Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Story of the Flash Gordon Movie Serials - 99 Cent eBook - 24 Posters and Stills

"ROCKETING TO THE rescue, Flash Gordon and his friends hurtle straight into the beam of a fiendish ray-gun and are blown out of the skies! And meanwhile, beautiful young Dale Arden, eyes wide, bosom heaving, cringes at the approach of lascivious King Vultan and his shaggy pet, Urso."

This cliffhanger perhaps best exemplifies what sets the "Flash Gordon" serials apart from other motion picture serials of the day: a raw, obvious, healthy (and unhealthy) sex appeal. One of the aspects that drives all three serials is Ming's lust for 'the Earthwoman" Dale Arden (and in fact, in the first serial, it seems every petty king on Mongo has the hots for pretty Dale). In fact everyone in these serials is "hot" from pretty boy with muscles, Buster Crabbe (Flash Gordon), the ravishing Jean Rogers (Dale Arden), brainy and muscular Frank Shannon (Dr. Zarkov), and that embodiment of evil incarnate Charles Middleton (Emperor Ming).
Flash Gordon, released by Universal Pictures in the spring of 1936, was a tremendously popular production and a huge financial success for the studio. Filled with glitzy special effects, costumes, props, masterpieces of monster and alien makeup, like the hawkmen and mudpeople, and over the top scripting, it continues to win new followers every day, more than three-quarters of a century later. 


Now Charles Lee Jackson II, Hollywood historian, former columnist for FILMFAX, and publisher of Extra Added Attractions magazine, who currently conducts a college-level course  in Ephemeral Cinema, in the Southern California area, tells the whole engrossing story of the making of this B-Movie classic.

This unique ebook edition features more than two dozen posters and stills from this now legendary series of filmic cliffhangers. 



 

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