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The Reviews

I got this for around $12, it's the first half of the complete series. It comes on 5 discs, double sided with 33 episodes. Firstly, the picture quality isn't great, this cartoon was made in 1985 so you can't expect a crystal clear picture. The story begins on Mongol where Flash Gordon's wife and son Rick are held prisoner by Ming the Merciless. Mongols resources are running out so he wants to invade the earth. Flash, chased by Ming's ice robots, crashes on earth outside Mandrake's mansion. Mandrake is like a middle aged English magician with an African man servant -Lothar- and a young adopted asian boy.

They both join up with Flash and later recruit the Ghost who Walks: The Phantom, to the team of....... THE DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH!

This is one of those toons so bad it's good and totally 80s kick ass experiences. I have laughed so hard. For a start they are all single dads, the Defenders that is and bring along three sons and one daughter who all live with them and are like junior defenders. The junior defenders are all like in their late teens and wear 80s style tight jeans and bomber jackets.

This is some classic shit. C-L-A-S-S-I-C. It's like the 80s has been distilled into an injection and shot into your arm. It's totally brilliant, totally crap and totally the greatest and worse thing you have ever seen in your life. And that makes it the greatest. There are so many WTF moments that you will be belly laughing half the time and the other half with eyes wide open at the sheer 80s superhero audacity on display.

Let's list some WTF moments. Firstly there is part of one episode where the magician mandrake starts wearing blue goggles for absolutely no reason whatsoevever and in the next scene they magically disappear.

Then there is a scene where huge troll like hands up-end Rick Gordon (Flash's son) and drags him into a tunnel. Inside the tunnel we see that the huge troll hands actually belong to a 30 cm purple fluff toy.

There is the scene where the Phantom's daughter psychically tells her black panther to follow a truck, at which point, said panther jumps off a bridge 80s style and lands on top of the truck. Then in an episode, Mandrake's adopted son throws a rock off a mountain top and somehow manages to crack open the cockpit of a supersonic jet belonging to Ming the Merciless' Ice Robots (yes you read that right). And not only is the jet destroyed, Flash Gordon then flys by and gives the kid the thumbs up. ROFL!

Then the show has awesome moments. For instance the intro for one episode has Flash and the Phantom in space, they engage this bubble shield astronaut suit on themselves, get into a firefight with Mings Ice Robots. So Flash wants to shoot them down but the guns are jammed, the ice robots shoot out their cockpit glass. Phantom suddenly stands up and crouches. Flash says "Phantom, what are you doing?", the Phantom says "Engaging the manual guns." So he jumps out of the jet, onto the wing, breaks a cannon off the wing and shoots down the enemy planes himself. Absolutely AWESOME.

Then later in the same episode Flash engages the Laser Sword. Picture a giant lightsaber coming out of the end of a jet and they use it to ram other jets and then break through Ming's evil dome building, crashing the ceiling down on top of him.

Then there is the episode where the DOE (Defenders of the Earth) computer is infected when they take it to play in a chess tournament LOL! It gets infected by a giant worm and they shrink down Fantastic Voyage style and attack it with little metal rods! BTW did I mention that the DOE computer houses the consciousness of Rick Gordons' dead mother?

Then you find out that the Phantom has a helicopter shaped like a skull! LIKE A SKULL. It's classic! In one scene Flash and Phantom are on foot and suddenly the ice robot jets attack. Flash runs to the copter for weapons. He does a forward somersault into the helicopter and comes out the other side of the copter with a gun and shoots down two planes - in one single movement. Total awesomeness.

Then Phantom can call upon the power of 10 tigers (it's part of jungle law) and he picks up a massive totem and throws it into the sky to trash more jets.

Then there are these inexplicable 80s moments, for instance instead of a dissolve or fade out they have the Phantom's black panther leap towards the screen, the camera entering it's mouth. Or Ming's snake pet looking at the camera and its eye twinkling for NO reason whatsoever.

It throws logic to the wind, they show you these WTF moments at every turn and you can only say "Okay LOL" and go along for the ride. It's hilarious and awesome and brilliant fun at every turn. It makes you feel like a kid again. I'm ordering the rest of the series on dvd now.

This boxset cost me $12 including shipping cost from amazon. If you are a child of the 80s and used to watch this show, just buy it.

The intro from the series can be found at the video intro link.

King Arthur and the Knights of Justice

I got this one disc set for $6 which is less than the price of a sandwich over here. It has the entire first series which is 5 episodes long. Unlike Batman the Animated series, this is no classic. It's definetely not something that holds up today and to be honest it's pretty crap in places. You would buy this for the memories and because you can get it for less than the price of a sandwich. It is though, hugely enjoyable. The story goes that the real knights of camelot are frozen in a cave so merlin goes into the future and abducts an american football team and takes them back in time to replace them. It's one of those shows that is so obviously geared towards young sword wielding wanabes that it's just hilarious in places. So bad it's good. For instance, I just watched this episode where they go to the top of this tower to fight a dragon, the dragon turns out to be an illusion and it was a trap and soldiers are making their way to the top of the tower to kill them.

So, basically the knights have magic armour that has emblems for instance arthur touches the sword on his chest and a sword appears. So they are stuck at the top of this tower and about to be killed so arthur shouts to his buddy "build me a glider!" and so his buddy knight for some reason, instead of having a weapon crest, has a hammer and chisel on his chest and touches it and the tools appear. Arthur then shouts "You have about 30 seconds before we're dead!" so this buddy builds a ramshackle glider out of some rotting wood. Arthur then whips off his cape, attaches it to the frame and 5 heavily armoured knights, with weapons, somehow manage to all fly off the tower on their glider. As they sail away the bad guys now on top of the tower shout "What manner of magic is this?!"

Then to top that off, their horses run beneath them and line up perfectly at the same speed and each knight then drops from about 50 feet in the air onto the horses back and they ride off. But what makes it worse is that later on they are attacked. Now like the weapon crests they have animal crests on their shields. So this one knight brings out his eagle crest and they fly off and escape the attackers. So... this is the same episode and they could have just used the eagle, but instead build a 30 glider. This show is awesome. I just watched an episode where 6 year old kids wearing saucepans for helmets wreck the warlords with sticks and catapults. This show is double awesome.

This is one show that has held up extremely well. The dvd comes in a glossy, lavish packing with a great documentary on the making of this emmy award winning series. 28 episodes over 4 discs for a bargain price. The art is amazing in todays context. It almost seems like TV animation has degraded from this high point. The city itself becomes a character, everything is drawn in an art deco style. The characters taking inspiration from old superman comics. This is almost like the foreshadow for the new Batman films. It has thrilling chases, adult humour, dark moments and that essential batman feel. This comes highly reccomended.

The Adventures of Tintin

Is a 10 disc boxset, celebrating 75 years of Herge. So far I have watched Tintin in America which was pretty lame to be honest. But Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharoahs reminds me of why I used to love this series. An suspenseful feeling, almost like hitchcock at times, with comic flourishes, the stories still hold up well. These cartoons are quite old so the transfer quality isn't amazing but it still looks good if you can overcome that.