Flash Gordon: Mars Attacks the World Movie Review

This feature condensation of the second Flash Gordon serial (Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars) was supposed to take place on Mongo, but all the characters and the locale switched to Mars after Orson Welle's famed War of the Worlds Halloween broadcast of 1938. So Azura, Queen of the Blue Caverns on Mongo in the Alex Raymond comic strip, became Azura, Queen of Mars. And so on. Plot concerns Ming the Merciless, planet-hopping, aiming a death ray at Earth in revenge for what Flash did to him in the first serial. Mongo's Prince Barin of Arboria also drops in to help his old friend Flash, and there are some put-upon Martian citizens called the Clay People to lend a muddy hand. Besides their eerie language (actually normal English played backwards!) and great entrance scene, literally oozing out of their cave walls (simple but effective double exposure f/x), the Clay People also benefit from some great Franz Waxman music borrowed from The Bride of Frankenstein. Overall, this serial is not as good as the first Flash Gordon but is worth a look. AKA: The Deadly Rays from Mars; Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.

1938 87m/B Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton; D: Robert F. “Bob” Hill, Ford Beebe; W: Ray Trampe; C: Jerome Ash. VHS, Beta CAB