| Flash
Gordon Conquers Universal
Pictures: The
3rd Serial |
| Ch.
5: Mining Polarite
in Frigia, Mechanical Monsters, and Saving Planet Earth |
|
The
Saturday serial splices in some stock footage of a real mine shaft somewhere on
a snowy mountain for their version of Frigia. |
Alex Raymond's Frigia was a Nordic playground,
with vast fields of snow and
unspoiled alpine vistas. |
|
Frigia
was plagued with huge hungry monsters
in the Sundays, who created much of the conflict. |
Flash and Dale endure
Saturday's cold wasteland,
to spare their home planet from Ming's biological
warfare. |
|
Ming sent
Rockets against them on both Saturdays and Sundays |
"That doesn't sound like our Rocket motor, Flash!" |
|
Flash
Gordon had previously faced Iron Men in 1935,
but the context was completely
opposite from 1940. |
Immune to Frigia's cold, Ming's mechanical
soldiers, or Anhilatons,
raid the mining camp. |
|
The
Iron Men of 1935 also fought for Emperor Ming, but
they were armored men,
rather than robots, and could lose. |
1940's remote-controlled mechanical monsters were impervious to ray guns, and
blew up on command. |
|
The
Anhilatons beat Flash up, plus kidnap Dale and Zarkov. | Flash
and Zarkov defeated the Iron Men in 1935. |
|
The
launch of a Ming Rocket Ship, with Dale aboard, finished the Frigian adventure
in strip and serial. | Flash
Gordon survives the robot attack, but chooses to save the Earth before rescuing
Dale and Zarkov. |
|
This sequence
in blue has no analog in the strip. | Flash
Gordon flies to Earth with Arborian soldier Roka. |
|
They disperse
the precious Polarite over Mt. McKinley. | The
Polarite neutralizes all of Ming's Death Dust forever. |
|
Flash hustles
back to Mongo to rescue Dale and Zarkov.
A whole new "story arc"
begins in the serial, which echoes a repeating theme in the comic strip -- outright
war with Emperor Ming, which continues until the last chapter. | Flash's
father (seated) is played by John Hamilton, who also portrayed Perry White in
the Superman TV series a decade later. Dale Arden's father is unhappy to
hear that his daughter is in Ming's clutches again, to say the least. |
|
As Dale
enters Ming's throne room with her captors, our
dancer exits, in a blur, for
the rest of the Saturday serial. | Dale
tried to fight back against her abductor in the Sunday pages -- she got VERY few
spitfire moments in the film. |
| |
