Flash Gordon (Soundtrack)
In The Space Capsule (The Love Theme)
They look at each other. Your very own roustabout*, a cosmos, a Kosmos bullied by timpani. Remember Flash and that Chams du Baron, sweating, bandanae around his neck?
An animal’s glance, so diagonal and quizzical in its wonder at the closing dumpster walls. Porno and science fiction’s connections sealed in her metal-bra cleavage, the exaggeration of gesture, the chest hair heave-hos.
They look at each other. One man, one woman.
*Frances Lai, theme from A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme, Claude Lelouch, 1966).
Ming’s Theme
Tee-hee-hee-ing, Freddie wears white shorts and sits down in all-black key ululation, 60 seconds flat, back to previous lunacy. Now, his soon-to-be prone body is strong; so strong he never sleeps.
To identify the villain is beyond capital-C Camp. It’s simply His Duty, and when one accolade is heard, it brings back his third-world days, a precocious childhood boxer winning trophies, writing home dutifully.
Eight breaths protrude like buck teeth in his high sighs.
The Ring (Hypnotic Seduction of Dale)
Eight breaths protrude and tinkle there, still, without initial sameness. Two figures stare at an idol, transfixed.
In The Death Cell (Love Theme Reprise)
The inductive moment at last. The fishbowl glance of the hero up from the poorly text, pink walls. The device represents a second-act sexual tension, which, rules dictate, cannot be released.
An echo in the distance, a reprise. Notice a human trait in the villain as the protagonist finds an escape. Lambasted by too many, the device has a way to market good and evil, reacquaint us with his body.
Lowered into the depths, a blank screen escape.
Arboria (Planet of the Tree Men)
Our write-off is the immodest accordion. Our Immelmann Turn* evens out, the blonde will talk to brunette and we unite, unite, unite! We are with each other, boys, we’re all on the same team.
“Take blondes to the suburbs,” Ross says. Take brunettes to the suburbs.
*A classic of air-to-air combat, engaged by the Hawk Men in Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, 1980) and so many suburban boys with model airplanes. Developed by Max Immelmann, a German World War I ace. The turn involves flying level, then pulling back on the stick, bringing the aircraft into a steep climb, which is maintained until the aircraft passes through vertically and completes a half loop. At the top of the loop, the aircraft is inverted and the pilot rolls the aircraft back into the upright position. The aircraft is now higher and has changed its heading 180 degrees.
Escape From The Swamp
This ain’t no transcription. No can do, special effects either carry the plot or not. They don’t turn around audio starts. Strange to think that this is more of a story than the actual animal’s captured gaze.
Wonder what she would make of a dickhead soundtrack’s story.*
*Escape From The Swamp, Alternate Take
Hawk men, oh my hawk men. In Sexual Personae (Vintage Press, 1990), Camille Paglia calls cinema “the ultimate phallic gesture.” It frames reality, grasps outside, domesticates it. So this great hairy male insecurity complex, as we all know, this Paglia woman, ever the Freudian, genitally reduces it. Hawk men, dive.
Flash To The Rescue/Vultan’s Theme (Attack of the Hawk Men)
Isolate my conniption—what did I exactly say? Is it unclear? He’s coming. Here. This is it. Do you understand what I’m saying? Here he comes—coming to get you and me and all of us.
Let’s ignore the repercussions of the deep deep phasers, babe. This taxidermic villainess is obsessed with the body of the hero. Her aviary awaits, still helps the still-living hero, regardless of its survival at the end of the act.
And look—little wings grafted onto their hirsute bodies!
Battle Theme
Computer game paramour, my sweetheart Sam Jones, now a construction worker (Kevin says), out in Los Angeles hustling for bit parts. I wondered what you should be, where you should go. TV for sure.
I hold on to my knobby joystick, thinking of you, rescue my missing parts. I’m gonna keep on cryin’ with a keynote disavowal, standing there, and all my other major events happening at the same time. Attack! Attack!
My confession here isn’t to throw you off. Rather, I confess repetition.
The Wedding March/Marriage Of Dale And Ming (and Flash Approaching)
The nuptial ambush, Maisie’s sneak around the rented tent. In vowing, we throw off all preconception, fess up as well as we can. The Captain and Tennille on 8-track—“There Is Love.”*
But to unburden a clean breast, to unburden all correspondence, a certain reconnoitering. In one lunkhead’s candid promise, there is both bad intention and an attempts at humor. Homoerotic chorus.
Nothing is murmured, no one stands at attention in the process.
*Toni Tennille introducing Chaka Khan, Midnight Special, 1977.
Crash Dive On Mingo City/Flash’s Theme Reprise
Chromatic in its own way, how they cufflink each other’s results. Hands raised, a festschrift, with audience, and as always an invitation for the hero to stay to make a new life.
“No thanks, Mac”—home is much better than this.
The Hero
Springtime, and unsung Bo Diddley plays live, end credits in Cotswall outdoors. To no one’s avail or recognition. Perhaps the last hurrah, at least for mixing it right. It’s off to German discos for awhile.
We’ll meet German actresses there, adopt a pastel stance, and it will be exciting, yes, and the cigarettes will roughen our voices. My mother likes it, actually, and it is the beginning of the bloat. It is unhealthy.
The next montage, Riefenstahlian.*
*Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1934).