That flying-penis spaceship is back in this belated but more-of-the-same sequel to the successful 1974 softcore spoof of 1930s FLASH GORDON serials.
Flesh Gordon (Vince Murdocco) is discovered starring in "The Flesh Gordon Story" for Hero Studios, but his bumbling acting enrages the director, who fires him. Outside on the street, after running into girlfriend Dale Ardor (Robyn Kelly), Flesh is kidnapped by three cheerleaders from outer
space--Babs (Stevie-Lyn Ray), Sushi (Blaire Kashino) and Candy Love (Sharon Rowley)--who take him to their leader, Robunda Hooters (Morgan Fox). She needs Flesh's help to free her planet from a massive impotence radiation ray that has rendered their men useless. For help, Dale turns to Dr. Flexi
Jerkoff (Tony Travis), and the pair join Flesh on the cheerleaders' planet, narrowly escaping death from the noxious gases of the farting planetoids.
Meanwhile, on the nearby Ice Planet, the Evil Presence (William Dennis Hunt), who, with his mad-scientist cohort Master Bates (Bruce Scott), controls the ray, now directs it at the Earth, causing widespread sexual malfunction. Evil wants Flesh's member grafted on to his own body, so he can
better satisfy his corpulent paramour, Queen Frigid (Dee Lux). Evil and Master kidnap Dale, while Flesh, Jerkoff and the cheerleaders are waylaid in the womblike G-Spot Cafe, where all men are rendered into infants, then enter the Rectal Cave, where they are imprisoned by the cannibal Turd People.
They are saved by Chief Diarrhea (Michael Metcalfe) and some Ex-Lax chewing gum provided by Jerkoff, then reach the Ice Planet, only to be captured by Evil, who's still torturing Dale with creatures like the Octopussy Eater. The cheerleaders invade Evil's castle and free the heroes; Jerkoff puts a
prophylactic over the impotence ray, turning it into a sex-enhancing beam. With the help of Queen Frigid--an ally after bedding down with Flesh--Flesh reveals Evil to be his dreaded nemesis Emperor Wang. The pair duel, but when both are menaced by a giant woman-spider, Wang escapes. Jerkoff has by
now fallen in love with Robunda, and Flesh and Dale take off for earth to get married.
This silly picture is indeed a sequel to FLESH GORDON, although the story lines of both films are virtually identical. There is, however, even less effort expended here to observe the conventions of the serial form or to establish the 1930s time setting. The screenplay, by Howard T. Ziehm and
Doug Frisby, is a lazy barrage of jokes and puns about excrement, body parts and sex, almost all delivered barely straight-facedly by the actors and incompetently directed by Ziehm (who also helmed the first movie), although perhaps, like the equally unfunny KILLER TOMATOES pictures, that's part
of the point. The chief problem is that these knowing spoofs are extremely self-conscious and miles away from the innocence that makes their progenitors still entertaining today.
FLESH's silliness, which includes a musical number, is never inspired, and Ziehm stages the action and (mild) violence in Three Stooges style, complete with zany sound effects. The acting is very bad; especially insufferable is Scott as the mad scientist, who appears to be imitating Marty
Feldman (in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN) imitating Dwight Frye. Apart from Ziehm, of the original film's entire technical crew and cast, only Hunt returns, as Wang. With its cheap sets and over-bright, uneven lighting, FLESH has the looks of early 70s sexploitation films. Although there is virtually no
below-the-waist nudity, the film's misogyny is uncomfortably apparent, even as the script pays lip service to some feminist ideas. As in the first picture, among the spaceships-on-strings is some decent special-effects work by Principally Entertainment Engineering and the FX Center and some very
good stop-motion animation by Lauritz (also end-title billed as Larry) Larson.
A long time in the making, this sequel was first announced as THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF FLESH GORDON in 1979 by Ziehm (who reportedly left science studies at MIT to produce straight porn films, like MONA and HOLLYWOOD BLUE), then re-announced under the current title in 1984. The movie was
finally shot, in Detroit and Canada, in 1989, played theatrically in Europe in 1990 (its copyright year) and 1991, and ultimately released in R and unrated versions on video in the U.S. in 1993. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
