Flesh Gordon

"After enjoying considerable success with his porn films MONA THE VIRGIN NYMPH and HARLOT, as their next step, Howard Ziehm and his team wanted to make a small  FLASH GORDON sex parody for $25,000. The production turned into a three-year venture during which the police confiscated negatives, Ziehm’s directing partner Michael Benveniste was fired, financial disagreements with producer Bill Osco led to difficulties, a Ouija board predicted the project’s failure, and the money kept running out – this led Ziehm to make other films in parallel, which caused even more problems. Eventually, the budget expanded to $500,000, but young effects artists such as Dennis Muren (STAR WARS), Rick Baker (AMERICAN WEREWOLF) and Greg Jein (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) got involved, as well as stop-motion specialist Jim Danforth (WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH). Instead of a porn parody, in the end FLESH GORDON turned into a zany, surprisingly ambitious soft-sex, science-fiction zeitgeist satire and became a successful cult film – celebrating its 50th anniversary at Hof in 2024.

FLESH GORDON reflects Howard Ziehm’s counterculture-influenced, anti-authoritarian attitude and that of his collaborators like no other film: nothing is sacred here, everything is permitted. After all, the makers themselves were among the pioneers of the sex-wave sweeping the world at the time – a wave that was known briefly as ‘porn chic’ in the USA. The film depicts a raunchy universe in which everything is seen through the lens of sex – even though an upstanding citizen still giggles with embarrassment at the word ‘erection’. There is colourful slapstick, a highly creative design, and a distorted echo of the original American superhero stories – and surely that sleazy satyric monster looks a bit like Richard Nixon ...?"

Christian Genzel