"Flash Gordon" is finally getting the deluxe DVD treatment, and it's about bloody time.Yes, fans of Mike Hodges' underappreciated broad n' baroque 1980 space fantasy (which he'd inherited from Nicholas Roeg) can rejoice and retire their (now out-of-print) barebones Image DVD: even though it's an odd 27 years later, Universal Home Video is prepping a 2-disc special edition for release this coming August. Can't wait? Check out the Alex Ross cover art here (the ultra-talented comics icon Ross is an obvious and avowed fan--his logo says it all).
Weird synchronicity: first I scored free tickets to the Queen musical, and then the "Flash Gordon" theme shows up in the Will Ferrell comedy "Blades Of Steel", which I caught two days later..and now this news. In the words of Dr. Zarkov: "Check the angular vector of the moon!"
Not a lot of details yet on special features, other than an "appreciation" of the film by Ross, an interview with screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (a camp pioneer--he wrote most of the Adam West "Batman" TV series, and "Barbarella" for Dino De Laurentis), and a chapter from one of the original Buster Crabbe serials.
But even if the disc extras are puny, there's a line of cool action figures, bobbleheads, and plushies coming from Bif Bang Pow! Yes, you can now own your very own cuddly Max Von Sydow...(and keep scrolling to check out the company's line of figures from "The Big Lebowski"--what, no "Autobahn"?)
