As of tonight, “rapist robots” will enter the Glib vocabulary. For better or worse. See robots on the left.

Flesh Gordon

When I was growing up, there was a legendary film. Supposedly it was a porno, mostly science fiction and the adults thought it was hilarious. Us peeps under the age of 18 only heard of it in stories. It was the cult film lovers’ cult film, a film that you couldn’t even get at the rental store. You had to go down to the porn store and buy a copy, or you had to have a friend make you a copy from a tape that had been copied so much it was like watching it through a screen door in the snow.
That film is Flesh Gordon. And it is a dirty film, make no mistake. Probably best to not watch this at work. Maybe it did deserve an X rating in 1974. Nowadays this should be on NetFlix with the other blue films, which you should also not watch at work. It’s just not that extreme by today’s standards. Yet here we are having to watch it off of Internet Archive. At least in 2020 you can get a copy of Flesh Gordon (and its sequel) from Amazon. So what happened? Why is this still so obscure?

The is a film which refused to be categorized. It’s Sci Fi, it’s a porn (kind of.  Not too hard.), it’s a loving tribute to Flash Gordon. A lot of heart went into this. It’s not a quick buck kind of film. It has a stop motion monster in it that was tribute to Ray Harryhausen. The Flash Gordon spaceship was recreated bent slightly, to look like a dick. The actors really “put out” for this film. Heh heh. And you know what else? It’s funny.

So let’s talk some film history. Howard Ziehm co-produced this, he was one of the original guys who began the blue film industry. A lot of famous people worked on the special effects, among them, Rick Baker. Our good friends at IMDB mention that this film was nominated for an Oscar for visual effects, however the academy decided to not award a visual effect Oscar at all because “there weren’t enough films with visual effects in 1974.” Yeah, screw the academy. They didn’t want to give one to a  porn that was funny and creative.

This film was written and directed by the team of Michael Benveniste and William Dennis Hunt. Benveniste was not with us very long, he passed less than ten years after this movie came out. William Hunt was an actor in 48 films and TV shows, including Evan Almighty, Frasier, Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Everybody Hates Chris. He never wrote again after Flesh Gordon.  The actor who portrayed Flesh Gordon was Jason Williams, who wrote a book about the experience entitled “I was Flesh Gordon.” I have not read it but GoodReads and other places rank this highly.

It’s women’s history month, so let’s talk about some historical women:

  • Candy Samples, one of the more famous 1970s porn stars, is in this. That link is NSFW.
  • Suzanne Fields plays Dale Ardor, girlfriend of Flesh Gordon. She was a veteran of 65 blue films before this one!  And this was her last film until this past year when she is going to be in a film called Apparitions. She thought her career in porno was “prettty funny.”
  • Last but hardly least is a name you might recognize! Bjo Trimble also worked on this film at the time, as a makeup artist.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s most obscure yet famous films. What damned this film to semi-obscurity? For one thing, an “X” rating which back then was the kiss of death. Also it got labeled as a funny novelty. I think that is what really damned this in the eyes of Puritan America. Funny means novelty, not to be taken seriously here in the states. Irritating but true. So buck the trend and watch! Or don’t! Everything is voluntary until someone shoots you with a fuck ray! The next few weeks we will continue to celebrate Women’s History month with:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Internet Archive is a little wonky.  It is unlikely the movie will play the first time ‘Play’ is clicked.  Be patient, you may have to try up to three times to get it to start playing the film. Chrome, Safari or FireFox are recommended.  Microsoft browsers get grouchy. This movie will play, it was tested by the crack GlibFlick team over Christmas break. This is the only way I can get some of these films, so I apologize for any inconvenience.