Review of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

. . . in pulling its plug. Everyone has heard of "Flash Gordon." He's a legendary character from the Golden Age of Entertainment (along with Superman, Batman, Tarzan, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Dracula, the Green Hornet, the Green Lantern, the Shadow, the Invisible Man, the Lone Ranger and so forth). But unlike all of these other distinguished personages, Flash Gordon is known by name only--NOT by recent cinematic "make overs," "resets," and "reboots." (The only halfway successful reboot I'm aware of was a Triple-X feature film from the late 1900s, which of course I've never seen.) So when I had an opportunity to view some of Flash Gordon's original source material, namely episode one--"Purple Death"--of FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, I decided to give this Legend of Yesteryear 20 minutes of my time. What a waste! This brief time slot was filled with so many names, introductions, and speed-talked exposition that there was no room for any action, or anything the least bit entertaining. Surely the network programmer who put FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE on the schedule was swiftly terminated, fired, and permanently black-balled from the industry, as the network in question abruptly cancelled airings of the remaining "chapters" of this tedious story two or three Saturdays into this fiasco.