bsmith5552 "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" is the third and final serial in the Flash Gordon Trilogy. In this instalment we have a new Dale Arden (Carol Hughes), Prince Barin (Roland Drew) and Princess Aura (Shirley Deane). Returning are the ever blond Flash (Buster Crabbe), brilliant scientist Dr. Zarkoff (Frank Shannon) and of course Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton). The one-seater tin lizzy space ships also return.Ming has returned to Mongo where he once again rules and revives his efforts to destroy the earth. When a plaque called "The Purple Death" threatens the earth, Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov are pressed into service once again in order to save the earth. Once on the planet Mongo, the team manages to foil Ming's various attempts to destroy the earth. Zarkov as always, invents the perfect counter-measure to Ming's weaponry just in the nick of time. And Flash runs to Dale's rescue a number of times through the usual assortment of secret passages and tunnels.There are the usual cliff hanger chapter endings with Flash and company escaping just in the nick of time. The special effects are crude by today's standards but for the period were quite believable. The meaning of the title is explained in the final fade out.A fitting end to the Flash Gordon serials.

poe426 It's a toss-up, if you ask me, between FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS and FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE. This one starts off well enough, with some solid scene-staging- but then degenerates quickly into the almost mind-numbing sameness that was the bane of chapter plays. Not doubt the pace of production played an integral part in this: I read somewhere that on one of these serials there were 80 setups in a single day. If THAT doesn't make for some uneven edges, nothing will. Costumes and extensive stock footage seem to have been cobbled together in an almost random manner befitting an Ed Wood epic (though not nearly as bad, to be honest), but it's the lack of the youthful enthusiasm that made the original so much fun that is most deeply felt (or not felt). By this time, they were going through the motions- although Crabbe really did seem to be getting more comfortable in the role. Pity.

quatermax-1 The heroic theme music strikes up, the chapter number and the 'story so far' prologue scroll up the screen and into the distance, and we are thrust into a new adventure where our hero and his companion, now disguised as Imperial Guards, having entered the stronghold of their enemy by spaceship, are about to rescue the beautiful Princess from his evil clutches! Elsewhere in the complex our hero's elderly mentor, dressed in his hooded wizard-like robes, also works to thwart the villain's dastardly plans… Sound familiar? Yes. Of course it does, for this is FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE (actually clunkily titled in all the opening credits as FLASH GORDON SPACE SOLDIERS CONQUER THE UNIVERSE) and is, of course, along with FLASH GORDON ('36) and FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS ('38), the inspiration for Mr. Lucas's other famous space opera, the name of which escapes me for the moment. We even have Imperial Spaceships bombarding our heroes on an Ice Planet (imaginatively called 'Frigia') and a battle on a Forest Moon ('Arboria' – Wow! Who dreams up all this stuff?), where friendly Prince Barin and his 'Merry Men' are bow and arrow wielding precursors to the Ewoks of Endor. There are many other elements too that eventually made their way into George's epic saga, but you'll have to watch it to see how many you can spot.The acting is dreadful, the costumes ridiculous, the 'special effects' laughable and the plot (using the term very loosely) has holes in it big enough to fly an Imperial Battle Cruiser through - but enough about STAR WARS (ah, that was it!). Seriously though, FLASH GORDON may be ropey but I challenge anyone to fault their enthusiasm and the whole is weirdly compelling and great fun.Shamelessly grabbing any spare backlot sets, props, sound effects and costumes available, a trend the much later STAR TREK original series, and others, continued, we are treated to such sights as Imperial officer's uniforms that appear to have been delivered by mail order direct from Ruritania; Prince Barin's 'treemen' clad in medieval castellated Lincoln Green (we assume) skirts and tights straight out of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD ('38), and backstreets of Mongo that could have equally been trod, and no doubt were, by both Errol Flynn and Frankenstein's Monster. Even the music is stock, the most noticeable being Franz Waxman's 'Birth of the Bride' from his score to BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN ('35), which is plundered repeatedly. Fin-accessorised bullet shaped spaceships buzz around (again to a FRANKENSTEIN laboratory's electrical hum) with sparks falling downwards and smoke drifting up (an amazing thing the vacuum of space), and, no matter the destination, they always land, spirally, in the same scenic valley.All 'dynamic' twelve chapters are presented in this boxed set with irresistible titles like 'The Purple Death', 'The Palace of Terror', 'Freezing Torture', 'The Destroying Ray' and 'Walking Bombs' (these particularly are a hoot), complete with the necessary cliff-hanger endings and opening and closing credits for each, but sadly, and a bad oversight, there are no special features. I know that perhaps this is difficult given the age of the material, but some accompanying old movie newsreels, as on the DVD release of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, might have put it into some kind of historical perspective.In this age of CGI effects where anything is possible, it's nice to look back and see where it all began, and I've no doubt that in 1940 it was equally as enthralling as any SFX blockbuster claims to be today. Get some beers in, some friends around and have some fun as FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE! Trivia Note: Although FGCTU was Buster Crabbe's final appearance as Flash in the old Universal serials, he did make one final cameo appearance as the character in season one of the 1979 TV series BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY which starred Gil Gerard as Buck, a character Crabbe had also played 40 years earlier in 1939. In the two-part episode 'Planet of the Slave Girls' (a typical old Gordon/Rogers chapter title in itself) Crabbe appeared as 'Brigadier Gordon', a former space fighter pilot called out of retirement, and there's a pointed piece of dialogue toward the end of the episode where the new Buck (Gerard) is, in fact, talking to the old (Crabbe):Buck: That's pretty good shooting. Gordon: Son, I've been doing this since before you were born. Buck (the character of course thinking he was born five centuries earlier): You think so? Gordon: Colonel, I know so.Only four years later Clarence Linden 'Buster' Crabbe had passed away, making this a nice and timely touch in an otherwise unmemorable series.

bob-717 I'm sure that even when this came out a lot of the stuff in this serial seemed pretty silly. But if you watch it, especially if you watch it as it was meant to be watched, one chapter at a time with a break in between, you'll probably find yourself getting into the cliff hangers, and occasionally dazzled by the occasionally sumptuous production values (huge pile of writhing dancing girls, snow mountain photography) and the sometimes ingenious special effects (those mud men always make me jump).The rest of the time, sit back & laugh.They must have known that they were stretching the premise when they made this, the third and last Flash Gordon serial, but the plot pretty much hangs together if you choose to pay attention to it (which can be hard, a lot of explanations are pretty rushed), and the performances are mostly good.