What maketh a gay cult classic?

The formula’s as combustible as a redneck meth lab: overheated stylishness, a cutting sense of parody, campy sexiness, endlessly quotable dialog, a genuine love for the grotesque and the likelihood that all of the above will be either unfairly misunderstood or unjustly maligned in their own time by the mainstream.

This is what separates the bad in terms of being unruly and naughty from the merely disastrous, the Trash Classics from the Box Office Bombs.

It’s a given that there’s a multiplex in Hell playing a triple feature of Gigli, Glitter and From Justin To Kelly ad infinitum; they are true Children of The Gorgon, too hideous and wretched for even their own makers to defend.

Yet somewhere in that hazy limbo between the Oscars and the Razzies dwell the immortals called Myra Breckinridge, Can’t Stop The Music and Mommie Dearest, ghettoized by the many but beloved by the few.

Rarely can the rigid and straight-leaning Science Fiction genre be said to give rise to a veritable gay free-for-all, but if the rules have ever been broken, then 1980’s lavishly out-of-this-world Flash Gordon is guilty of being a kitsch pleasure.

With flamboyant Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, camp scribe Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and a galaxy of slumming international talent at this rocket’s helm, you know it’s time to strap yourself in and gird your loins for zero gravity.

You don’t have to be gay to love Flash Gordon, but it helps.

Flash Gordon was a Pulp Sensation of comic strips and serials during the 30s. The strip featured Flash as the can-do patriotic (some might say mythically Aryan) hero who battles against the dangers of the deep space planet Mongo and its overlord Ming The Merciless with girlfriend Dale Arden and rogue scientist Dr. Hanz Zarkov in tow.

Flash was built to the gills and always in jeopardy of having his clothes torn away, being tied up in elaborate S&M torture scenarios, or seduced by an aroused alien monarch.

In its day, Flash Gordon dripped with interracial sex, xenophobia, rape, facile American jingoism and the evolutionary co-mingling of man and animal.

1974’s softcore porn spoof Flesh Gordon – a cult gem in its own right — opted to play the source material as a full-bore farce. Flash 1980 takes the tougher route of neither slaughtering the sacred cow nor worshiping at its feet.

It was the casting of American male starlet Sam J. Jones (right) in the lead role that sealed the deal and created a built-in gay audience from the get-go. 6′3′’, framed like a quarterback (Flash’s new claim to fame in the modernized version) and blindingly sexy, Jones was already stroke-worthy in the pages of Playgirl during its fledgling pre-erection, “for the ladies” years.

Spotted by De Laurentiis’ mother-in-law in a game show appearance that ultimately clinched him the role, former Marine Jones had bared all — billed as brunet Andrew Cooper III– for the magazine’s June 1975 centerfold. Of course we all end up picturing present-day action stars in the all-together, but how often do we get to see the real thing thanks to pre-fame nudity, much less accompanied by a military and long-rumored gay porn past?

If Princess Leia in harem attire and a choke chain became the iconic fantasy girl for the hetero light saber set, then Jones wins the crown of Mr. Interstellar Hot Body for post-Carter youngsters experiencing their burgeoning blushes of gay thanks to their parents’ first VCR.

Flash’s charm is that he’s not the symbolic macho superman of his Depression-era fame. Instead, he’s a doe-eyed and slack-jawed sex object — more akin to mod kitten Barbarella than Buck Rogers — a star-spangled paragon of male fortitude remixed, remade, remodeled into a Me Decade Centerfold.

The brilliance of Semple’s script is that it never concerns itself with presenting Flash as especially bright or deep. If he wins through, it’s because of his brawn, his carefree disposition and his sheer obliviousness. An utter himbo to the core, our Flash is the kind of guy who can wear his own name brand emblazoned across his chest without a hint of irony and probably has to sound out the directions on his bottle of Sun-In.

Whether he’s using slang like the most clueless American on holiday or flying into certain death aboard his air cruiser as if he were jet skiing at South Beach, Flash is not what you’d call top-heavy in terms of grey matter. These aren’t complaints. If we had to be marooned in a hostile alien landscape, we’d want it to be with the human male equivalent of a cuddly, loyal Saint Bernard.

Planet Mongo (right) instantly brings to mind that word that makes any corn-fed conservative shudder with contempt: European.

If America’s Neo-McCarthyites could finally achieve their dream of jettisoning any form of queerness, ethnicity, or individuality out into the cosmos, this Eurotrash fantasy land is exactly what the deported would found. While Zarkov (an exuberant Topol) seems right at home, Flash and Dale (Melody Anderson, of Manimal fame and 80s TV movie fixture) are deliberately cast as naive fish-out-of water, tantalizingly pure delicacies that have the court of Mongo slavering.

And what a crowd it is: Lizard People, Hawkmen, veiled royal consorts, samurai guards in gilded armor, fur-swathed dignitaries and Nubian potentates abound. Production Designer Danilo Donati had previously given Fellini Satyricon and Caligula their debauched flair. Here he goes deliriously over the top again. There’s enough glitter, sequins, satin, spandex, New Wave eye make up, black vinyl and gold lamé to make even C3PO exclaim “Oh my, how outre!”

Presiding over the menagerie is towering Swede Max von Sydow as Emperor Ming (left) and Italian siren Ornella Muti as his minxish daughter Princess Aura.

Already caricatured embodiments of the Yellow Peril in the serials (and drawing heavily on The Mask of Fu Manchu’s father/daughter team of Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy — two of the most sadistically queer villains ever to grace the screen), these two are cartoonishly burlesque in their garish Eurasian drag.

We first see Aura (right) in her glittering Mata Hari ensemble, trailing a long rainbow fur train behind her and leading her dwarf plaything Fellini on a chain. She’s a hoot, slutting it up with half of the planet’s male population and undercutting Daddy’s authority when it gets in the way of her zeroing in on a new tryst like a heat-seeking missile.

Ming as incarnated by von Sydow is a marvelous voluptuary, a melange of Mephistopheles and Genghis Khan out to conquer and screw in equal ratio. A cobra in bordello red and sporting what can only be described as gold pasties as regalia on his chest, this despot makes the gauche triad of Bush, Jong-il and Ahmadinejad seem all the more callow and puerile.

Arriving post-Jubilee and -Xanadu, Flash Gordon perfects their fusion of stylish imagery and music that would become de rigeur years later. At times bordering on being as much a musical as it is a splashy lampoon of the sci-fi genre, it’s Brit Rock powerhouse Queen’s integral soundtrack that’s the lodestar of this saturnalia.

With pansexual chameleon Freddy Mercury — able to fluidly transform himself into the most debonair of matinée idols or the grandest of all queens — acting as Greek chorus, what could’ve been just another rote laser light show is propelled into a new orbit as an all-out Rock Opera. Alternately trippy and rollicking, soaring and swooning, it vivifies a once-staid slice of Establishment Americana and rouses Flash to ditch his sturdy boy scout act and swing loose.

Backdropped by its swirling, vivid skies and populated by gaudily exotic denizens, Mongo is everything monochrome and repressive about American Fundamentalist culture turned on its head. Only The Road Warrior with its marauding gay bikers, neo-primitive mohawks and assless chaps comes anywhere near capturing as dizzying a through-the-looking-glass culture wherein Norman Rockwell and Uncle Sam are dashed to pieces and trod underfoot.

The jaw-dropping dialog and kinky innuendo come fast and furious after our daring trio’s arrival on Mongo. Dale is bound for Ming’s opium-dazed seraglio, Zarkov is set for conversion, and poor Flash has to walk slowly to his execution in only a pair of leather hot pants. This is no way to treat a Jets quarterback and People cover man! Dig Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin and borrow his come-on to Aura so you can use it with someone you love: “Lying bitch!”

The real Bird of Paradise is burly Shakespearean actor Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan, Lord of the Hawkmen (left).

Tearing into every line of dialog like a lion about to strip a gazelle, he looks ready to grace the cover of American Bear and his bellicose cry “Diiiiive!” will be seared into your memory.

Add to that his squadron of surly, leather-clad British louts and this is clearly the kind of alien life form to which you’d have no qualms about being forced sexually to submit.

Aura’s libido only ratchets up the glorious tawdriness. Reviving Flash from death, she can’t wait to sink her claws into him and deliver him to Barin’s moon of Arboria. “I don’t wanna go to any moon!” protests our dim-bulb Flash. “I have to rescue my friends and save the Earth!” — putting the skids on what we can safely presume would be a memorable Neapolitan Ice Cream three-way of nationalities.

Poor Aura gets nothing for her trouble but a nasty flogging from Ming’s two right hands Klytus and Kala. He’s so dandy and free with the withering asides that you’ll swear Terry-Tomas is behind the mask, while she’s a brazen Harpy Dyke who works the little lady over and sneers: “We don’t like doing this at all!” Sure you don’t. Muti gets the movie’s choice line (and one of filmdom’s all-time howlers) when she pleads “No! Not the bore worms!”

Their name says it all.

It’s no wonder the movie served as the baptism for many a Rough Play Fetishist during their formative years. Bind and Bitch Slap seems to be the leisure sport of Mongo. Between a stripped-down Flash’s getting the once-over from Klytus, his to-the-death whip match with Barin, the hysterical chick fight between Dale and Aura, plenty of erotically charged interrogations, and everyone out to either inflict pain or bed-hop, the movie must be a fixture on the syllabus at Dominatrix U.

Held captive by Barin, Flash is forced to endure initiation into the Arborian Brotherhood. Apparently having no women among them, their ritual of fisting a sacred tree trunk, risking getting lanced by a testy scorpion and finally committing a form of Seppuku out of what must be sexual frustration makes perfect sense.

Vultan thankfully swoops in, Flash unites everyone with his call for uprising against Ming (though his being stitched into a succession of delt-accentuating tanks, skin tight black nylon pants, and jack boots is what keeps us on board), and it’s time to storm the palace.

Queen’s blazing synths and driving guitar hit their apex in the incredible Hawkmen attack on Ming’s war ship. Looking like nothing so much as the Flying Monkeys from The Wizard of Oz assailing an immense Doc Johnson Kamikaze-style as it emerges from a bong hit, it’s no mind twister to imagine what drew the band in the project in the first place.

It all ends with Viva La Revolution!, a literal crashed wedding, a double engagement and Ming at long last having to take it hard from behind.

Those who either grew up with the original or were in the market for another geek-friendly space franchise were mystified at best and hostile at worst. This is a romp that after all features a leading man who shows more skin than his female co-stars, plenty of puns, throwaway dialog, sight gags, and “the rock music.” Flash had committed the cardinal sin of being cool and self-aware.

The film went largely panned in the U.S., endearing only types more inclined to seek out The Rocky Horror Picture Show than Star Trek. The more middle-of-the-road Star Wars with it’s chaste and po-faced tone inspires multiple joyless prequels and ubiquitous TV airings, while Flash finds its home on the Midnight Movie circuit and group viewings in lava lamp-lit apartments.

In the years since its release, Flash has remained a favorite overseas and garnered a small but rabidly faithful stateside audience of glam rock enthusiasts, satire-happy gays, 80s nostalgists, drag queens, stoners, and travesty buffs — a Queer Cult if ever there was one.

“Will we ever get out of here?” muses a wistful Dale. Who knows? Who cares! With Flash, all manner of lusty Hawkmen, a good pair of leather cut-offs, and a bore worm if you should absolutely have to fly solo, Mongo is your oyster.

The Earth is not enough.