by Swashbuckler on 5/27/2000
favorite track: 12
 
One of the wierdest misfire films to come from the king of misfires, Dino De Laurentiis, Flash Gordon traded heavily on the psychedelic imagery of Mongo, the undercurrent of kinky sexuality, its hommage to the original "Flash Gordon" serials and, of course, the music by Queen.

Queen's songs work surprisingly well with the film, mostly because of the fact that the movie itself doesn't take itself at all seriously.

The band members actually come up with some interesting material, including an entertaining song "The Hero" for the heroics of Flash (Sam J. Jones) himself, a bizarre love theme (heard to wonderful advantage in its first appearance and in "The Kiss"), a hypnotic motif for Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow, obviously having a ball with this role) and a rousing clarion call for the Hawkmen.

Unfortunately, all of this is presented on the album buried under dialogue and effects. Although cleverly edited to tell the story without the benefit of the kinky visuals, there are times when this practice is very distracting. Certainly, the track "Vultan's Theme" could have been presented without Brian Blessed shouting "Dive! Dive!" all over the place. As a standout musical sequence, this is particularly dissapointing, as is Melody Anderson's chanting of "Go, Flash, Go!" over the well-wrought rock anthem "Football Fight."

All in all, while Queen's music would be fairly well represented on this album were it not for the continuous stream of dialogue, Howard Blake's orchestral contribution to this film is used here and there only as connective material.

A promotional release from SuperTracks rectifies this situation somewhat by presenting Blake's score tracks.

While thankfully free of the dialogue, Blake's score suffers from the absence of Queen's music, which it was designed to supplement. As a result, thematic material related to aspects of the Queen score appears out of nowhere on this album (for example, Queen's love theme is heard in "Rocket Ship Flight" in a form that only makes sense if you're familiar with the original version).

Nevertheless, Blake's lush orchestrations and tongue-in-cheek approach to this film make the new album endearing. Much of the score has a campy, cartoon-like quality to it. Quirky little bits such as "Flight to Arboria" and "Dale's Drug" are a lot of fun, and Blake's pounding action music, heard in "Football Fight" (not to be confused with the track of the same name on the Queen album) and "Duel on the Sky Platform," based heavily on the rhythm from Queen's "Flash's Theme" are undeniably rousing.

If Queen's album could be reissued without the dialogue, then much of this would become moot; enterprising film score fans could edit the score into its proper order while Queen's fans could just hear the music. As it stands, there is no way really to hear this score in anything approaching a normal way.