Flash Gordon - Why the dialogue?

Does anyone have any idea as to why the dialogue was added to the Flash Gordon album? I would love to hear the entire album with only Queen and no other voices.

There are people here who probably have an actual answer -- but (without actually knowing) i would guess that it was because at that time soundtrack records were not overly common.   Rock tracks were only just starting to be used, so it was almost a new genre -- ok, genre stretches it a bit, but it was something fairly new and different, they were maybe still ironing lumps out of it, figuring out what people want. 
That's just a guess though.

The album can be considered an 'audio version' of the film. The dialogue becomes part of the the songs hooks. A great mix, but would've liked more of the orchestral score included.

PS - try the DVD with different language audio during the songs. Much fun.

I like the dialogue. Had the album for many years before I saw the film, and after I watched it it's easy to "follow" Flash Gordon by just listening to the album.

I think the demo for Football Fight that is on the new remastered edition was cool, but kinda missed the dialogue...
- "Are your men on the right pills?" - "Maybe we should exicute their trainer...?"

Also... the intro on Gimme the Prize makes the song more interesting. Before I watched Highlander I had some pictures made in my mind, and thought it was great to finnaly see how it really was.

dysan wrote: A great mix, but would've liked more of the orchestral score included.
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Somebody on ebay is selling the official Orchestral score by Howard Blake : 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Howard-Blake-FLASH-GORDON-Score-AMITYVILLE-3D-OST-CD-/190487155738?pt=Music_CDs&hash=item2c59eb541a   

And Also Here at BuySoundtracks.com:

http://buysoundtrax.stores.yahoo.net/flasgororsco.html   

Myself,  I bought this when it first got released & It's a nice disc to go along side with the Queen Release,  a "companion of sorts".

Here is a fan mix that I did a while back using both the Queen & Howard Blake scores,  a nice bit of the Music that pre-ludes " Football Fight"  in there.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8tv5z5oo5bce5zb

dysan wrote: PS - try the DVD with different language audio during the songs. Much fun.

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I never thought about the language options, I wonder if there is a way of extracting the music from the DVD without the dialogue?

I believe it was Brian specifically who wanted to have the dialogue in and did much of the original mixing of the album, so that the story of the movie was present via those clips. If I remember correctly, he said it otherwise would've sounded like a bunch of musical clips with no context.

Personally, I'd love to hear the entire thing without dialogue as well.

And I have a copy of the Howard Blake score (which is, naturally, dialogue-free) and it's quite good.

I know that film inside out, every word, every gesture - and it was listening to Flash on GH1 back in 82 - 83 that got me into Queen. I even collected the stickers with Weet-A-Bix.

FREEZE YOU BLOODY BASTARDS!!!!

As far as I know, the best answer to the question "why is there dialogue from the movie on the Flash Gordon soundtrack" is "because the band wanted it that way". And I love it as-is.

Having said that, I would dearly love a "clean" version of the soundtrack album i.e. just the music without the dialogue and sound effects. That would have made a perfect bonus disc for the Flash re-issue, although the Flash demos were nice too.

But as with so many things in life, you have to appreciate what is and not pine for what you wish things were.

I don't think the songs are strong enough to be played by themselves, and Brian was very much aware of that.
Background music for a movie is meant to be in the background only, and it needs to be very different when it's listened to all by itself.

A good example of this is Flash's Theme which sounds like a dull and monotonous demo on the album, and only becomes interesting in the single remix where it has entire "verses" made out of the film dialogue.

I thnk snippets of dialogue from the film works very well on soundtrack albums. It puts the music directly in to context with the film. Flash Gordon was very good early example of this. The same can be said for many of the tracks from A Kind Of Magic album  too. For me quite a few of the songs on magic would be worse without the dialogue from Highlander included.

The inclusion of dialogue seems to work forTarantino too, and he probably has some of the best selling soundtrack albums out there. Although in his case the dialogue tends to be slotted between the music tracks rather than in the songs themselves, because the music was not specifically composed for the film.

MadTheSwine73 wrote: Does anyone have any idea as to why the dialogue was added to the Flash Gordon album? I would love to hear the entire album with only Queen and no other voices.

yes - this is what makes Flash Gordon a pile of crap

DOWN WITH THE DIALOGUE!

I think "because the band wanted it that way" is the wrong answer.

Wouldn't anyone appearing on the soundtrack have to be compensated in some way?  I doubt Brian May wanted part of his pay to go to Max Von Sydow to tell Cletus he's bored.

I never really imagined fans of Queen thinking that the film Flash Gordon is bad. The album is an aquired taste, sure, but surely you'd all love the film?

I guess it's like I can't understand kids who got into Bowie via his role in Labyrinth.