Starring Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Frank Shannon, Beatrice Roberts
Directed by Ford Beebe & Robert Hill
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
When the Earth is in peril from a beam removing nitron from their atmosphere, Flash Gordon and his friends travel to Mars to shut down the beam, and find that Ming the Merciless is there and alive.
We have here a sequel to the original Flash Gordon movie serial, reuniting most of the principal cast in another conflict between Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless. With Mars the setting this time around, we have new characters and thrills, with clay people who can hide within rocky walls, Mars' queen Azura who can use magic to teleport anywhere in a cloud of smoke, bat-wing capes that allow the user to fly, and light bridges that allow people to cross chasms on a beam of light. There's also battles between flying vehicles, and plenty of derring-do for Crabbe as Flash Gordon to engage in. Also returning are Rogers as Dale Arden (with darker hair) who gets a bit more to do than in the original serial, Frank Shannon as Dr. Zarkov, and Richard Alexander as Prince Barin. A cocksure reporter played by Donald Kerr is also along for the ride as a stowaway. If you liked the first Flash Gordon serial, you ought to like this one, although there are no giant monsters around this time, nor as diverse settings, but there's plenty of music from Bride Of Frankenstein cleverly reused.
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