Letterboxd — Your life in film

This was actually a first time watch for me, I don't know why I never got around to seeing it. But with all of the Flash Gordon references in "Ted", I was intrigued to finally check it out since I was scanning through On Demand for Encore and saw it.

Well I did expect it to be extremely corny and cheaply made, after all it was made in 1980 and it appeared to have very poor special effects in clips that I'd seen. But I really didn't expect to have as much fun as I ended up having while watching this. It's very fun, and even though the effects are pretty much shit, nothing that is onscreen had a negative affect on my opinion of it. I was expecting to hate the film on the appearance of it alone, but I loved some of the imagery and characters that existed in this world. The look of the locations and the look of the hawk men were awesome.

I absolutely loved the final 25 minutes, with the hawk men and Flash attacking the ship in the clouds. It was a huge dose of adventure, that I found to be a shit ton of fun. It's something that I loved about films from the 80's and my childhood. A movie that is just wall to wall entertainment, that is light and has the right amount of action and a few laughs.

I wasn't impressed with the acting but this movie didn't require anything above mediocrity to make this fun IMO. It wasn't the performances that made this film good, it was the characters and the feel of it. I did like Timothy Dalton and Max Von Sydow though, I was actually surprised when I saw Dalton. I knew Sydow was in this, but I had no clue Dalton was.

I will also add, that IMO this could be a pretty good candidate to be remade. I know, I know...it's usually frowned upon, but in a new era of special effects, I think this would be possibly an amazing adventure film. It has so many elements of fun that i think it couldn't miss.