There's a strange story I'm sure MOST people are NOT aware of... mostly due to some very erroneous info put out by certain parties decades ago.
Filmation-- Hanna-Barbera's biggest competitor in the 60s & 70s-- was getting really tired of being stuck in the "Saturday morning ghetto", especially when censorship had been so outragiously high for the whole of the 1970s. They got ahold of the rights to adapt "FLASH GORDON"... a feat George Lucas had been UNABLE to do (the price tag was too high). In his case, he made the right creative decision to do something (AHEM) "original". Cheaper and more creative. But keep what I'm saying in mind, here. It wasn't because someone else already had it... it was because he couldn't afford it. This is important.
Filmation decided to aim high, and create an animated FEATURE FILM that would appeal to all ages, not just "the kiddies". But there was a massive prejudice in America against such a thing, just as since the 1950s there had been against comic-books. "Oh, those are ONLY for KIDS!" The result was, they were unable to find a single distributor to put up the money needed to finish the most expensive project they had ever sunk their talent into.
The person who came to their rescue, crazy enough, was Raphaela DeLaurentis... who ran her father's European distribution operation. She saw what they did, loved it, and they struck a deal. She'd put up the money to finish the film, and in return, SHE got the theatrical distribution rights to "FLASH GORDON". Of course, NOBODY in America wanted the film... but it was released theatrically in England and Europe-- and DID VERY WELL!!!
Her father--Dino-- had NEVER heard of "FLASH GORDON". He loved what he saw-- and decided, on a whim, to DO ONE OF HIS OWN. And, unlike anyone in Hollywood at the time, Dino was like an old-fashioned movie mogul. When he put his mind to it, nothing deterred him. His LIVE-ACTION film went from initial idea to OPENING DAY in under a YEAR. When I first read this story, in the early 80s, I was floored. NOBODY in Hollywood could have accomplished what he did. (Well, except maybe Roger Corman... heh.)
Naturally, this also "explained" the inconsistent, even schizophrenic tone of Dino's film. Turns out, the Italian crew wanted to do something VIOLENT and SEXY. The Americans involved wanted to do Adam West's "BATMAN". (Yep, seems EVERY damned "classic" character being revived in the late 70s was treated with UTTER CONTEMPT... like "DOC SAVAGE", "TARZAN", "FU MANCHU", "CHARLIE CHAN", even "BUCK ROGERS".)
Of all of those films from that period, "FLASH GORDON" is the only one that, to me, really "works"... almost in spite of itself. Especially the last half-hour, which has a sense of MOMENTUM that just won't quit.
The one really tragic decision in the making of the film, which had an INCREDIBLE cast of actors, was the lead role... Sam Jones is the one really BAD actor in the thing. Worse, he got into a disagreement with Dino at one point, walked off the film before it was released, and so 2 planned sequels NEVER happened.
Anyway, if you happen to watch the 1979 Filmation feature and the 1980 live-action film back-to-back... you'll probably notice that Dino's film feels like a PARODY of the Filmation film. A lot of plot elements and story structure is similar.
Still unable to get their feature run theatrically in America-- OR EVEN ON TELEVISION-- Filmation made the decision to turn it into a Saturday morning serial... but what got on TV was mostly new, and much of the feature version was NEVER seen as part of that series, as it was too "adult" in nature for "the kiddies". However... 3 YEARS later, NBC finally ran the thing in Prime Time on a Friday night. By then, censorship had lightened up a bit.
Somehow, about a decade later, somebody else got the videotape rights... and the promotional text on the package told a story VERY different from the one I just told here. They tried to make it look like the cartoon was inspired by Dino's film, INSTEAD of the other way around... and even suggested Dino had the rights long before STAR WARS happened. Utter B***S***.
My own favorite FG remain the 3 Universal serials from 1936, 1938 & 1940, all of which, I've confirmed for myself, were BETTER-WRITTEN than the original newspaper strips. Yep, even "...TRIP TO MARS", which was by far the least of the 3.
