Purple Death from Outer Space (1966)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

In the 1920s up to the early 50s, a staple of Saturday movie theaters were the movie serials. Each week, you'd see a different chunk of a very long movie--usually 4-5 hours long broken into about a dozen pieces. Folks loved them and they were entertaining...provided you weren't very demanding! The acting usually was adequate at best and the films were filled with one crazy death-defying stunt after another. As for the stories, they usually involved some goofy super-villain as well as a handsome, rugged star.One of the weirdest genres within the serials were the sci-fi pictures--such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Both starred the same handsome hero (Buster Crabbe) and it was pretty easy to mix them both up...though the Flash Gordon was so popular it actually ended up being made into three series--"Flash Gordon", "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars" and "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe". "Purple Death from Outer Space" is actually this third series pared down to normal movie length--pared down from 220 minutes to only 88! The Purple Death from the title refers to the sudden deaths of many humans on Earth...and in each case a weird purple mark appeared on the corpse's forehead. Dr. Zarkov thinks this might be the work of the Evil Ming the Merciless, so he and Flash blast off to investigate. His hunch turns out to be true and what follows are a series of adventures and near-death experiences as well as Flash and his friends looking for an antidote for the Purple Death.If you've seen any of the old Flash Gordon serials, this is pretty much the same thing all over again--Mind trying to capture Dale to make her his bride and the Doctor to make him do his evil bidding. And, like the other serials, the trio of good folks are seemingly indestructible. Silly kids' stuff but entertaining despite the silly writing and costumes (many of which look like recycled clothes from "The Prisoner of Zenda" as well as "The Adventures of Robin Hood"--which is pretty odd considering it's sci-fi! Dopey fun.By the way, during the mountain climbing portion of the film set in Frigia, keep count of the good guys. There are four but in several of the bits of stock footage they use, there are five!

Flash Gordon battles Ming the Merciless over a new plague devised by the latter called the Purple Death which is presently causing perturbation and despair on the planet Earth.A film edited from several instalments of the 40's serial 'Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe', these were then played on television in the 60's as standalone movies. They are I suppose moderately amusing in that they were made at a time when we knew so much less about outer space, meaning this kind of nonsense could be passed off as vaguely plausible. But on the whole these TV movies edited from ancient sci-fi serials are interminably bad to watch now. The constant stirring music was also fairly hard going to my ears as well. This one may not be quite as painful as its lower budget 50's 'Rocky Jones' equivalent but it is still very much off its time and even though it gives me about as much pleasure as kicking a puppy to say so, I have to say that I thoroughly disliked it more or less from start to finish.

FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, with Larry Crabbe, Carol Hughes (--the Dale Arden--) and Anne Gwynne (--as Sonja--), directed by Beebe and Taylor, shows the search for Polarite, the attack of the robots (mechanical men, says Zarkov), a blizzard on Frigia, Will Flash Gordon ever defeat the purple plague? This disease is caused by the death—dust, another diabolical invention used by the deluded Ming.Daddy Ming goes on with his nonsense about conquering the Universe, being perhaps the most funny involuntarily absurd movie villain.Ming's sinister soldiers are faceless masks, mindless automates, reduced to a brainless obeying. Apart from the not so strikingly original structure of the group of protagonists and the use of a few planets, this look of the imperial soldiers is the most obvious resemblance to Lucas' universe.The setting is on the famous planet Mongo, then on a deadly cold planet—in another Ruritanian state, Frigia; in Frigia's north, Gordon and his pals, wearing clothes treated with Calorite, search for the Polarite, the only known antidote to the very useful death—dust, the ultimate invention from Ming's top laboratories; Gordon makes the avoidable mistake of taking some geezers (yes, I even count Barin as one of those …) with him, which kind of slow him down, but this only enhances the quality of the suspense.My favorite scenes are those in Ming's temple—the vast hall serving as Ming's throne room, adorned with oriental decorations, with the hideous idol, the belly dancers and the Asian music.This serial has the singularity of featuring the most absurd disguise ever—see Zarkov's disguise, offered him by another geek.After 70 yrs, the Gordon serials remain interesting, a nice testimony to the imperishable interest an exciting movie can raise.

I have affection for this just because of a childhood experience watching these old serials. There was a fellow who used to show a fifteen minute episode as he sat at the control panel of his space ship. I loved those old rockets hanging on strings as they floated through space with their electric sparks shooting off to the side. The aliens with the angel wings.Ming the Merciless. Flash and Dale. Everything was so cheap and, yet, even as a child, I thought this was some artifact from simpler time. I was actually concerned for Flash and what Charles Middleton was going to do to him. Dr. Zarkoff seemed a bit of a putz, but he was also brilliant. Anyway, this is pretty bad, but I can't judge it too harshly. It wouldn't be right.