The makers of Flesh Gordon just chose to target their film at a very different audience.įlesh Gordon was released in the ‘Golden Age of Porn’, when the idea of spending half a million dollars on a sci-fi skin flick and rolling it out to theatres around the country actually made a degree of sense. It should be noted here that there is no suggestion that Lucas was inspired by Flesh Gordon. Lucas began writing his film in 1973, and discussed the project in interviews that predated the release of Flesh Gordon.īut Lucas and the makers of this sexploitation film clearly shared very similar influences, and came to a very similar conclusion - that the time was ripe for these types of adventure stories to make a comeback. To those innovators and their fans throughout the world, we dedicate Flesh Gordon. The originators of the heroes of yesteryear and those who immortalised them on the silver screen and in comic strips played no part in the production of this motion picture, but it could not have been made without them, for their ideas and visions of other worlds have been our inspiration. Realising America’s respect for things of the past, we in the spirit of burlesque and satire have created a new folk hero, with the spirit of the old but the outrageousness of the new. In today’s troubled times, we, the producers, felt there existed a need for more entertaining humour. They possessed the goodness and moral fortitude which the country could admire in its time of need. One of the greatest morale builders was the creation of the super hero: Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, Buck Rogers, Superman and many others. The public needed something to help lift morale and give courage. To avoid a lawsuit over the Flash Gordon serial, Ziehm agreed to add the disclaimer “Not to be confused with the original Flash Gordon” to all the film’s advertising materials (including the trailer), and added an opening crawl to the film that established that it was a parody.įrom 1929 to 1933 America had been ravaged by a merciless depression. (Graffiti Productions, incidentally, was founded in the late ‘60s, years before Lucas released American Graffiti in 1973.) It was all so similar that, according to Howard Ziehm’s DVD audio commentary, Universal Studios actually planned to sue his production company, Graffiti Productions, for plagiarism. The planet Porno is, of course, Mongo Dale Ardor is Dale Arden Wang the Perverted is Ming the Merciless Dr Flexi Jerkoff is Dr Alexi Zarkov Wang’s daughter Amora is Ming’s daughter Aura and Prince Precious is Prince Barin.
#OLD GAY PORN MOVIE NAMED GIANT PARODY SERIAL NUMBERS#
While Lucas made sure to scratch the Flash Gordon serial numbers off, to make Star Wars its own entity with its own distinct characters, the makers of Flesh Gordon blatantly lifted the plot, characters, and a number of scenes and shots from Universal’s original 1936 Flash Gordon serial, simply giving the existing work a porn paintjob. They just got there three years earlier, and they weren’t as subtle about it. Cichy and Bill Osco - saw Flash Gordon as being emblematic of a type of adventure story that just wasn’t being told anymore as an antidote, of sorts, for a cynical society. Like Lucas, the makers of Flesh Gordon - director and producer Howard Ziehm, with co-director Michael Benveniste and co-producers Walter R. We’ve just begun to take the first step and can say, ‘Look! It goes on for a zillion miles out there.’ You can go anywhere and land on any planet.” “But there is a bigger, mysterious world in space that is more interesting than anything around here. We no longer have the Mysterious East or treasure islands or going on strange adventures. One of the criteria of the mythical fairy tale situation is an exotic, faraway land, but we’ve lost all the fairy tale lands on this planet. “I wanted to do a modern fairy tale, a myth. “You just don’t get them anymore, and that’s the best stuff in the world - adventures in far-off lands. “It struck me that we had lost all that - a whole generation was growing up without fairy tales,” he told American Film. Lucas saw Star Wars as a return to the optimistic adventure fiction of his youth. I realised that what I really wanted to do was a contemporary action fantasy.” It’s your basic superhero in outer space. “I realised that I could make up a character as easily as Alex Raymond, who took his character from Edgar Rice Burroughs. They didn’t really want to part with the rights - they wanted Fellini to do Flash Gordon. After THX 1138 I wanted to do Flash Gordon and tried to buy the rights to it from King Features, but they wanted a lot of money for it, more than I could afford then. “I loved the Universal serials with Buster Crabbe. “I loved the Flash Gordon comic books,” he told American Film in 1977. When George Lucas made Star Wars, he never tried to hide the influence of Flash Gordon on his film.