the time and Buster Crabbe’s best. It’s one of the best ones for introducing people to the format.
IMO the most faithful iteration is the Filmation cartoon from 1979/80. Aside from the usual reuse of footage cheats common to the producer, it was a notch above usual Saturday morning fare. Plus Princess Aura 
4 Likes
I saw Victory in a theatre, but I can’t remember why. Either a free pass from a radio station giveaway, or a bonus for seeing some other film. But not raiders.
I actual have Victory on DVD, a two movie pack with American Flyer (I wanted that more). Victory still is watchable, but it makes no sense. They just happen to have Pele in prison camp? And the game becomes more important than escaping?
3 Likes
I was going to post something similar. But you said it better then I would. That being said Princess Aura was more my type.
Melody Anderson was the girl you take home. Ornella Muti was the one who makes you her willing love slave.
3 Likes
I saw it on the first day it was released and I was 15. We saw it at the Virginia theater in Champaign-Urbana Illinois in 1977 in the summer. There was nobody in line! Earlier that spring a friend of mine had loaned me the book “Star Wars” and I picked it up and started reading at 9:00 p.m. and couldn’t stop reading until I finished it overnight at 4 am! Then I promptly forgot about it!
I saw the movie two more times that summer … the second time we went with the scout post and we bought tickets in advance by sending someone to the theater and then we waited in line which was all the way down the block!
by the third time it was three or four months after the movie had opened and it wasn’t as hard to get tickets or to get in! It is the only movie I have seen in my lifetime three different times in the theater! things were very different in 1977 movies cost $3 or $3.50 and we saw as a family just about every single move released between 1970 and 1980 it was such a dominant form of entertainment and the quality was so much higher than our tiny little 13-in Sony color TV set!
8 Likes
Brazil entered the war on the Allies. But yeah the plot was goofy. Especially since Stallone’s character deliberately got recaptured after escaping to plan the big breakout during the game.
John Huston was definitely getting eccentric in his choices towards the end.
4 Likes
I’m through the intro of Flash Gordon 1980 and loooosiiiing iiiittt… Aliens effin’ with humanity with buttons that affect Earth changes? HOT HAIL lol omfg where has this been in my liiiife…?
9 Likes
Oh wow, I saw Victory in the theater, too! But you camping story is better than mine, which is that my friend’s dad took us to see it at the local single-screen theater. That’s the story.
3 Likes
yeah, he’s just a hottie. no offense taken here – you are attracted to who you are attracted to!
5 Likes
Hey, Wizards.
On a Star Wars viewing (not my first), my parents packed the family into the car and we went to the local drive-in to watch a double-feature of Wizards followed by Star Wars. My under-10 brain didn’t really follow Wizards much (it was a few years before post-apocalyptic fiction crossed by radar), but I was struck by the odd story.
4 Likes
Saw it I think 36 times when it came out. Tickets were cheap, and I had friends who worked at the theater so some watching was done from the projection booth. And I got a job then at the theater and saw the subsequent films “on the house”.
I first heard about Star Wars from Bob Wilkins’ late night TV show Creature Feature. I didn’t live in the bay area, but for some reason we got it on our cable up in Oregon as an oddball extra channel. Bob had a short clip (Luke & Leia swing across on the rope I think) and mentioned something about an upcoming movie that looked interesting.
1 Like
What was strange now that I reminisce was the near total lack of supervision. It was my older brother and me and the other family with two boys around the same age. I don’t think any of us were over 12.
I don’t think too many parents these days would be that lackadaisical about their kids and the woods.
4 Likes
I would pay good money for a Criterion Collection 4K restoration of the original trilogy on bluray. Yes, I know there’s the de-specialized editions or whatever online somewhere…
4 Likes
I can totally see it. If you want to see him much earlier in his career, Lion in Winter. It’s a great film all around and Dalton has a key part.
4 Likes
Unfortunately I don’t think that is ever going to happen. Part of the sale to disney was the stipulation that only the SE ever be released.
3 Likes
I’ve heard that, too. It’s a true shame. Stephen King did something similar with The Gunslinger, which was near to perfect in its original form, and I really wish I still had my old edition.
2 Likes
Probably because of the “cinematic affects” I would guess.
2 Likes
There was not much advertising, but our local SF club were champing at the bit, I was unable to make the first showing at the great, but now gone, Cine Capri in Phoenix, AZ, and there was already a line for the second showing when I got there, The theater was awesome, and the curtain raised up to reveal the title curtain behind, which opened horizontally to expose the film on a giant curved screen which extended out to the fifth row of seats. A friend came out and went right back in line to see it again. When I came out after seeing it, the line extended way down the street and around a corner out of site. This was mostly thru word of mouth. I’d seen many the old serials on B&W TV as a kid, so I was primed for the kind of space opera that unfolded in front of my astounded eyes. It played at the Cine Capri for over a year straight, SW’s longest single run in the USA, and I saw it more times over that time, then at a local drive-in many times, and when it was showing at a shotgun movie theater for a buck, well, I saw it there a bunch of times. Years later towards the end of the Cine Capri’s existence, they had a special showing of it that I took my sons to, so they could share the experience.
6 Likes
When the scrolling began, I thought it was like being in a time machine to the old days of movies, and then I wondered if Erich Wolfgang Korngold had been raised from the dead to write the score. The effects were astounding for that time, and I watched it more for that than the acting.
4 Likes
