“Flash Gordon.” Steinbrunner, Chris, and Burt Goldblatt. His salary was roughly $1,000 a week for each six-day picture, with star billing, such as it was, thrown in as an added inducement. The space adventures of the comic-strip hero and his friends. And yet they owe a considerable debt to the serials, which inhabited a world of constant action, peril, and imagination, but were ultimately too simplistic for contemporary audiences. In 1979, NBC launched a Saturday-morning `Flash Gordon' cartoon. Judging from the fact that, two years later, I would be called back for a third In between these three iconic serials, in an attempt to break away from the Flash Gordon character, Crabbe also portrayed Crabbe’s next film would seal his fate in Hollywood; he agreed to appear in a string of no-budget westerns for PRC, aka Producers’ Releasing Corporation, arguably the cheapest studio in Hollywood. By now firmly consigned to the “kiddie trade,” where before they had also attracted adult audiences, serials were seen as being bottom-of-the-barrel product, and the major studios that churned them out (Columbia, Republic and Universal) saw them as strictly bottom line propositions. 1 Review . Crabbe had achieved lasting fame as But the die had been already been cast even with the cost-conscious production of And yet, for all the compromises and production short cuts, the The rocket ships were generally ineffective miniatures, the plots were predictably preposterous, and the special effects were often primitive, but somehow, none of this mattered. 48 Favorites . Always cost conscious, serials would usually spend most of their production budget on the first three or four chapters, to entice exhibitors to book the serial, and capture audience attention; subsequent episodes were then ground out as cheaply as possible.While estimates range widely, the serial was roughly budgeted at $350,000, which was far more than the average serial at the time, usually brought in for $100,000 or less. They were predictable, their plots unfolded like clockwork, they did the job, and got out. Steve Holland, Irene Champlin, Joe Nash.Flash journeys to the center of the earth to investigate a series of mysterious earthquakes. As filming progressed, Crabbe grew more confident, and the cast and crew realized that they were working on something that was, to say the least, a notch above the usual serial fare. Created by Peter Hume. Under contract to Paramount at the time, and not happy about it, Crabbe expressed polite disinterest: “I honestly thought The two men shook hands on it, and a month later Crabbe found himself on a Universal sound stage, tackling the role that would become his lifetime calling card.
Steve Holland, Joe Nash, Irene Champlin.Villains smuggle a hypnotic drug that makes people commit acts against their will.
The first serial used non-scrolling text to recap the previous chapter, and the second utilized comic book-type art for its recaps. Opening Scroll: Only the third serial, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, utilized this (and it wasn't the first, as Universal had used this recap method in its serials starting in 1939). Serial scripts were immense, often running to 400 pages or more (or four times the length of an average feature), yet shooting schedules and budgets were often miniscule, and directors were expected to shoot as many as 70 “set ups” (a complete change of camera angle and lighting) a day to stay on schedule.

In between setups, Levine had an improvised dormitory set up on the Mascot lot in some vacant studio space, where exhausted stuntmen, actors and technicians could catch a few minutes sleep, and then grab a cup of coffee and some doughnuts to wake up, before being dragged back to the set.