Some weeks ago, I took a look at the 1972 cult, adult, animated classic Fritz the Cat. In that review, I talked about that movie having a reputation that precedes itself. Just the title almost gives it a mythical aura. I mentioned a couple other movies in that review, and one of those is the topic of this week’s B-Movie Enema review – Flesh Gordon.

Obviously, 1974’s Flesh Gordon is a sex parody of the classic Flash Gordon serials of the early days of swashbuckling matinees. So I guess we should start with the subgenre itself. The sex comedy actually goes waaaaay back to ancient Greek theatre. Basically, it’s farcical sex. This carried into the Roman times which actually then became the major influence of what we know as situational comedies, better referred to as the sitcom.

In the mid to late 17th century, of all peoples, the English brought the sex comedy back into popularity. However, the origins, and the eventual influence, of Flesh Gordon can go to a period of the 50s and earlier 60s when Hollywood would have these cheeky romantic comedies that were charged with a bit of sex appeal. This was directly influenced by the early sexual revolution of Playboy magazine being introduced and sexologist Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University studying the sex lives of women. This would eventually bring us to the late 60s and early 70s when Hollywood itself would shift to a new style and way of business and indie filmmakers looking for a start would make a whole bunch of scandalous comedies that could play with the new lifestyles that grew out of the late 60s as well as nudity and much more open discussion of sex lives.

And, of course, let’s not forget the new rating system that would allow for films to be rated R and X. This would allow for very specific film theaters and drive-ins to be able to play these types of adult entertainment that wasn’t always that kind of adult entertainment. This would then roll into being a part of the inspiration for more successful sex comedies like National Lampoon’s Animal House, which, itself, became a huge inspiration for the sex comedy domination of the 80s.

So, now, let’s look backward at the inspiration for Flesh Gordon – comic strip protagonist Flash Gordon. The 1930s were a time of pulp heroes being created with all sorts of interesting costumes and large sci-fi concepts. Flash Gordon was created by Alex Raymond and made his debut in January of 1934 – four years before Superman would take his bow on the scene and create comic books as we know them today. Gordon was influenced by a hugely popular comic strip character, Buck Rogers. Rogers came along before the end of the 1920s and was a smash hit.

King Features Syndicate was the publisher of the Flash Gordon character, but his creation by Raymond was only after King Features unsuccessfully tried to buy the rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs character John Carter. Eventually, Flash Gordon came along as the protagonist, with his love interest, Dale Arden, and scientist companion, Dr. Hans Zarkov, to defeat the threat of planet Mongo which was on a collision course with Earth. Mongo’s evil ruler is none other than the diabolical Ming the Merciless. Flash Gordon was a massive hit. His strip ran EVERY DAY from 1934 to 1992 and continued on in Sunday papers until 2003. Even today, he appears in comic books and has starred in several movie serials starring Buster Crabbe from 1936 to 1940. He then moved to television in the 50s and animated adventures from 1979 and into the 80s.

The biggest, and most nostalgic, appearance is 1980’s Flash Gordon film directed by Mike Hodges and produced by Dino De Laurentiis starring Sam Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, and Topol. That’s a movie that is equal parts awesome and bonkers, as well as equally beautiful as it is strange to look at. There could be an entire article around the movie itself.

But, for now, let’s shift our attention to Flesh Gordon directed by Michael Benveniste (who also wrote the film) and Howard Ziehm.

The movie opens with something somewhat… wholesome. Yeah, that’s not something I’ve often typed on this blogzone. There’s a whole narration about how the aftermath of the worst years of the Depression brought about the creation of the superhero. Fast forward to the 70s (this film was actually made in 1971 but didn’t get distribution for a few years), and more troubled times what with the Vietnam War and Nixon and what have you have come, so the producers decided to make something a little more entertaining in humor. Basically, they were presenting this parody in the spirit of burlesque and satire with all the spirit of the old and the outrageousness of the new. While the producers are completely transparent that the older creators had nothing to do with this film, they wish to dedicate the spirit of the movie to them as it was those creators that inspired the production. That’s nice. It says, “Yeah, we’re about to do a whole lotta boner and sex jokes, but, hey… It’s all in the fun and games of burlesque and we love you old guys who created these characters.”

The movie begins with a radio report saying that the President and Vice President are quite concerned over some sort of shenanigans going on that is affecting the entire world. It’s up to renowned scientist, and expert in animal behavior, Dr. Gordon (played by veteran actor John Hoyt), to hold a conference with other top scientist dudes and figure out what the heck is going on. There’s a pretty funny moment right out of the gate with Gordon staring almost endlessly into his telescope. It keeps cutting back to these people waiting around impatiently to finally hear the great Dr. Gordon give his opinion. It’s such a small joke but has great comedic editing.

What is it that Dr. Gordon’s expert conclusion? “Gentlemen… We’re in big trouble.” That’s it! Smash cut to a paperboy selling papers with the headline talking about a sinister sex sickness that is imperiling the planet. Brilliant! The rays creating the sex sickness rain down around the paper boy and suddenly everyone on the street begins to suddenly attack each other.

The scientists have different opinions about what is really going on, but they ultimately defer to Dr. Gordon. Gordon also reveals that his wife was affected by the sex rays and he caught her in bed with the garbage man. But there’s a hero on the way! Gordon’s son is on his way back from Tibet where he was representing the United States in a world hockey tournament. That son is none other than the heroic FLESH GORDON!

I will say one thing about the credits of this movie… The artwork is bizarre but gorgeous. It’s a lot of nudity and surreal paintings and possibly watercolors? It’s also got a pretty good score over it. This movie is not exactly shy that it is gonna be loaded with tits and also be bombastic in an old-style adventure serial feel.

The plane ride for our hero hits some nasty weather. This ultimately brings Flesh and heroine Dale Ardor (ardor is a synonym for passion) together. She knows who he is because he’s the famous Dr. Gordon’s son. The plan gets hit by the sex rays. Dale and everyone else on the plane are immediately affected. She tears her top open as she giggles and writhes around next to Flesh. The whole time, Flesh is telling her to control herself. Meanwhile, up in the cockpit, the co-pilot announces to the pilot, “Sir, I’ve got a giant boner!”

Now, as great as it is for a guy to suddenly announce that he has a giant boner, it’s really not good for the horny pilots to leave a currently flying airplane’s cockpit. Flesh takes control of the plane and tries to fly it to safety, but the controls are as fucked as everyone else on the plane. So, Flesh decides that everyone else is not worth saving and takes Dale and they bail out of the plane with a single parachute.

Now, if you’ve ever seen two people use a single parachute, you know that the only natural thing to do for the person not actually wearing the parachute is to blow the other person while they float down to earth. That’s exactly what Dale does for Flesh. They land outside the lab and home of Dr. Flexi Jerkoff. He thinks they are there to steal his top-secret spaceship. When he learns that Dale was affected by the sex rays, he decides to do a little experiment based on what he’s heard about the side effects of the ray. The main one he’s interested in is whether or not the rays do increase the bust of affected women.

As it turns out, Flexi was also affected by the sex ray too. He goes into the pained tale of how it was hell for him to be affected by the ray out here alone in his lab. He then quickly changes his attitude and gleefully tells the two young lovers that the good news is that he completed the spaceship before the rays. The reason why needs to tell them that is that the design of the rocket was not influenced by him being influenced by the sex rays.

Because the ship is a giant golden dick.

Now, if I may be so bold, doesn’t that thing look like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile? Okay, yes, it’s clearly a dick, but the Wienermobile is also fairly phallic in its own right.

Regardless, Flexi Jerkoff is going to fly that shaft straight into the evil guy’s planet hole. He begs Dale and Flesh to join him. He doesn’t know what evils they will encounter, but he knows someone has to stop that evil sex ray. Flesh and Dale agree to join Flexi on his journey toward the fleshy folds of the evil planet that’s about to slide all up ons Earth.

I will say between the miniatures and the cheesy effects for the rocket, I actually do like this movie’s look. It really does look like a color version of the old serials and black-and-white sci-fi films of the 50s. It’s charming in that way. There’s a campy feel to the look and the acting. Sex films were often campy in this era – even the pornos. There’s a production value and real thought put into how this movie has fun with its inspiration. It’s just a bit of fun.

As Flesh, Dale, and Flexi head toward the origin of the sex ray, they are actually hit by it. They weren’t able to steer the spacedick… er, spaceship out of its way. This time, Flesh is affected by the ray and he, Dale, and Flexi have a massive fuck sesh. I should mention that earlier, when Dale ripped her top off on the airplane, Flesh gave her his sportcoat to cover up her tits. This time, Flesh and Flexi rip her skirt up too. Flesh and Flexi get dressed again after fucking around, but this time, Dale has nothing left to wear. There’s a part of me really curious about how long actress Suzanne Fields will go completely nude.

The intrepid heroes find the source of the sex rays – the planet Porno. Their arrival is spotted by the security guards of Emporer Wang the Perverted. They are shot out of the sky where they are pursued by those security guys. Before leaving the spacedick, Flexi gives Dale a gown to wear. He says it was his mother’s and she was buried in it.

One, that is funny. Two, I guess I got my answer as to how long Suzanne Fields would go nude after all her clothes were torn up.

Flexi, Dale, and Flesh hide in a cave that is made out of a peculiar rock formation. It’s not like any stone or rocky substance known on our planet. It’s soft and a little fleshy. Inside the cave, there’s a one-eyed monster that Flexi immediately identifies as a penisaurus. Now, all jokes aside, the penisaurus is a hell of a creature effect. I love the look of that thing. It’s not just one thing either, there are multiple penisauruses. The penisauruses attack, but the heroes are “saved” by Wang’s men, but that also means they are captured and brought to Wang.

Wang is kind of a misstep, but, keep in mind, I am saying this from a 2023 perspective and this film was made over 50 years ago. Wang is one of those Asian stereotypes like Fu Manchu. Naturally, he’s also played by a white guy. That white guy is William Dennis Hunt. He’s the only actor in this film that would appear in the 1990 sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders. In that, he reprised Emperor Wang.

Now, Wang, well, he’s not entirely sure why the Earth people are pissed off about the sex ray. He figures they should be thankful for all the sex. He discovers Jerkoff is a scientist, and he’s got use for one of those, so he sends him away to do… uh… science I guess. He has quite the hots for Dale so decides she will become his bride. As for Flesh, he wants to send him off to something called the “sex depleter” and have him drained of his… Look, they’re going to drain his balls.

That’s when Amora, Queen of Magic, steps in and says she would like Flesh for herself. She brokers a deal with Wang to give him to her if he survives various trials. He defeats three monster chicks. This greatly pisses Wang off, so he sends him to the depleter. Amora whisks him away with her magic. She uses some of that voodoo that she doo do to try to make Flesh forget his old life and turn him into her King of Darkness.

I don’t know how well that spell works, but I do know that Amora and Flesh fuck while her flying swan ship traverses the skies of Porno. They are discovered by Wang’s guys and he orders them to shoot them down over the forest kingdom. Flexi easily escapes his duties as a scientist and steals a spaceship to find Flesh. Flesh may not want to be found, though. He’s getting some of that Queen of Magic sex business.

That is until Wang’s men shoot down her ship and they crash. Flesh escapes the destroyed ship wearing her robes which means he’s attacked by one of Wang’s men, only for it to be a disguised Jerkoff. As Flesh prepares to return to Wang’s fortress to save Dale, Amora speaks to them from her ship or possibly from beyond the grave? I don’t know. Anyway, I do know she is going to give them her magical pasties because they are the only thing that can defeat Wang’s sex ray.

What? That’s what she said. They are her special, power-fueled, magical pasties. I’m not making this shit up.

After bequeathing her pasties, Amora says she can finally rest in peace. They hurry back to stop the wedding of Wang and Dale. Now, I’ll try my best to figure out exactly what happened here. Things quickly go off whatever rails there were in this movie. Okay, so Flesh and Jerkoff get back to Wang’s palace where they are captured. Now, that might have been a ruse because Flesh and Jerkoff easily overpower them and that gives them access to the wedding. However, they aren’t exactly needed because one of Wang’s bitches steals away with Dale to have a catfight because she’s seemingly jealous that Wang is going to marry the Earthwoman. Flesh swordfights guys but Jerkoff is able to finish everyone off with those magical pasties. Wang tells them they are too late as Dale was taken before he could seal their marriage with a kiss. Flexi wants to blast Wang with them titty lasers, but Flesh says just let him be. He’s obviously been whipped enough today as it is.

Now, as I said previously, it seems as though Dale is taken by a jealous lover of Wang’s. Well, that was a little bit of misdirection. This lady is trying to save Dale and takes her to a place where she, herself, has soldiers who are simply naked chicks. So… She wasn’t a jealous lover of Wang’s. She was there with him in his throne room, but she’s like an inside woman to bring it all down. I ain’t gonna lie, things are moving at a dizzying pace now. Dale’s taken to Chief Nellie, the leader of an underground gang of Amazons who opposes Wang. However, Nellie is like a pirate woman too? She’s got a metal leg (instead of a pegleg) and she has a hook for a hand. She also has an eyepatch. She also has a matching boob patch too.

Anyway, Nellie says that they plan to initiate Dale into their Amazonian army. Dale says she doesn’t want that. She wants to be with Flesh and Flexi. Nellie says tough titties because she’ll be of better use there with them. Then, the entire scene comes to a screeching halt while Dale awaits being “initiated” so Nellie can inspect her Amazons and nipple tweak and stroke butt. She finally picks an Amazon to initiate Dale by basically having lesbian sex with her.

Previously, Flesh and Jerkoff were thrown in a pit which happens to be somewhere near where the Amazons are because they hear Dale screaming for Flesh. Flexi blasts a hole in the underground caves with the magic pasties. They save Dale but they are soon attacked by some sort of bug creature that is straight up Ray Harryhausen in design and stop-motion animated style. It’s kind of glorious.

So, again, over the last, I dunno, ten minutes, Flesh and Flexi returned to save Dale, only for Dale to be kidnapped, and I think Wang was ultimately defeated, but then Dale is nearly initiated into a band of Amazons by some sort of lesbian ceremony, and now Flesh is fighting a Harryhausen stop motion bug monster. The bug creature is defeated by an arrow shot at it by Robin Hood.

Timothy Dalton here is Prince Precious. He’s here to give us some backstory. Precious was the rightful heir to the kingdom of Porno. Wang was just some botanist who ended up getting his dick chomped off by a crazed “penis fly trap” and went crazy. He designed the sex ray and was able to overthrow Precious. The Forest Kingdom, where Precious and his advisers were banished, is basically a constant pansexual orgy. What they do have is, between the forest people and Jerkoff and Flesh, the ability to destroy the sex ray to bring Wang down and save Earth.

There’s just one problem, though, one of the forest people is a turncoat and is actually working for Wang. After Jerkoff created a device that will destroy the ray, and showed it off, the turncoat warned Wang and sabotage their attack on the sex ray. What’s more, the traitor made off with the magic pasties. Now, what we see is the forest people ship being pulled into a toothy chomp compactor that destroys the ship. After a clever break as if it is a serial and a brief intermission (this movie has an intermission after the second act by the way), our heroes actually escaped before the ship was destroyed when they used umbrellas to float down to the ground. It’s… It’s a whole thing. Don’t… Don’t worry about it.

What we do need to worry about is that Wang has trapped Flesh and friends in a diabolical trap. In this room, dubbed the Royal Flush, the floor opens into a whirlpool that flushes them down into oblivion. Wang and his royal court celebrate with song and dance. Though, not all is what Wang seems. They are swimming through the pipes of the Royal Flush. So that basically just means that they were able to swim up and out of a toilet in the men’s room.

Now, here’s something that happens in this movie that is nearly inexplicable, and, no, it’s not Emperor Wang’s rapist robots (more on them in a moment). The traitor to Precious brings the stolen power pasty to Wang. To toy with one of his concubines, he slips it up her lady bits… where it becomes stuck. There’s a whole thing about how the pasty is stuck in her vagina. I cannot imagine how much and what variety of drugs these guys were on to come up with a quarter of the bonkers shit in this movie.

Now… where was I?

That’s right! Rapist robots. Ming has these mechanical sex pests that come out and try to attack Precious, Dale, and Jerkoff while he tries to dislodge the pasty from the lady’s vagina. Flesh tries punching the robots. That doesn’t work. So he realizes what control makes them work and sends them after Wang. Wang is able to escape but not without issuing the warning that they have not heard the last of him.

The heroes are able to get their pasty back to destroy the sex ray. Meanwhile, Wang goes to pray before the great and awful God of Porno. Now, this giant, stop-motion creature is supposedly voiced by Craig T. Nelson. I really hope that’s true. Anyway, while the heroes try to run away from the Porno God, Dale trips and he picks her up and tells her they are going to become really good friends. He takes her to a place called the Tower of Murder where he likes to hang out. After scaling the Tower of Murder, Flesh, Precious, and Flexi arrive with one of Wang’s rocket ships so Flexi can use his super laser to destroy the Porno God. The laser works to hurt the beast, but it’s when Flesh comes down a rope ladder to save Dale and fly away in the ship that causes the monster to stumble off the top of his Tower of Murder, crashing into Wang and the sex ray below him and destroying Wang’s whole kingdom.

Prince Precious retakes the throne of Porno and Flesh, Dale, and Jerkoff get back into the spacedick and fly back to Earth where everyone gets a happy ending.

Flesh Gordon is a bit of fun, classic adult film cheese heaping with a big gooey pile of camp. I don’t really know what the original cut of this film looked like. What I watched was the 90-minute “special edition”. I think where I have some issues, the original version of the movie, which was only 78 minutes long, would have sufficed. Some scenes go on way too long. There’s a LOT that happens in this movie. I will say that it is at least frenetic in pacing so that’s good. However, when it began to drag, it became a real drag to watch.

Overall, though, this is a really well-conceived idea for an adult parody. It’s likely this was mostly angling for an audience that grew up watching Flash Gordon on TV or read the daily strips. While I think it is an utterly bonkers movie that is overstuffed with a whole bunch of kooky shit, I have to believe that cinephiles who also have an interest in early sex parody and the porn films of the 70s that got fairly decent distribution, I recommend the film. Even though I have some issues with it, I cannot deny it really does have a lot going for it and it should appease those who like these types of movies from that era.

For me, the real treats of the film belong to the general set design of the movie and those wonderful stop-motion creatures that popped up throughout the film. As for the design of the film, it really looks like they went back to those classic sets of the early days of sci-fi films and just reused them. They possess that kind of charm. The monsters were expertly animated. Honestly, they really look great. Surely that cost the production a lot of money, but it pays off big time. You had penisauruses, that bug creature, and the giant Porno God that I really do think was voiced by Craig T. Nelson.

We go from 70s schlock camp to 80s campy schlock for the next review. Join me next week as I take a look at the pulse-pounding, everyone-acting-their-asses-off, AC/DC-scored rock soundtrack, and Stephen King goodness(?) that is Maximum Overdrive. Be back here for that or I’ll have to send that truck with the Green Goblin on the front to hunt you down and get ya!