FLASH GORDON: THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME

As I understand it, this is pretty rare. I distinctly remember seeing this on television when I was a kid. I love the palette, all the rich orange tones set against the green and the color of the title card. Beautiful. This was the original opening for a made-for-television feature (its production prompted by the success of Star Wars) which was later turned into a Saturday morning series.



Apparently, George Lucas tried to nab the movie rights for Flash Gordon, but upon finding that Dino De Laurentiis had secured them, decided to make Star Wars instead. You can see quite a number of influences found in the above episode of the serial starring Larry (Buster) Crabbe (note the text crawl at the beginning of the episode).

I love this serial (this and King of The Rocket Men ... I used to watch both these old serials when I was a kid). I've posted this episode here because of a really strange scene 15:51 mins into the film where a tribe of rock-headed people (called Rock Men, funnily enough) speak backwards. It always freaks me out.