[Link to Part One]

Obviously, Flash Gordon is not really dead. Aura’s been sleeping with the doctor in charge of Flash’s execution (honestly, who has she not been sleeping with?) and he arranged to fake Flash’s death for her. She kisses him awake in his coffin Flash which for some reason has a mirror in its lid. Why would a dead person need a mirror in their coffin? Even an alive person wouldn’t be able to see their reflection because there’s no light.

Aura lies and says that Dr. Zarkov and Dale are safe. She also lies and says she won’t watch Flash change clothes (she watches in the coffin mirror). Flash is not nearly perturbed enough by the way Aura purrs I like you a lot before whisking him away to her boyfriend's kingdom.

Meanwhile, Ming is taunting Zarkov. Turns out this whole thing was a test. Ming flies around zapping planets with natural disasters, and if the people can’t figure out what’s happening, he leaves them alone. But if they realize it’s an attack, then he has to destroy them. Whatever floats your boat, man.

Since Zarkov is the one who figured it out, Ming is going to suck out his memory (but also still destroy Earth, I guess?). Markov’s memories play backwards on a TV screen as they’re erased, that’s pretty cool. A tiger features prominently. Aww, he used to have a wife. Uh, she drowned in a pool I guess? Before that he was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany. Wow, this is really humanizing Zarkov. Poor guy.

Now he’s a fetus and ready to be re-programmed. No higher than level three, Klytus (the chief henchperson) says; a human can’t take any more than that. But Klytus should have stuck around because the woman running the machine sets it to level six after he leaves! Turns out this won’t matter even a little bit.

Zarkov has supposedly been replaced with “Agent Zarkoff,” a mind-controlled imperial spy. But since he says “Hans Zarkoff” before correcting himself to “Agent Zarkoff” when asked what his name is, seems like maybe that whole reprogramming thing didn’t work.

Aura is giving Flash a very sexualized lesson in flying her rocket. Flash has absolutely no objection to Aura climbing all over him. He seems not to feel much loyalty to Dale, and considering that he’s known her for only a day or two, I can’t blame him. Aura promises to take him to Cythera, her “secret pleasure moon.”

Turns out that a secret pleasure moon is small potatoes, though, because there’s an entire pleasure galaxy! That’s where the elixir that Dale’s served in the harem comes from. It will make her night with Ming “more agreeable.”

“Will it make me forget?” Dale asks.

“No, but it will make you not mind remembering.” What more could anyone ask? Dale loves the taste of the elixir and scarfs it down.

Flash aims the shuttle at the moon of Frigia in order to force Aura to let him use the telepathy-phone to communicate with Dale. Dale’s tripping balls on her pleasure elixir, which is maybe why she doesn’t realize that Flash is fully making out with Aura while he’s thinking instructions at her.

“Fake him out,” Flash thinks at her.

“How?” Dale asks.

“Girls know how,” Flash says. “It’s been done to me.” What the hell is he talking about? Faking orgasm? That’s not going to help. Or does he mean acting seductive so that she can escape her rapist? In that case you’re really telling on yourself, Flash.

After accidentally telepathically telling Dale that Aura is really turning him on, Flash hangs up.

Dale convinces the servant who brings her the sedative aphrodisiac to partake herself. This is a much better idea than whatever Flash was trying to imply, because when the servant is blissed out Dale switches clothes with her and leaves her in the bed. (I mean, it sucks if the handmaiden gets raped in Dale's place but I'm assuming Ming will notice the switch first.) She manages to get her hands on a phaser of some kind and takes out a bunch of guards with it, running barefoot and carrying her high-heeled sandals because she is a practical woman. This version of Dale kicks ass. And is way to smart to be with a dum-dum like Flash.

Ming’s henchman send Spy-Zarkov to intercept Dale. Not knowing that Zarkov got brain zapped, she reveals to him that Flash is still alive and on his way to Arboria, so now Klytus knows it, too. He realizes that this is Aura’s doing, but doesn’t tell Ming that; he just asks for permission to follow the trail and do what he pleases with her, because apparently Klytus is about the only man in Mongo Aura isn’t sleeping with and he’s pissed about it.

Dale and Zarkov escape Ming’s palace, and it’s revealed that Zarkov wasn’t memory wiped at all! He protected himself by remembering the formulas of Einstein and Beatles lyrics. Nothing can defeat the human spirit! Except maybe the hawkmen who just arrived.

The hawkmen carry Dale and Zarkov through the sky for some reason.

Ah, they’re bringing them to Prince Vultan. This Prince Vultan is even better than the original. He keeps the maniacal laughter but adds a real Shakesperian vibe to the role. Rather than keeping Dale for himself, he wants to turn her over to Ming to allay Ming’s suspicions of him. Zarkov tries to convince Vultan that the thing that makes the most sense is for everyone to unite against Ming.

We cut to Aboria, where “a young man is being initiated” in a ceremony that sounds EXTREMELY sexual. (Aura thinks so, too.)

The actual initiation is a sort of treeman Russian roulette that involves sticking your hand into a hole in a stump and seeing whether the thing inside that bites you poisonous or not, I guess. James Bond Prince Barin is there with his sidekick, played by none other than Richard O’Brien, AKA Rocky Horror’s Riff Riff. We’ve really come full circle. (Also, without his Riff Riff makeup and hair, Richard O’Brien is kind of hot?)

Anyway, the kid gets bitten and begs Barin to kill him before “the madness sets in.” Barin obliges. Aura waltzes in and asks Barin to hold onto Flash for her, and that if he kills him he’ll never have her again! Barin is not enthused, not only because Flash is clearly Aura’s boy toy but because harboring a fugitive from Ming is suicidal. Aura leaves to go home, and Flash tries to convince Barin that the thing that makes the most sense is for everyone to unite against Ming.

Klytus has captured Aura upon her return, and is having her whipped. Aura is not happy about this and demands to see her father. But Ming doesn’t give a shit. He’s eating popcorn or something and tells them to continue the torture.

Once they’ve extracted a confession of her, Ming instructs Klytus to send Aura to Frigia for a year to “cool her blood,” and then he’ll marry her off to Klytus. Klytus loves this plan.

Apparently in Arboria they store prisoners in an almost-submerged cage before killing them. Seems like that’s an extra step — you could just submerge the cage all the way — but okay.

Barin has come up with a way to kill Gordon without breaking faith with Aura. He sends Riff Raff into the cage, posing as a prisoner, who just happens to have stolen a key to the cage. Riff Raff helps Gordon escape, but it’s a trap! He leads Flash into the tree-man temple, where only tree-men may go, and now he has to go through the initiation we saw earlier. Barin swears he won’t kill Flash - unless Flash begs him to. I don’t think Aura’s going to be okay with that, actually.

Flash isn’t going to go along with this plan! Until Barin calls him a coward, then he’s all in. The beast doesn’t go for him, but when it becomes clear that Barin will just keep making him do it, Flash fakes getting bitten so that he can steal Barin’s sword and run off. Barin, who is almost as dumb as Flash, tells his men not to chase Flash because he’s going to hunt him alone.

Flash seems to have run into the Swamp of Sadness during his escape and gets sucked under the mud.

Much like Westley escaping the Lightning Sand, though, he climbs out using a vine… only to get consumed by some kind of creature living under the forest floor. Good thing Barin is in pursuit! He kills the creature and is about to shoot Flash for good measure, but the hawkmen arrive! Vultan wants to talk to Barin. The hawkmen fly Barin and Flash to Vultan’s kingdom. They’re spotted en route by Klytus.

Barin demands trial by combat rather than being turned over to Ming and demands his opponent be Flash. Zarkov and Dale arrive and Dale runs to Flash and kisses him, and they kind of get engaged, but the hawkmen pull them apart so that Flash can fight to the death with Barin. They’re fighting hand-to-hand on a platform that looks like it’s suspended above the Imperial Vortex.

Fight scenes are always boring. Vultan agrees. “Give me the remote control!” he shouts. He’s ready to change the channel.

The platform they’re fighting on starts tilting, and spikes come out of it. They fight with whips while the crowd chants things like “Die! Die!” and “Kill! Kill!” Vultan shouts things like “Vultan! Vultan!” and Dale shouts things like “Flash! Flash! I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!”

Barin is about to force Flash’s head onto one of the spikes. Flash asks him to promise that he’ll team up with Vultan to fight Ming, which throws Barin off his game and he almost falls off the platform. Flash helps him back up, much to Vultan’s disgust. Zarkov calls this a demonstration of humanity. Vultan calls it rubbish.

Barin pledges loyalty to Flash and starts to give a rousing speech. But right at that moment, Klytus arrives in his flying coffin. He insults everybody, and tells Barin about torturing Aura (“she seemed to find it quite enjoyable”) and in retaliation Barin and Flash throw him onto the spikes of the platform. There is a very gross practical effect of his eyes and tongue popping out of his mask for some reason.

Vultan is really pissed off by this turn of events and leaves Barin and the earthlings in his palace while he and his hawkmen evacuate. Flash starts tearing down the beaded curtains to make parachutes out of so they can jump down to Arboria, but Ming arrives. He has Dale, Zarkov and Barin taken back home, but he stays to chat with Flash. Ming is so impressed with Flash’s heroism that he offers him a kingdom of Mongo. And that kingdom is going to be… Earth. Instead of destroying Earth, Ming will soften it up to make it easy for Flash to rule them, while Ming breeds with Dale. Pleasant!

Flash is not into this plan, though it isn’t clear whether it’s the slavery of earth or the loss of Dale that turns him off. So Ming leaves, abandoning Flash in Vultan’s empty palace which he then bombs from the air.

Flash fortunately falls down a hole that leads directly to a magical ski-doo that shoots into the air just as Vultan’s palace is destroyed. The ski doo has a radio, so Flash can contact Vultan and get some landing coordinates. Vultan, shamed by his hawkmen, realizes that he has to help Flash after all.

Dale is in her “bridal chamber” getting all dolled up for her “wedding night.” Soldiers come and dump Aura in the room too for some reason. Dale attacks her, and they pillow fight on the giant bed. Aura swears she’s a changed woman. The bore worms really changed her mind about her dad. She gives Dale some poison to give to Ming, explaining, “My father always drinks a power potion before he makes love.” Gross. And why does she now that?

But Dale says she can’t do that. She promised Ming she would be “a good wife” in exchange for him sparing Zarkov and Barin and she’s going to keep her word even if he doesn’t, because that’s what makes humans better than a “Mongo-person” like Aura. A servant comes to lead her to her “joyous night.”

“Nothing can save me now,” Dale wails to Aura.

The soundtrack disagrees. Flash!!!! AHHHHH!

Ming, of course, is planning to execute Zarkov and Barin - live on TV during his wedding! Aura, on her way to watch the ceremony before getting exiled to the ice planet for her treachery, busts them out of prison (where “Long live Flash!!” graffiti adorns the walls).

“They’ve changed the code!” Aura says, unable to open the door.

“I’ve changed too, Aura,” Barin assures her.

“And I’ve changed, too,” she answers.

Zarkov opens the lock. “I thought it was one of the prime numbers of the Zeeman series. I haven’t changed.”

Meanwhile, Flash seems to be riding his ski doo straight at Ming’s palace, taunting a big cruiser to chase him - straight into an ambush of hawkmen! A fight ensues. Queen plays most triumphantly. Vultan and Flash take over the cruiser. There’s only 3:24 until Earth is destroyed—but Queen just started playing wedding march over the radio! Weird that the empire of Ming has the same wedding music as Earth.

What’s Flash going to do?

His first plan is to fly the cruiser into the palace’s lightning shield, bailing out at the last moment, causing the shield to blow up so that the hawkmen can get through. But the cruiser takes too much damage on the way in. Flash realizes he’s going to have to stay on board in order to aim it into the shield. Vultan is amazed by FLash’s selflessness. Blah, blah, humans are amazing.

Barin and Zarkov break into the security room, kill the leader, and try to figure out how to disable the lightning field before Flash’s rocket hits it. Zarkov pushes buttons at random, while Barin shoots his way to the field generators. The shield comes down just in time. Also, here’s what happens when you rip the glasses off these guys’ faces:

Flash!!! AHHHHH! He’s a miracle! He does the impossible!

Flash crashes his rocket right into the wedding chapel, conveniently spearing Ming on the nose of the rocket!

Fifteen seconds till the destruction of earth! In an exchange that takes a lot longer than 15 seconds, Flash demands Ming stop the moon from crashing into Earth, Ming refuses, and using the ring he was about to put on Dale’s finger, beams himself… elsewhere? The ring falls to the floor, the timer counts down, the floating globe arrives to announce that Earth is saved. Flash has saved everyone of us, just like the song said. Except for all the people he killed along the way.

Barin becomes the new emperor, and appoints Vultan general of the armies. Mongo is at peace. A mysterious hand picks up Ming’s ring. The end… or is it? (It is. They didn't make a sequel.)

Verdict

This movie is GREAT. It's so stupid and it knows it and it ramps up the stupidity at every opportunity. Visuals, script, soundtrack, acting, are all A+ sci fi camp.