Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All

Filmation has gotten its ample share of criticism of their somewhat slap-dash animation, and not undeservedly (although the same can be said for pretty much every animation studio producing Saturday morning fare). Their animation did improve in the '70s as they, somewhat surprisingly, adopted rather expensive and intesively-detailed rotoscoping technology to their bag of tricks. This upgrade was evident, if overly overused, in their later offerings of Tarzan, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and so forth.

None of these come close to comparing to the masterpiece that is "Flash Gordon - The Greatest Adventure of All".

While the animation style is utterly familiar as being Filmation's, there is a subtle grace here that is not evident in even their better Saturday morning productions. There are actually entire passages where the lip movements match the dialog. What you have to understand is that Filmation was not known for this type of detail, so to the initiated, it's nothing short of breathtaking to behold.

The story is extremely faithful to the comics and mythos, while having some darker, more realistic elements added, another pleasant surprise.

While initially intended as a live action feature, costs mandated it be animated, and it's much better for it. NBC were so impressed that they shelved this movie in favour of ponying up more geld for a Saturday morning series (not going into that here), finally airing it in 1982, three years later.

This can be found on YouTube, as well as other places around the web, so it isn't difficult to locate, but it would be wonderful to have a proper, official blu-ray release.