"FLASH! AHHH-AAAAAAAHHH...!!"
Well, at least we've been spared the hot hail so far.
I have a confession to make: Flash Gordon is on my short list of all-time favorite "guilty pleasure" movies. It's a film so exorbitantly bad that it's insanely good! But I doubt that Dino De Laurentiis ever intended this to be a "serious" movie anyway. It's just good clean tongue-in-cheek camp, made even more awesome with that classic soundtrack by Queen! I've also read that Max von Sydow considers this to be one of his favorite movies that he's worked on, because of all the outrageous costumes that he got to wear as Emperor Ming the Merciless.
(And c'mon, Sydow's Ming is one of the greatest film villains in the history of anything. You know it's true :-)
Here's hoping that all the stuff going on lately is just bad coincidence. I'd hate to think that Ming really is out there on Planet Mongo, waiting to see if anybody is noticing his handiwork :-P