Flash! Aaaaaaaah! He’ll save every one of us! Okay, okay, you get the idea. I just wanted to make sure you youngsters out there know which Flash Gordon movie we’re talking about here. What a wonderfully campy movie – you had to love it. Well, sort of. This movie also served as my introduction to Queen at the time – I had heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” before then but hadn’t yet associated it with Queen – and to be honest, though some may write this album off as a silly soundtrack from a silly movie, the music in places is among Queen’s best. The music brings back fond memories of better days and childhood for me, and my only peeve with the album is that it commits one of the worst sins a soundtrack album can commit in my book – tons of soundbytes. I have to admit to being a bit of a film score purist in that this soundtrack and others such as Apollo 13 really get on my nerves with the soundbytes. Soundbytes aren’t bad, but when they cut into the music itself, I bare my teeth and growl.
A little obscure trivia for you: Aside from being a soundtrack to a sci-fi-ish movie, this album shares something else with A Kind of Magic. On track 13, “Battle Theme”, one of my favorite parts of the whole movie, that wondeful and quite literal giant of British acting, Brian Blessed, can be heard yelling “Who wants to live forever?” in character as the leader of the Hawk Men. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
One of my biggest peeves with the remastered Queen CDs has been the remixes that someone decided needed to be included on each one. I risk all my credibility here by announcing that, in a strange, Art-of-Noise-ish way, I liked the heavily sampled remix of “Flash’s Theme”. It must have been something in the water…
- Flash’s Theme (3:29)
- In the Space Capsule (2:42)
- Ming’s Theme (2:40)
- The Ring (0:57)
- Football Fight (1:28)
- In the Death Cell (2:24)
- Execution of Flash (1:05)
- The Kiss (1:44)
- Arboria (1:41)
- Escape from the Swamp (1:43)
- Flash to the Rescue (2:44)
- Vultan’s Theme (1:12)
- Battle Theme (2:18)
- The Wedding March (0:56)
- Marriage of Dale and Ming (2:04)
- Crash-Dive on Mingo City (1:00)
- Flash’s Theme Reprise (1:23)
- The Hero (3:31)
- Flash’s Theme – bonus remix (6:43)
Released by: Hollywood Records
Release date: 1980
Total running time: 42:07