Sunday, February 11, 2007

SATURDAY MORNING MEMORIES:FLASH GORDON-THE COMPLETE ANIMATED SERIES


A blurb from Ink and Paint about Flash Gordon: The Complete Animated Series:” Forced to crash-land his space ship on Mongo-a bizarre planet ruled by the tyrannical Emperor, Ming the Merciless-Flash Gordon and his companions, Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov, face danger and excitement! To save themselves from doom at the hands of the evil Ming and his ruthless Metal Men, they must find a way to bring together the citizens of Mongo and their leaders, including Thun the Lion Man, winged King Vultan of the Hawkmen, and bow-wielding Prince Barin of Arboria.

Flash Gordon was a childhood movie serial hero that I used to watch on our local Saturday afternoon Horror show called “Creature Feature” with the host Dr. Paul Bearer. Filmation did a great job with the character in this 1979 animated series. The animation was a mixture of classic Filmation animation and a process called “Roto-scoping” where they would trace over live footage to make it look more life like. Again, BCI Eclipse and Ink and Paint have done a fantastic job with this set and it is packed full of extras with Audio Commentaries on 3 episodes and even a bonus episode of Flash Gordon from the “Defenders of the Earth” series among other extras.


VIDEO

The video quality is very good! Note that starting in season 2 the episodes were 2, roughly 12 minute episode to make one show. The shows were also done like chapters from the old movie serials. There is also a Play All feature.

Audio

Was originally recorded in Mono. It is Mono on this set but can be heard quite clearly.

Disc 1- 1. “A Planet in Peril” *
2. “The Monsters of Mongo”
3. “King of the Hawkmen”
4. “To Save Earth”
5. “The Beast Men’s Prey”
6. “Into The Water World”
7.“Adventure in Arbaria”

Disc 2- 1. “The Frozen World”
2. “Monster of the Glacier”
3. “Blue Magic”
4. “King Flash”
5. “Tournament of Death”
6. “Castaways in Tropica”
7. “The Desert Hawk”

Disc 3- 1. “Vultan-Revolt of the Powermen”
2. “Ming’s Last Battle”
3. “Gremlin The Dragon/Royal Wedding”
4. “Sir Gremlin”*/Deadly Double
5. “The Game/The Seed”
6. “Witch Woman/Micro Menace”
7. “Flashback/The Warrior”

Disc 4-1. “The Freedom Balloon/Sacrifice of the Volcano Men”
2. “Beware of Gifts/The Memory Bank of Ming
3. "Survival Game/Gremlin’s Finest Hour”*


Extras

Disc 1: Audio Commentary on “A Planet Of Peril” by Lou Scheimer and Darrel McNeil

Disc 2: None

Disc 3: Audio Commentary on “Sir Gremlin” by Lou Scheimer and Tom Ruegger

Disc 4: Audio Commentary on “ Gremlin’s Finest Hour” by Michael Reeves
Blasting Off with Flash Gordon! -Documentary (21:32)
Storyboards-Barin Sequence and Metalmen Sequence
Bonus Episode-“Escape form Mongo” from Defenders of the Earth series (21:56)
Flash Gordon Chronicles-Heroes, Villains, Aliens settings- (Text Only)
DVD-Rom Feature-Scripts for all episodes, storyboards and Flash Gordon Bible


Verdict

If you are a fan of the comics of the newspaper and of the old movie serials or Science Fiction for that matter, then you need to get this set! The picture and audio quality are great. The extras are quite good and the audio commentaries give insightful information that was not presently known about the workings of the show.


Rating; *****!

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