FLASH GORDON - The Movie!!!

WHAT: BOMBS AWAY! - A Salute to the Great Movie Flops of the 80’s featuring (Instalment one) FLASH GORDON

WHERE: Husets Biograf, Magstræde 14, tel: 33324077

WHEN: 14.00 on 05.17 & 05-18

WHY: Finally big-budget movie disasters are getting the respect they don’t deserve. Why waste your time on a run-of-the-mill failure when you can experience a movie so utterly bizarre and so ambitious yet so idiotic that it leaves you breathless? A movie that misfires with such conviction and velocity that you can never forget it.
FLASH GORDON (1980) was all this: a critical and box-office flop on an epic scale that now comes back to haunt us with its late 70’s hairstyles and fashions, its absurd monsters, its deranged dialogue and the terrible beyond-wooden acting of its two lead actors. And yet lurking amongst the wreckage of this atomic movie bomb are some great performances (not least by a hot slinky Ornella Muti as Princess Aura), the famous soundtrack by Queen, awesomely campy special effects unequalled since Barbarella and a fabulous production design by Danilo Donati. For the good and bad an experience worth revisiting!

Ticket price: 50 kr. also includes EXTREME ANIMATION (1 hour) at 13.00 both days as well:
EXTREME ANIMATION: Historic cartoon classics from America’s Strange & Violent Past, 62 minutes, all 16mm

This lively compilation of 16mm cartoons brims with violence, perversion, gun-play, racism and torture – (mostly) all in good fun. From the playfully preserve sexual pranks of the silent-era Buried Treasure to jazz-fuelled if racist masterpieces like Jungle Jive and Coal Black and De Seben Dwarves to the surreal and by turns grim and hateful anti-Nazi propaganda of Der Fuehrer’s Face and Education in Death, this is an entertaining and at times disturbing show. It rattles some skeletons still dangling in America's closet and therefore might possibly also shock & offend some viewers. Starring Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Hitler and Superman, the program focuses primarily on the war years (early/mid-40’s) and features some of the top masterpieces of American animation. (Duration of the show is a short feature-length 62 minutes, but this is a comfortable and sufficient running time for an animation program.)

In order of play:

(1) BURIED TREASURE, AKA EVERYREADY HARDON, b/w, silent, 6 min., director unknown, year of production “about” 1930. This cartoon ”has a highly professional graphic style similar to that of the Krazy Kat cartoons of same period. The protagonist of this bizarrely humorous episode is a randy little man who becomes involved in a series of erotic and horrific encounters. The film is full of playfully X-rated sight gags, the humour derived from the awkward experiences of the hero who wants to have sex in the worst way. It is a classic of its kind…” quote from the 1974 book Sinema by Kenneth Turan and Stephen F. Zito.

(2) BIMBO’S INITIATION, b/w, sound, 6 min.,1931, P: Fleischer Studios, D: Dave Fleischer. “Like many of Fleischer’s Depression era cartoons, ‘Bimbo’s Initiation’ is filled with desperate characters dealing with an unstable, even hostile universe. After being swallowed by a manhole and locked in by a demonic Mickey Mouse (evil Mickey Mouses were rampant in early Fleischer cartoons), Bimbo finds himself in a dungeon inhabited by a pseudo-Masonic group with chamber pots on their heads who chant, “Wanna be a member, Wanna be a member?” When Bimbo refuses, he is thrown into a labyrinth filled with surrealistic tortures, with Betty Boop making an appearance at the end.”

(3) TERROR ON THE MIDWAY, color/sound, 9 min.,1942, also directed by Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios. An early cartoon version of Superman based on the superhero character created by DC comics. In this episode a King Kong-like ape escapes and sows chaos at the circus, forcing Clark Kent to change into superman to restore order by knocking some heads together (mostly those of the escaped circus animals). The focus here is on Superman beating up on animals who really haven’t done anything wrong.

(4) HARE RIBBIN,’ Technicolor/sound, 8 min., 1944, D. Bob Clampett. Stars Bugs Bunny who makes a fool out of a pursuing hound dog by donning various disguises including dressing in drag as a mermaid (Most of the action takes place underwater). In the end he gives the despairing dog a gun so he can shoot himself in the head, which he does in a brutal scene that was censored from most screenings on American television (suicide was a frequent dark-humor gag in Warner Brothers cartoons)

(5) JUNGLE JIVE, technicolor/sound, 7 min., 1944, D. Shamus Culhane, a Walter Lantz production that tells the story of how jungle island natives “found” music (the instruments washed up on the beach). A highly entertaining cartoon that features a jumpin' boogie piano by the great Bob Zerke, it is also clearly racist, as so much of American popular culture was at the time. The brown-skinned natives are pictured as bumbling dolts but with lots of ‘natural rhythm.’

(6) COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS, color/sound, 7 min., 1943, D. Bob Clampett. This parody of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” exchanges Ms. White and the mythical dwarfs with a jive-talkin’ all-black cast who embody all the most noxious racial stereotypes of the day. Here black women are either overweight ‘Mamas’ or hot young sexpots while the men are shiftless idiots or pimps. Because of this it was one of the most controversial Warner Brothers cartoons ever made and was widely banned from television play. And yet its great jazz score and inventive animation marked it as one of Clampett’s best films and an acknowledged masterpiece, albeit one with a pronounced negative side.

(7) DER FUEHRER’S FACE, Technicolor/sound, 8 min., 1942, D: Jack Kinney. Immensely popular upon its release to theatres during WW2, this propaganda classic features Donald Duck falling asleep and dreaming he is slaving in a Nazi munitions factory. This leads to a surreal dream sequence that is a classic in animation history. The German leaders are characterized as ridiculous figures while the brief appearance of Tojo and Mussolini have more racist overtones. The main thrust of the cartoon is to convey how badly common German working people had it under Hitler. The theme song was later popularized by the band leader Spike Jones.

(8) EDUCATION FOR DEATH, Technicolor/sound, 10 min., 1943, D: Clyde Geronimi. This is one of the most powerful and bitter cartoons Walt Disney Studios ever made, and for decades after the War they vowed it would never be re-released in any form. Like DER FUEHRER’S FACE it was a wartime attack on Nazi Germany, but was much more brutal in its depiction of the effects of Nazism and how German youth were being turned into mindless and inhuman killing machines devoid of any trace of humanity or free thinking. The animation is outstanding, and there are also moments of absurd humor, but the end result of this film is closer to a nightmare.

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