Back in the late 80’s I tried in earnest to get my band The American Devices involved in the “Flesh Gordon” (1972) sequel “Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders” (1989) directed by porn pioneer Howard (Mona) Ziehm, because the first one was considered a minor classic for its excellent stop-motion puppet creatures animated by the likes of Ray Harryhausen protégé Jim Danforth. Preproduction sketches piqued my curiosity with monster characters like a giant female dominatrix spider & anthropomorphized turds. Corresponding back & forth via snail-mail with the producers in B.C., I hoped they could at least get some of our music on the soundtrack & sent them a whole promo package, but no dice. Just as well, because the humor in Flesh Gordon 2 turned out to be sophomoric beyond redemption & the cheesy party-time music they ended up going with sounded more like Huey Lewis and The News. I still really have a soft-spot for this thing, though. It’s almost campy enough to recollect early John Waters. The heading for this Motion Picture Purgatory which originally appeared in a 1999 Valentine’s issue of The Montreal Mirror was “The birds & the bees gotcha depressed? This Valentine’s Day, don’t repress, regress!” (To see image full-sized, click on it to open in a new window & use the magnify function).
Original art for sale for $50.00 CAD. Unfortunately, only the original pencil preliminaries are available (signed & dated by author/artist Rick ) since this is such an early strip that I used to have to bring the art over to The Montreal Mirror for scanning before I was properly equipped myself & the original inks got stolen overnight. Includes B&W newsprint tear-sheet from where it was originally published. Postage & framing not included. Motion Picture Purgatory Volumes One & Two available at FAB Press. For original art info, contact Rick Trembles @ ricktrembles (at) hotmail (dot) com.
