Howard ziehm himself is a great comic fan and so he set up a parody of Flash Gordon in the style of the 30s/40s Tijuana bibles which were essentially porn spoofs of popular comic strips. As a parody the film is actually quite funny with genre parody with lots of elements from the original comic strip but also plain slapstick and silliness. Nevertheless -as Ziehm himself states in the audio commentary- the film is actually about 20-30 minutes too long. Hardcore it is not and Ziehm himself was adamant about the film not being shown in porn cinemas but rather in the art-house circuit. From an F/X point of view the film is actually reasonably well made for its age (released in 74 but shot in 71), particukarly the monster sequences. Flash Gordon is a very suitable object for that sort of treatment as the comic strip always had a massive undercurrent of S/M in it.
Review of Flesh Gordon
