Though Universal Pictures had spared little expense to bring the popular King Features' Syndicate comic strip Flash Gordon to the silver screen as a 12-part serial in 1936, by the time production got underway on the third Flash Gordon chapter play four years later the studio was looking to economize. Copious stock footage keeps Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) at its fighting weight, with shots of sparking space ships searing across the cosmos recycled from both Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and the icy atmosphere of the land of Frigia - setting for the serial's second chapter, "Freezing Torture," and location of a potential antidote to "The Purple Death" introduced in Chapter 1 - evoked by reusing mountain footage from the silent German Bergfilm White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), which had starred Leni Riefenstahl a few years before she became Adolf Hitler's pet propagandist. Though former Olympian Larry "Buster" Crabbe returns in fine form as Flash, series regular Jean Rogers (who had moved on to 20th Century Fox) is subbed this time out by Carol Hughes; reprising their roles as Flash's compatriot Dr. Zarkov and deep space despot Ming the Merciless are Frank Shannon and Charles Middleton, respectively. Produced a year before America's entry into World War II, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe reflects the tenor of those troubled times, with Ming less of a Fu Manchu-style Machiavellian manipulator than an outright dictator, who warehouses his enemies in concentration camps and gasses innocent victims with "death dust."

By Richard Harland Smith