My Early Cinema Experiences

By the time I was little, Chorlton-cum-Hardy was down to one solitary cinema: the Classic. It was originally named the Rivoli,iopened in 1936, damaged in World War II and later restored and reopened. In 1955 it was renamed the Essoldo, then renamed again in 1972 to the name I knew it by - the Classic.

It was the first cinema I visited and the one of the first movies I saw there was 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' in 1974. I was a bit of a handful it seems; when the lights dimmed I yelled out 'Innit dark. Turn the lights on, daddy!' Later on, as the strains of 'heigh-ho!' rang out I shouted 'Look! Look!It's the Seven Warfs!' You can't take some people anywhere, can you? I saw quite a few Disney movies there; in common with many cinemas, the Classic used to show childrens' movies during school holidays. I remember a double bill one afternoon of 'The Jungle Book' and 'One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing' (it would be a few years before I wondered why Peter Ustinov was playing a Chinese man.)

Then there were saturdays, the children's matinees. It was a badge of honour to sneak in without paying (not that I ever did this heinous thing, of course . . honest . .). Once inside, we behaved appallingly, shouting, fighting, throwing popcorn . . occasionally there would be threats to stop the movie and we would pipe down for maybe five minutes before starting up again. How the staff must have hated us.

I first saw 'Star Wars' there. 'Star Wars' wasn't released in the UK until the end of December 1977, so I saw it in 1978. Very exciting; I couldn't wait. Walking home afterewards I was full of the images I'd seen and felt bursting with electricity. I said to my dad 'Dad? I feel the Force.' He looked at me, made a face and said 'Don't be so bloody stupid.' He had a way of bringing me back to Earth! (There were other times when he fired up my imagination no end, such as the infamous Flying Saucer Hoax he tricked me and my sister with, but more of that another time!) I also remember seeing 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'at the Classic. My mum and sister both were sobbing wrecks at the end and it's possible I had some dust in my eye myself.

So many movies, so many memories. I don't know how many films I watched there but I did notice that attendances weren't great. Ona (e screen was converted into a roller skate arena (a very small one) and the cinema was renamed again to Shalimar. It eventually closed and was bulldozed in 1991, a victim of the mass destruction of a generation of period art deco cinemas as attendances plummeted. Since then we've had a revival for cinemas with the advent of multiplexes, which are great in their own way - comfortable seats, excellent sound and picture quality - but a bit soulless.

Those cinemas we lost had character, bags of character and, belatedly, the remaining examples are being preserved and restored. Quite right, too. There is nothing like watching a movie in an old theatre; the red velvet seats, the decor, the gleaming brass, the smells, the generations of memories. These buildings are an integral part of movie history, the outlets in which our dreams took flight and we delighted in thrills, spills and buttered popcorn.

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon is a favourite of mine. No, it's not a great movie by any means and the whole thing is hamstrung by a boring main character with as much personality as a soggy dish cloth. What makes it all work is the sheer fun of the thing, the style, the bonkers imagination. I could watch it again and again.

As a kid I remember the BBC broadcasting the old Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe. Crabbe epitomised the clean-cut, square-jawed hero ad he looked like he had walked straight out of the comic book pages. I also remember Zarkov wearing some sort of hot pants which was a disturbing image, for sure. Dale Arden was a drip, always in need of rescue. Far more interesting was Ming's vixen of a daughter, the beautiful and evil Princess Aura.

For me, then, the movie came only a few short years after my first memories of Flash and the original depiction was fresh in my mind – the rocket ships with their art deco, 'futuristic' styling and the noise of their motors, the sound resembling a bag of rusty nails being blasted with an electric current with a propeller noise grafted on. When I eventually saw the movie I saw a lot of similarities – the art and design department on Flash had clearly gone to some lengths to capture something of the spirit of the old serials. There were differences, too – a movie made in 1980 cannot and should not be shot like a piece of 1930s pulp cinematic fodder.

So what was the genesis of the movie? The idea of reviving Flash had been around for a long time. George Lucas attempted to buy the rights, failed and went on to make a little thing called 'Star Wars' (who ever heard of him or his B-movie sci fi flick again, eh?) . Eventually Dino De Laurentiis acquired the rights and it was under his auspices that the movie took shape. Mike Hodges was hired to direct. Flash was quite a departure form some of his prior work – for example, the gritty, noir-esque gangster flick set in Newcastle, 'Get Carter' , though come to think of it, Ming might well have appreciated some of the violence and sadism on display as Michael Caine bludgeoned his way through his problems.

Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the screenplay. By the sounds of it, Semple did not enjoy the experience – he has talked about thinking the character of Flash was 'not very good' , but not being allowed to improve it. He also has spoken about the pressure to make the script funny, which he believes was a mistake. The script was constantly tinkered with to inject humour and jokes and Semple felt it got out of control. When your screenwriter feels that way, that things were lurching from crisis to crisis before you'd even gotten to a studio lot, you have to wonder how the movie got made at all.

Yet it was shot, completed and released, despite Semple's misgivings and despite other problems, like Sam Jones, cast as Flash, constantly getting into fights off-set and eventually refusing to return for re-dubs and re-shoots. This was due to problems with De Laurentiis (allegedly) and some earlier dubbing where a voice actor had impersonated Jones (upsetting Jones when he found out). This was all damaging to the movie, in addition to the initial casting of Jones as Flash. True, he looked like a God, with his physique and flowing blonde locks, but he was a new and different take to the Flash of old and, in my opinion at least, was wrong for the part.

So why do I love a movie that is so flawed? As I said before, fun. FUN. There are delightful moments, such as Ming's gleeful sadism, Dale's switcheroo between herself and one of Ming's concubines, Zarkov's mad pursuit of his hapless assistant and, it has to be said, any Brian Blessed screen time. Many people associate Blessed closely with this movie and it's no wonder – he had the time of his life playing Vultan, King of the Hawkmen (his favourite character from Flash) and the role is tailor made for his bombastic, gusto-charged acting. He attacks the role with relish - anything less for a King wearing wings, a gold helmet and the bottom half of a Roman Legionnaire's outfit would have been completely inadequate.

Other performances stand out. Max von Sydow plays Ming perfectly, taking delight in cruelty and sadism, a ruler supreme who sees his subjects as nothing more than his playthings. Topol is always great fun whenever his Hans Zarkov is on screen, Peter Wyngarde is sinister as Klytus, an effect he manages to convey without really needing his mask to do so. Ornella Muti is gorgeous, seductive and capricious as Aura and I remember wondering, as a thirteen year old, why would Flash be interested in Dale when Aura was throwing herself at him? It's a question I still ask myself, though of course I can now appreciate the value of going to sleep without wondering if you'll get a knife in the back while you're mid-snore.

There are lots of good performances gong on, like Melody Anderson, Timothy Dalton, Richard O'Brien, Mariangela Melato and John Hallam. It was generally a very good cast and for me, that makes up for my problems with Sam Jones. (I've nothing against Sam Jones personally, who seems a nice enough guy as well as being 6' 3” and, apparently, handy in a scrap!) The movie looks gorgeous, with a rich, at times psychedelic palette of colours. Ming's throne room is red and black, emphasising his Imperial grandeur and authority, while in the background the sky is a swirl of pinks, purples and oranges. The Kingdoms, what we see of them, are well realised, Flash's attempted escape through the Arborian forest a memorable highlight – and who can forget Peter Duncan's cameo as a hapless Arborian who comes a cropper during his Manhood initiation?

There is plenty of action, too. The fight between Flash and Barin on the tilting, spiked platform (look closely at the actors and you'll see silver paint that's rubbed off on their clothes) is very well staged and the attack of the Hawkmen on War Rocket Ajax is terrific. It's true that Brian Blessed had to be told off as, when firing his gun, he kept adding his own sound effects. ('I felt such a tit!' Blessed revealed in his excellent commentary on the DVD release.) I even enjoy the silly American Football game where Flash takes on Ming's guards, with Dale's cheerleading (a Melody Anderson invention) and Vultan bopping guards on the head with the look of a guilty schoolboy.

It's a pity that planned sequels were never made. The follow-up was supposed to be 'Flash Gordon on Mars' but according to Mike Hodges in interviews, Sam Jones, thanks to his dispute with De Luarentiis, refused to do any promotional work in the U.S. This also led to posters for the film to feature Ming far more prominently than Flash and Hodges thought that these factors may have damaged the U.S. Box office. What really tore it for a sequel according to Hodges was that there was zero chance of Jones returning. We'll never know how a sequel might have turned out, but it would have been fun to see Flash's continuing adventures.

We still have Flash, with its supply of quotes (after three: one, two, three: 'Gordon's alive??' ) and the great soundtrack by Queen. They only did two soundtracks, this one and 'Highlander' (a movie I'll blog about in due course) and both were, in my view, stellar. In Flash, Queen's music often matched and accentuated the oddity and weirdness that was going on. As for the movie's theme, try playing it anywhere, any time and people will still shout 'FLASH!' along to the song.

As I've said, it's not a great movie. It's not making big statements, it doesn't try to be high art. What is does do is entertain us richly. The good guys win, everyone is happy and the evil guy dies. Or does he? We see Ming's ring (no jokes, please) picked up at the end of the movie, accompanied by Ming's chilling laugh . . would Ming return one day? If he ever did, you can bet that Flash, Zarkov, Dale, Barin and Vultan would be there to stop him. And have a rollicking good time while they did so!