The Most Fun You Can Have For $1

So I was browsing through a local Dollar Tree store (not to be confused with Dollar General, All For a Dollar, The Dollar Store, Everything's a Dollar, etc.), and there was this display of DVDs of classic TV shows. Classic as in '50s-'60s. Typically had 3 or 4 episodes each. Most of'em didn't interest me much, but this Flash Gordon DVD with three episodes from 1954-55 caught my eye. I was only 3 to 4 years old when the show aired, but I still have (very) vague memories of watching them. Only a buck? I couldn't resist.

Today I popped it in the player to check out Flash Gordon and the Planet of Death, which happens to be the first episode of the series, and had so much fun that I went on to watch Deadline at Noon and The Subworld Revenge, which both came near the end of the 39-episode series. I laughed my ass off.

Think classic Star Trek had cheesy production values? Flash Gordon is artificial plastic cheese food stuff in comparison. The plots (I use that term loosely), the dialog, the acting, the effects (I can't bring myself to call them "special"), the props -- all so dreadful they're hilarious. The costumes, remarkably, were just about on par with classic Trek's (that silver swimcap Flash is wearing on the DVD cover didn't actually appear in any of these three episodes); heck, Dr. Zarkov's uniform (and his beard) looked as if they might have been the model for the TOS Klingons. True, I wasn't exactly impressed with Flash's form-fitting white T-shirt in Planet of Death. But Dale Arden was, for the most part, attired in a sensible trouser uniform. Come to think of it, she could almost have been the precursor to Majel Barrett's pilot episode "Number One."

Deadline at Noon was a particular hoot. The titular deadline was for the explosion of a "duranium bomb" (tell me Roddenberry didn't steal that name) that had been planted in Berlin in the 1950s by time-travelling aliens. This bomb was going to destroy Earth, and it was planted in the 1950s because it somehow would take around 1250 years for the duranium to explode -- apparently this series is set in the 33rd century. (This sounded like it was intended to be some kind of "radioactive decay" with a long half-life -- they were searching for the duranium with a Geiger counter -- which didn't exactly jibe with the fact that the bomb had all kinds of weird mechanisms that Dr. Zarkov had to disarm when they found it. Or maybe I misunderstood the technobabble; the sound, supposedly "enhanced" according to the DVD jacket, was atrocious.)

Anyway, it's 11 AM of the day it's supposed to explode and blow up Earth at noon, and Flash and his buddies from the Galaxy Bureau of Investigation have exactly one hour to travel back to the "sixth decade of the 20th century," as it was quaintly referred to by Zarkov, and find and disarm the bomb. Evidently this is one of those cases where the time in the past marches in parallel lockstep with the time in the present (i.e., the 33rd century), which makes no sense at all, but whatever. Dr. Zarkov conveniently happens to have brought a time machine aboard the Sky Flash (their cheesy space ship which looks about the size of one of Trek's tiny shuttlecrafts) in his carry-on, and they travel back to the 50s with much less fuss and bother than a slingshot-around-the-sun maneuver entails. They identify some major cities (DC, NY, Paris) from the air, marvel at an "aeroplane" and an ocean liner, and engage in amusing exchanges about how primitive this culture must have been.

At this point I felt as if I had stumbled into ST: Voyager's Future's End or the original series' Tomorrow is Yesterday. The Enterprise -- excuse me, the Sky Flash -- is spotted over Berlin and assumed to be invaders from outer space. The cops (driving an old VW Beetle) are sent to find them after they land, but Flash "freezes" them with his ray gun while Zarkov and Dale locate the bomb and defuse it, two seconds before noon. Dale wants to stick around and look up their ancestors to tell them what the future will bring, but Zarkov says no. (He must be the original Temporal Agent.)

Oh, and if you're wondering why the heck they picked Berlin, of all places, for the location of the duranium bomb, it's undoubtedly because this series was actually filmed in West Berlin.

I can't remember when I had so much fun for a dollar. And I can't wait to get back to the Dollar Tree, because they also had a "Volume 2" Flash Gordon DVD featuring the episodes Akim the Terrible, The Breath of Death, and Claim Jumpers, and I want to see what else the Great Bird stole from them. Only a buck? I can't resist!