Review of Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All (1982) by Ken S — 04 Sep 2012

From the very first moment you know this is going to be good. The animation quality is well above the usual standards of Filmation. I've liked some Filmation shows, particularly the animated "Star Trek", but their animation style was far too often cheap and stiff.

Stock shots reused over and over again, plenty of static shots of one character while another character off-screen is talking...a lot of cheap tricks were used to save on animation. I don't blame them, animation can be expensive, but it can sometimes e dull to watch.

But this starts off and there is movement, and style...and you can tell that some effort was put into this one, and it truly carries the spirit of "Flash Gordon", which is one of the most important aspects of the character to capture.

The serials had the spirit of fun and adventure, but the campy film from 1980 didn't...it was making fun of that spirit. The story of the first serial, the 1980 film, and this animated feature are pretty much the same, and while I still have a soft spot for Buster Crabbe.

..this is a definite improvement over the campy nonsense that was the live-action film. It is written by Samuel A. Peeples, who also wrote the second pilot for "Star Trek", and he did a solid job with this Flash Gordon script.

As animated TV movies from the late 70s/80s go...this is all around a solid effort, if only they could release it on DVD!