Flash Gordon - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Flash Gordon or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Flash Gordon

[christina]

Max Von Sydow shaved his head for the role of Ming the Merciless as Ming the Merciless is bald in the comic strip.

[lynn]

Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed) says, "Who wants to live forever?" This is highly similar to the line, "You cowardly kitten! You want to live forever?", spoken by the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) to Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), in Batman: The Movie (1966). Both films were written by Lorenzo Semple Jr..

[jeffrey]

According to the original storyline, when Dale is entranced by Ming's hypnotic ring, she is having a vision of being on an erotic picnic with Ming in a 1920's setting.

[elmer]

A comic book adaptation of the film was drawn by artist Al Williamson, who had previously worked on Flash Gordon comics in the 1960s. Williamson actually disliked the movie, especially the casting of Sam J. Jones, whom Williamson felt did not resemble the classic character.

[willard]

First film of Jim Carter.

[eli]

Nicolas Roeg was originally going to direct, but didn't, due to creative difference. One of his proposals was to excise the trademark cliffhangers and melodrama, seeing Flash as more of "a metaphysical messiah".

[tamara]

According to Sam J. Jones, while filming the tilting-disc fight scene, the actors would get covered in paint by the disc that was spray painted silver. They would have to take extra time between each take to wipe silver paint off their bodies.

[kim]

The aircraft used during the beginning scenes is a deHavilland Dove DH.104 fixed wing twin engine (inline six cylinder 400 hp each).

[steve]

Flash's t-shirt was a gift from an anonymous female fan. Flash wore it a lot, hoping he would eventually meet the woman.

[brent]

According to to the movie bio book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", Star Wars happened because George Lucas really wanted to do a Flash Gordon update. A souped up version with great production values, but he couldn't get the rights to it, so he did he did his own poor man's version of it (which wound up being much more successful than any Flash Gordon version that had come out before it.) Ironically the success of Star Wars led to this 1980 Flash Gordon reboot getting made.

[kyle]

In the finished film, George Harris' dialogue as Prince Thun of Ardentia was dubbed. His voice is on the Queen soundtrack album, indicating that the change must have been made fairly late in post-production.