Product Details

• Actors: Buster Crabbe, Jean Rodgers, Charles Middleton
• Directors: Frederick Stephani
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B0007O1VX4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #359,854 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Outer Space Movies Begin Here, May 8, 2005

By 

Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flash Gordon Rocketship (1938) (VHS Tape)

When Buster Crabbe was chosen to play Flash Gordon in ROCKETSHIP (1938), he was nationally known as a swimming and track star. His ability to dart in, around, and through a series of oncoming tacklers came in handy as the script required him to fight an assorted motley group of monkey man, giant lizards, and the lackeys of Ming the Merciless. ROCKETSHIP is no film of serious plot or special effects. It was meant to kill a hour or two at the local movie house, and this it did with surprisingly effective verve. Jean Rogers as the delectable blonde sidekick and Priscilla Lawson as the equally desirable Princess Aura battled each other for the right to be Flash's consort. Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless turned out to be the unexpected center of drama as his cruel-etched face issues one order after another consigning Flash to his doom.

The plot is nonsense of course. Earth is threatened with collision by the planet of which Ming is the overlord. Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkoff fly to that planet to stave off that collision and in so doing overcome some pretty cheesy looking obstacles. But one is not supposed to take seriously any of this. One can, however, take note of the cinematic prescience of the script writers and FX technicians. Flash and Ming use television and radar in a manner that suggests that these devices will soon enough dominate the lives of the next generation or two of viewers. For those who wish to see how STAR WARS and STAR TREK got their start, ROCKETSHIP is a fun and rollicking film that has stood the test of time as one of Hollywood's first outer space films.