Life After Flash

When Sam J. Jones played Flash Gordon in 1980 the part was supposed to make his career. It did something else. A falling out with producer Dino De Laurentiis during production ended the relationship, part of his voice was redubbed by another actor, and Hollywood stayed shut for years afterward. Lisa Downs uses her documentary for both halves of that story, the making of the 1980 picture and the four decades Jones has lived since, with Melody Anderson, Brian Blessed, Topol and Brian May of Queen filling in how the film became a cult standard. Downs stayed with the same idea in her later work, making documentaries about other actors remembered for a single eighties role.