SubscribeI was talking to a friend this evening about my love of old school Republic serials and notably Buster Crabbe as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The conversation reminded me I meant to post this ages ago when I was babbling about how movie marketing used to get it so spot on:
It’s part of the original teaser campaign for the then upcoming Flash from some time in the 30s (actually reprinted in the July 1962 of Spacemen magazine).
How the cameramen performed all their magic remains a secret of the studios, never to be revealed…
Which in turn nudged me to link to this post, wonderfully entitled Screenplay Structures, Flash Gordon and the Death of Cinema.
Well worth a read as I think it’s spot on. In fact I was talking about it this morning with a friend in LA as we discussed small format webisodic productions. Most people don’t get it yet, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few years and there’s so much turmoil in the large format right now that it’s gonna pay off to take a closer look at what Buster was up to before WWII.
Exciting times ahead.
I see Eisner is penned as the next director for Flash and he is promising to make it as close to those shows as possible. I wonder how he will CGI in the strings ?
Charles Middleton made for an excellent Ming the Merciless. He also put in a fine performance as a an arsey/homicidal artist in one of my favourite Laurel & Hardy shorts, ‘The Fixer-Uppers’.
All standard Xmas school holiday TV fare when I was a kid.