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Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars
Space Soldier's Trip to Mars
USA 1938
produced by
Barney A. Sarecky (associate) for Universal
directed by Ford L. Beebe, Robert F. Hill
starring Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Frank Shannon, Beatrice Roberts, Donald Kerr, Richard Alexander, C. Montague Shaw, Wheeler Oakman, Kenne Duncan, Warner Richmond, Jack Mulhall, Lane Chandler, Anthony Warde, Ben Lewis, Kane Richmond, Hooper Atchley, James Blaine, Thomas Carr, James Eagles, Jerry Frank, Louis Merrill, Edwin Stanley, Ray Turner
screenplay by Ray Trampe, Norman S. Hall, Wyndham Gittens, Herbert Dalmas, based on the comicstrip by Alex Raymond, special effects by Ed Keyes
serial
Flash Gordon, Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe)
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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When some ray from Mars sucks all the nitron from the earth's
atmosphere slowly but steadily, Flash gordon (Buster Crabbe), Dale Arden
(Jean Rogers), Dr Zarkov (Frank Shannon), and stowaway reporter Happy
Hapgood (Donald Kerr) make a trip to the planet to find out what's going
on ... and they find Mars's Queen of Magic Azura (Beatrice Roberts) has
teamed up with Emperor Ming (Charles Middleton), whom Flash and company
thought destroyed on Mongo in the earlier serial [click
here], and they have conspired to destroy earth. Flash and
company escape but are captured by Azura and Ming, only to escape and fall
into the hands of the Clay People. The Clay King (C. Montague Shaw) forces
Flash and Zarkov to return to Queen Azura's castle to kidnap her, but once
they have her they almost fall prey to Ming's intrigue, as he has long
conspired to get rid of her, but she's able to safe herself and escape
Flash's clutches. Still, their attempts are good enough for the Clay King
to make peace with Flash and friends, and he sends them on a mission to
ensure the help of the Tree People in an attack on Azura's palace - but
the Tree People are secretly in league with Ming, and Flash and company
soon become their prisoners ... until they are freed by Prince Barin
(Richard Alexander), who has come to Mars from Mongo to pay a visit to his
fellow Tree People to find them on the wrong side of things. Flash and
friends even manage to secure the black sapphire, the stone which
counteracts the white sapphire Queen Azura gets her magical powers from.
With that in hand, our friends manage to abduct Queen Azura to the Clay
People for her to restore them to their former human form, but Ming
captures Flash and seizes the sapphire from him to contain it in a box
that neutralizes it. Her magical powers being restored, Azura manages to
escape. However when she asks Ming about the whereabouts of the black
sapphire, Ming claims he never got it. Flash manages to escape, and
somehow end up in the land of the Tree People, where Dale is rendered
mindless to a point where she almost kills Flash before being abducted to
Azura's palace. But of course, her friends save her, restore her memory,
and even manage to get the black sapphire again - and again they kidnap
Azura, but this time Ming has Azura's stratosleds going after the
stratosled of the kidnappers and bomb them once they flee on land,
claiming Azura's magic will protect her ... well, it doesn't, and Azura
dies in "friendly fire", very much to Ming's delight, as he now
has free reign to attack the clay people with the help of the Tree People.
Azura's last act is an act of greatness though as she tells Flash how to
restore the Clay People to their human form - and thus they are much more
ready to fight. Plus Flash and company spy out the lair of the Tree People
- and there they learn of a plan to bomb the Clay People or of existence -
but Flash manages to (physically) jump the lead stratosled of the bomber
squadron in mid-air and take the pilots prisoner ... who once among the
(now re-humanized) Clay People realize they are their (actual) brothers
and thus pledge allegiance to Flash. Flash and friends then make it to
Azura's palace, where Mind is about to be crowned, and they manage to turn
the collective Martian aristocracy against Ming - but Ming manages to make
an escape, and he now tries to destroy earth before being captured, but
now even his sedond-in-command (Wheeler Oakman) turns against him, helps
our heroes to overthrow him and personally sends him to the annihilation
chamber before Flash can save even Ming the Merciless from such a cruel
fate ... What goes for Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars goes
for all three Flash
Gordon-serials starring Buster Crabbe: They do demand their
fair share of suspension of disbelief, and while some effects are great,
others are great in their naivity, and yet others fail to convince even
taking their age into account, plus one can't deny the serial is at times
overly campy ... but if one can accept all that and see the thing with the
eyes of one's inner child, one can see a pleasently naive space opera full
of that sense of wonder that makes the best escapist science fiction tales
the pieces of greatness that they are. After all, there's hardly a dull
moment in this one, it's full of action and (at least for the time) novel
ideas mixed with many pulp mainstays, and the story is as stringent as it
presents a variety in its narration (not a given with serials) - so if
you're in the proper mood prepare to be properly entertained ...
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