You know that thang was thangin
You know that thang was thangin' Courtesy of Hen's Tooth Video

Unstreamable is a column that finds films and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States.*

We're bogged down with all these Sundance films this weekend, so we're dropping a mini column tonight. We'll be back in early Feb with more picks. In the meantime, we got the megalist.


FLESH GORDON
USA, 1974, 78 minutes, Dir. Michael Benveniste, Howard Ziehm
Oh its outrageous alright.
Oh it's outrageous alright. Graffitti Productions

I picked up Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm's Flesh Gordon—a sex spoof of the 1936 superhero serial Flash Gordon—in the Sexploitation room of Scarecrow Video just after someone cropdusted the tiny space with the worst fart ever. The smell literally choked me out. I note this only because the juxtaposition of the stinky smell with the smutty content accurately reflected the irreverent strangeness of Flesh Gordon.

The loose premise puts the virile Flesh Gordon, with the help of love interest Dale and scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff, on a mission to planet Porno to stop the deeply perverted Emperor Wang from shooting sex rays at the helpless people of Earth. Filmed on a teeeeeeeny budget, the sets and stop motion special effects are impressive and campy as hell. One particularly notable sequence comes when Flesh is kidnapped and made a sex slave by Queen Amora, the evilest and sexiest thing on this side of the Milky Way. Her spaceship/galactic fuck lair resembles a huge black swan which is, like, the femmiest thing ever—super hot. Or another scene when Flesh and Jerkoff rescue Dale from a bunch of Amazonian lesbians only to get accosted by an oily, stop-motioned animated creature. I love watching porn with a plot! JAS KEIMIG

Available for rental at Scarecrow Video.


PS: We like mail from Unstreamable readers! Thanks for all your suggestions. Send me and Chase your hard-to-find fav films whenever you want.

Here's a message we got from Meredith this week about our last column:

My friend Ryan and I are heading to the Seattle area on April Fools weekend. While researching things to do, Ryan stumbled upon your article The Fall Is Unstreamable and sent it to me immediately. I have been obsessed with finding a playable copy of this movie for less than $150 for years! What I've discovered is this movie would be nearly impossible to clear as the production company, Googly, went bankrupt, not long after The Fall was released. Plus, footage of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the likes at the end of the movie would be a fortune to reclear, if they could contact the proper estate representatives to even begin the clearance process. Catinca Untaru (little Alexandria in the film) probably knows more, but I don't have any socials outside of LinkedIn so I can't DM here for the deets. Plus, I have to give up on the journey at some point. All that to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the highlight you did on The Fall.

Thanks, Meredith! And Catinca, if you're reading, send us an email too.


*Unstreamable means we couldn't find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other 300+ streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn't find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don't consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.