Flash Gordon (1980)

Ever so slightly mad scientist Dr Hans Zarkoff (Topol, who like Prince and Madonna only needs one damn name, thank you very much) is convinced that the series of seemingly natural catastrophes hitting earth is caused by alien forces. As your do, he has built a rocket in his own, large, shed, to prove it and save Earth, too, but it turns out to find co-pilots willing and able to push down one foot pedal lest one’s rocket explodes is rather more difficult than you’d expect. Fortunately, said (un)natural catastrophes do lead to a plane crash right into Zarkoff’s rocket barn. On board the plane are football star Flash Gordon (Sam Jones) and his instant love interest Dale Arden (Melody Anderson), and they are easily convinced to help out with the Earth saving when threatened with a gun.

Once the trio is in space, Zarkoff turns out to have been perfectly right. Evil space Emperor Ming (Max von Sydow) of the planet Mongo is trying to destroy Earth for his entertainment. Fortunately, Flash turns out to be a proper, pure-hearted hero in the Captain America-mold, so Project: Save Earth just might proceed eventually.

As anyone who knows me or has been reading this blog for a bit will probably know, I’m not a fan of camp at all, nor of that most horrible of all sins a movie fan can commit – liking things ironically. So my deep and abiding love for Mike Hodges’s certainly very campy Flash Gordon doesn’t really fit my usual viewing habits. But then, I don’t love this film ironically but with all of my heart; and the film’s camp sensibilities seem mostly to consist of allowing itself to become as artificial and strange as possible, the people involved finding the point where even the strangest shit becomes joyful.

Mike Hodges (much beloved around here for Get Carter, Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) seems like a strange choice of director for an adaptation of a classic movie serial/comic strip, and you’d certainly not approach making a science fiction adventure movie as he does today, but he clearly brought a wild visual imagination and a sense for goofy joy to the proceedings his other films (you might exclude Pulp) weren’t the place to demonstrate. Hodges also turns out to be a master of how to pace this sort of crazy space adventure, which is breathlessly and with something exciting happening every single second.

Aesthetically, in design and and stylistic approach, the film has something of the fever dream of a pubescent boy (that’s a compliment) mixed with a bit of LSD, as realized via special effects that often seem to consciously point back in the direction of the Flash Gordon serial, and others that have their basis more in stage special effects than what you’d expect any typical effects crew of a 1980s film to come up with. If you can get rid of that pesky idea of realism, the things the film has to show, its series of increasingly bizarre costumes, its multi-coloured liquid skies, the pantomime style creatures, are true wonders to behold, and look like nothing you’ll see in any other SF movie. Well, I suspect some of the SF films of Alfredo Brescia would have loved to look like Flash does, yet never had the money or the craftsmen, but that’s about it. If you always imagined your space operas to look like a dream of adventure and space rather than an attempt to mimic reality, this is the film for you.

Adding to this very special sense of wonder is a soundtrack by Queen I am contractually obliged to describe as “ass-kicking”. It also happens to be true. Queen, much like Flash Gordon, were of course masters at being absolutely sincere in their campiness, overblown in a way that’s meant to build an exciting dream world simply bigger and more interesting than reality, and therefore the perfect fit for the things their guitars, synths and Mercurys accompany.

But that’s not all what I love about the film. It also doubles down on the kinky aspects of the material it adapts to a nearly ridiculous degree, so much so that I have not the faintest idea how a film featuring Ming mindwhammying Dale to a public orgasm or Ornella Muti’s Princess Aura sticking her tongue into whatever male mouth available, and which clearly thinks that slightly (or very) weird sex stuff is simply fun did get a PG rating at the time. Sure, there’s a deplorable lack of nudity, but much of the film seems so sexually overheated in various kinky manners that undressing anyone just seems like overkill. I would be very surprised if Hodges and the scriptwriters hadn’t studied Flesh Gordon quite extensively, is what I’m saying.

Because that’s still not enough, Hodges also manages to often turn a film made of the stuff of dreams, plain weird shit and basically anti-realistic special effects into a thing of great excitement, turning out big “fuck yeah” moments again and again, even if his hawk men carry the most un-flightworthy wings imaginable and his hero happens to ride an improbable silver air/space scooter. The film’s just shamelessly going with it all, and you’d be a sad old coot not to enjoy it.


The actors sure seem to enjoy themselves, too. Sam Jones – probably fortuitously – is the eternal heart on his sleeve straight man to a whole horde of scenery chewers doing their spirited best, with Brian Blessed doing his Brian Blessed thing to a blessed degree, while von Sydow, sporting some of the most gloriously absurd costumes imaginable, achieves astonishing feats of BIG GOOFY YET SERIOUS EVIL BORN FROM BOREDOM. And that’s only the most obvious two in a horde of actors all tuning into exactly the same frequency. Even better – nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, in the cast seems to come to the material from a position of superiority. Instead, everyone digs into the absurdity of much of what’s going on and treats it like it was Shakespeare, treating the often wonderfully bizarre dialogue to the most incredible line readings. It’s glorious and wondrous to behold (and hear), but then, so is everything else about this film.

In short: Driving Force (1989)

aka Roadwars

The Future. The US have hit an apocalyptic economical crisis, even further deepening the divide between the rich and the poor. Law enforcement is corrupt and unavailable if you aren't rich enough, and everyone hustles somehow to survive.

Well, at least gas is still cheap, or that's how I explain that former engineer Steve (Sam Jones) has finally found a new job as a tow truck driver to keep himself and his little daughter, sugary sweet Becky (Stephanie Mason), in bread. Sam's a basically decent chap, so it does not take long until his classical view of the tow trucking business comes into conflict with a trio of rogue tow truck drivers led by the psychopath Nelson (Don Swayze, Patrick's even less talented brother). Nelson and his crew are what happens when the no-good post-apocalyptic punks of other post-apocalypse films finally get a job: tow truck drivers who cause the accidents they survive on themselves and blackmail people into paying them. In the end, the streets won't be broad enough for Steve and Nelson's crew.

As if a trio of psycho punks weren't enough of a problem for our hero, he is also fighting a custody battle for Becky against her grandparents, who are rich and evil and will therefore get their dirty, manicured hands on Becky sooner or later.

Somehow, Steve still manages to romance good rich girl Harry (Catherine Bach) during all this, but their love story is as boring as it is trite.

By 1989, when the Filipino/US co-production Driving Force was shot, everything had already been done in the post-apocalyptic movie genre. Or nearly everything, as director Andrew Prowse and screenwriter Patrick Edgeworth must have decided in a moment of genius/madness. Really, who wouldn't want to see a movie about post-apocalyptic tow truck drivers? (As always, don't answer that, please).

As goofy as the film's basic idea sounds, as basically decent seems its early execution. This is one of those movies that are more inspired by the first Mad Max film, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where the old social structures have not entirely broken down, but are deteriorating fast. Thanks to its world still being so (uncomfortably) close to the world as we know it, the movie gets by fine with a few shots of grubby back roads, run-down buildings and people in dirty clothes to set up a somewhat satisfying idea of what this particular post-apocalypse is all about. Even the evil tow truck brigade makes a certain degree of sense in a pulp fiction kind of way.

Unfortunately, Prowse doesn't seem to know what's actually good and entertaining about his film, and adds that stupid custody battle storyline and that unpleasantly cutesy kid to the whole she-bang. Whenever the custody plotline starts, the movie turns from a mild, yet entertaining exploitation movie into Lifetime Channel family movie fodder that drags the film's pacing and my patience down very quickly. I blame Over the Top. The added love story is not much better.

It's always too bad when a film so clearly neither knows what it wants nor where its strengths lie, but that's exactly the case with Driving Force. It's a film that permanently sabotages itself, and becomes unnecessarily boring over long stretches.

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