Entry Forty-One: Flesh Gordon (1974)

Flesh Gordon (1972)

Dir: Michael Benveniste & Howard Ziehm

"Not to be confused with the original Flash Gordon...or that multimillion dollar work of art playing down the street!"

Good fuck, it's COLD down here in the Basement of Sleaze!  My furnace went out the night before last and I can't get a replacement installed until tomorrow...It's okay, though; I can huddle up under a few soiled blankets, burn some old popcorn boxes, skin mags and fanzines for warmth and turn up the HEAT with some adult entertainment!  So, dear reader, journey down into the cold-ass basement with me as we take Fuck Flick February out with a bang (in more ways than one) with the grandaddy of all porn parodies, the galaxy spanning epic Flesh Gordon!

When a "sex ray" aimed at the Earth causes the masses to erupt in bouts of frenzied fornication, intrepid Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams, Society) blasts off in a phallic rocketship, along with his allies Dale Ardor (Suzanne Fields, The Story of "O") and Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins, nothing else), to confront the extraterrestrial perpetrators!  After passing through the sex ray (which provides a convenient excuse for a DP threesome), our intrepid trio lands on the planet Porno.  Upon arrival, they are forced to do battle with a nest of Penisauruses, and are then brought before depraved Emperor Wang the Perverted (Wiliam Hunt, TV's NYPD Blue).  The orgy scene that occurs in Wang's throne room was clearly the inspiration for a similar scene in Conan the Barbarian, right down to the score!  Wang decides to keep Dale for his bride, while sending Jerkoff off to work in his private laboratories and Flesh becomes the sex slave of his daughter, Amora (early porno starlet Nora Wieternik, Dr. Dildo's Secret).  After administering a serious deep-dicking to Amora, Flesh reconnects with Jerkoff, and the two set off with Amora's "Power Pasties," the only thing that can stop the sex ray!  After Dale is kidnapped by a group of underground "dykes" led by porno legend Candy Samples (Breast Orgy, here complete with hook hand and eyepatch!), Flesh teams up with a group of gay forest lads, rescues her and reunites with Dr. Jerkoff.  Returning to Wang's throne room, they're forced to deal with a giant toilet and hilarious, tie-wearing rapist robots, before confronting the ultimate evil behind Wang's throne, the well-animated, Harryhausen-inspired Great God Porno (voiced by a then-struggling actor named Craig T. Nelson-TV's Coach and, more importantly, Action Jackson!).

Flesh Gordon has become something of a mainstream release since it's "adults only" debut in 1972; I initially saw it on a VHS release in the mid-nineties and I swear it contained more hardcore action than the Hen's Tooth Video DVD that I watched for this entry.  Setting aside it's sleazier ambitions (and terrible acting), however, this is a genuinely loving and faithful tribute to the original Buster Krabbe Flash Gordon serials, right down to the costumes and bouncing-wire spaceship effects.  The (excellent) stop-motion creature effects were provided by soon-to-be-legends David Allen (Star Wars, Laserblast), Dennis Muren (Equinox, Jurassic Park) and Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London, Gremlins 2: the New Batch).  Required viewing for visual effects historians!