Production
The film employed special effects artists who would later gain fame, including Mike Minor, Greg Jein, and Rick Baker. Established effects artists Jim Danforth (credited as Mij Htrofnad) and Dave Allen also took part.
The film's low-budget effects were achieved through using old-fashioned techniques. The model of Wang's palace was created using everyday objects such as drinking glasses, and was designed to resemble Griffith Observatory so that footage shot at the base of the observatory could be used.
Star Trek fan and writer Bjo Trimble was a makeup artist on Flesh Gordon, and described it in On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek.
Longtime fan and science fiction and fantasy writer Tom Reamy served in the film's Art Department as the production's Property Master. He tracked down many props for use in the film.
The film's climactic monster was not intended to speak, but it proved so expressive that dialogue was dubbed in to match its mouth movements. Addressed as the Great God Porno in dialogue, the effects crew named him "Nesuahyrrah," a tribute to stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen by spelling his name backwards.
According to the DVD's audio commentary by Ziehm, the film was originally done with scenes of straight and gay hardcore pornography. These were cut out after Ziehm found himself in legal trouble. (Producing pornography was legally viewed as pandering at that time.) The x-rated footage was surrendered to Los Angeles vice police. The "collector's edition" video was labelled "the original, uncensored version", but it is no more explicit than any of the earlier releases.
Read more about this topic: Flesh Gordon
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)