Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe Movie Review

Third and last Flash Gordon serial works well as both a 12-chapter play and a feature-length condensation (both have the same title). Ming the Merciless of Mongo is dusting the Earth with toxic spores, the Purple Death. Naturally Flash, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov visit Mongo to frustrate the Emperor; assisting them are the running characters Prince Barin of Arboria and Aura, Ming's daughter now married to Barin. Considered by serial authorities as weakest of the three F.G.’s, it's nonetheless the most elegant looking because filmmakers had the sense to copy clothing and set designs predominant in Alex Raymond's source comic strip (Raymond was greatly influenced by Cecil B. DeMille's 1935 epic The Crusades and turned medieval soap opera into space opera when drafting his costumes and textures). In the concluding chapter Flash unleashes an out-of-control rocketship against Ming's castle battlement, and the latter was actually part of the set for Universal's 1939 Tower of London. Whence came the title of this serial? Ming, in his egotistical blindness, calls himself “The Universe,” and because Flash so thoroughly quells him at the conclusion, Flash is entitled, according to Dr. Zarkov, to say that he has conquered the universe. Sheesh! AKA: Purple Death from Outer Space.

1940 240m/B Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes, Charles Mid-dleton, Frank Shannon; D: Ford Beebe, Ray Taylor; W: George Plympton; C: Jerome Ash. VHS, Beta VYY, MRV, SNC