FANTASY : analog – Flash Gordon in Rocket Ship (16mm)

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr Alexis Zarkov visit the planet Mongo to thwart the evil plans of Emperor Ming the Merciless, who has set his planet on a collision course with Earth.

Flash Gordon was published in 1934 as a weekly comic in the Sunday supplements of the newspapers supplied by King Features. It is about the ‘world-famous polo player’ Flash Gordon, who has crashed in an aeroplane and meets other survivors - Dale Arden and Dr Zarkow, who is endowed with a ‘great mind’ and who - having briefly gone mad - forces the two of them to take off with him in a home-made rocket to an approaching comet. The aim is to divert it from its collision course with the Earth. They succeed, but the rocket suffers a crash landing. Meanwhile, the comet itself turns out to be the planet Mongo, which has been thrown off course and colonised by countless rather exotic creatures. From 1936, various science fiction film serials were made from the comic. Buster Crabbe played Flash Gordon, the hero with - at the time - typical American virtues. He is athletic (a world-famous polo player in the comic, a football player in the late 1980 film version), blond and educated.

In cooperation with the AUSTRIAN-ANALOG-ARCHIVE, which has set itself the task of preserving ALL analogue materials such as films, photos, records, etc. so that they can be passed on to future generations.