Back in the late-'80s and early-'90s,
when superhero films were more the cultish domain of B-movie studios
than the stuff of summer blockbusters, Marvel wasn't exactly picky
when it came to licensing out their properties. That's how we got
Albert Pyun's 1990 Captain America
and 1989's The Punisher
with Dolph Lundgren, and why it was a genuine shock when it turned
out that Roger Corman's buried Fantastic Four
film was the victim of a rights-holding scam and not the real deal.
Given this climate of B-level Marvel adaptations it is not at all
surprising that at the beginning of the 1990s Charles Band was –
allegedly – hard at work on an official adaptation of Doctor
Strange. In the '80s Band's
previous studio, Empire Pictures, had been developing an obvious
Doctor Strange
knockoff, called Doctor Mortalis,
but the production fell apart when Empire declared bankruptcy.
According to Hollywood legend, when Band started Full Moon
Entertainment he returned to the idea, but decided that rather than
simply making a knockoff, he could actually afford to license the
franchise from Marvel and make it an official film version of the
comic series. But somewhere along the way he lost the rights;
allegedly in a similar situation to that which spawned the aborted
Corman Fantastic Four,
that he took too long to develop the project and the rights reverted
to Marvel. Never one to avoid a loophole, Band simply went ahead with
the project anyway, and changed the script just enough to make his
Sorcerer Supreme – er, Master of the Unknown – legally distinct
from the Marvel superhero. That's the legend, anyway; of course,
there is little concrete proof to back this up, so it's just as
possible that this film was a knockoff from the beginning, and the
rumor that it started its life as an officially-sanctioned adaptation
was only started to give the project more legitimacy.
At any
rate, it's very obvious what Doctor Mordrid: Master of the
Unknown is: a Doctor
Strange movie in everything but
name, with the superhero's backstory changed so it wouldn't quite
seem like plagiarism. But here's the real twist: it's actually a good
movie, and possibly even one of the better 1990s B-level superhero
films (not that the bar is high). It certainly is one of Full Moon's
more ambitious projects, with (for what it is) an unusually good
script and high-quality production. At its center is a very strong
performance from one of cult cinema's great leading men, Jeffrey
Combs (Re-Animator,
The Frighteners, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and
Enterprise), leaving
his usual villainy behind to play the hero for once. While the film's
origins are dubious at best – no matter which version of the
behind-the-scenes story you believe – the end result is an
overlooked superhero flick which is definitely worth a look for
Doctor Strange fans,
aficionados of '80s/'90s B-cinema, or anyone who likes their
superhero movies with a heavy dose of nostalgia. So put on your red
sorcerer's cape – oops, I'm sorry, your legally-distinct blue
sorcerer's cape, and pendant with a slight different symbol – and
step into this parallel Marvel universe that beat the official
adaptation to the screen by fourteen years.
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| Herbert West vs. Shao-Kahn... Fight! |
Dr.
Anton Mordrid (Combs) is a criminologist and scholar of the occult
(see – totally not a surgeon) who lives in a spectacular New York City
loft filled with books and mystical artifacts. But beneath this
facade Mordrid is actually a centuries-old sorcerer, standing guard
against a powerful cosmic evil which has been prophesied to try and
destroy the world. Now that evil has escaped its prison and come to
our dimension – in the form of ubiquitous '90s bad-guy actor Brian
Thompson (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer twice) – and Mordrid
must find a way to stop him. The specifics are different, but we
basically still end up with a good sorcerer protecting this dimension
from a villainous one representing dark forces that lay beyond. How
this story is executed, though, is decidedly different from what it
looks like we are about to get with Marvel's Doctor Strange
film. The tone and style are
distinctly early-'90s, and despite the R-rating it actually feels
quite similar to the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
film, with its emphasis on the
New York City locations, and the hero and villain's interactions with
the various characters who live there. The film's supporting
protagonist, a fellow criminologist (Yvette Nipar, RoboCop
the TV series), is more than a
bit reminiscent of the TMNT
movie's April O'Neil, not least of all in her interactions with the
buffoonish and clueless law enforcement officials who serve to make
her and Mordrid's jobs more difficult. Thompson's villainous Kabal,
meanwhile, finds a henchman in a metal-loving Satanist who could not
be more of a tropey early-90s hooligan. Like that first Ninja
Turtles movie, Doctor
Mordrid also features a
combination of fun and somewhat silly comic book elements and gritty
on-location New York City ambiance; a juxtaposition which is both a
lot of fun, and which thoroughly anchors the film in its time and
place. For anyone who grew up enjoying movies like the original TMNT
or Super Mario Bros,
this is an extremely nostalgic experience; the sort of film that
could only have come from that era, in the most charming way.
 |
| Meanwhile, in some Magic The Gathering artwork... |
With
all these parallels to films like those mentioned above, this feels
like it should be a PG or PG-13 genre flick aimed at a wider
audience... yet somewhat bizarrely, it definitely is not. For
absolutely no reason except to earn an R-rating, director/producer
Charles Band has filled the film with F-bombs and a bit of gratuitous
nudity. It's bizarre – I can only imagine that he did this because
Full Moon had a reputation for R-rated horror fare, but in this case
the language and nudity feels not only gratuitous, but totally at
odds with the sort of film Doctor Mordrid seems
like it is trying to be. It really does feel as strange as if someone
dubbed a bunch of F-bombs into Ninja Turtles,
and the result is a very dissonant final product that seems totally
unsure if it's supposed to be for older kids or adults. This is
similar to the problem that The Guyver ran
into, except in that film it was the opposite: distracting bits of
silliness shoehorned into what felt like it should have been an
R-rated movie. At the very least Doctor Mordrid avoids
the worst of The
Guyver's
problems: its content feels out of place, but its tone is quite
assured and consistent. It knows exactly what sort of a film it wants
to be... it just isn't the sort of film that is conducive to Full
Moon's R-rated ways.
At
its core, beyond its '90s pop-culture trappings, this wants to be a
classic supernatural comic-book yarn, full of magic and mythology,
and centered around a compelling good-vs-evil story. When we get
glimpses of the dimension of magic which Mordrid and Kabal call home,
the art style looks exactly like something out of a classic comic: a
Gothic citadel full of fire and monsters and blue light. While the
low budget is evident, the art style looks great, and despite not
technically being based on a specific series (well, you know...), the
aesthetic firmly locates the film in the realm of comic-book movies.
The same goes for the impressively baroque set for Mordrid's
loft/base of operations. Outside of the gorgeously gothic Subspecies
2 and
3,
this is among Full Moon's best-looking movies (even if Mordrid's
superhero outfit is very campy indeed). Then there's the film's
creature effects: while they are only used in a couple scenes, and
only briefly, the movie boasts some very cool stop-motion animated
creature work, in the tradition of Ray Harryhausen. These effects
were done by David Allen of Industrial Light and Magic fame, whose
credits include creatures in Ghostbusters
II,
Willow,
and The Howling.
The creatures have a deliberately retro feel to them, recalling more
The Seventh
Voyage of Sinbad or
King Kong
than a typical '90s feature, but I think that's the point: that's the
type of movie magic that Doctor
Mordrid wants
to capture, and it does it quite well.
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| "You need proof I'm a good actor? Well, you're still taking me seriously in this role, and look at this ridiculous outfit I'm stuck in!" |
As
always in Full Moon films, there is quite a mix of quality and
cheesiness in all aspects of the production, including the acting.
There are definitely some B-level performances here, from the
maniacal metalhead to the buffoonish cops with their Brooklyn
accents, and even Brian Thompson's one-dimensional heavy (which is
pretty much the same characterization he used as Shao-Kahn in Mortal
Kombat: Annihilation and
The Judge on Buffy).
But Yvette Nipar gives a solid performance as Sam, Mordrid's ally,
and makes her a strong protagonist. Of course, the performance which
makes the movie is that of Jeffrey Combs, as the title character.
Combs is best known for playing villains and crazy people, but he has
proved many times that he is actually a very good actor who does not
deserve to be pigeonholed in this way. Here he gets the chance to
show off a very different side of himself, not only as a superhero,
but as a very kind, soft-spoken, and sympathetic guy. He gets to show
off his range pretty well, and strongly demonstrates that he really
should have been given more chances to act outside the world of genre
films. As so often happens with actors, a breakout role in a cult
favorite horror film can be a difficult thing to escape, and the
creepy Herbert West from Re-Animator
proved
just as hard for Combs to outrun as Alex DeLarge was for Malcolm
McDowell (who also made a very charming and sympathetic leading man
in a few films, yet still always gets cast as a psycho). As his
performance as Anton Mordrid shows, he deserves better.
There
is no mistaking Doctor
Mordrid: Master of the Unknown for
anything besides what it is: a low-budget, B-level superhero film
very much of its era. The mere fact that it is an utterly shameless
unlicensed Doctor
Strange
movie sets expectations fairly low. But, within the context of what
it is, it genuinely is a pretty good movie which far exceeds those
expectations. Its story works quite effectively, its lead actor gives
a compelling central performance against type, the special effects
are quite good (if charmingly retro), and the whole thing is
genuinely a lot of fun. That's ultimately what makes up for its
weaker points: it honestly is a fun movie, with an approach to the
superhero genre that is infectious in its enthusiasm, and at its best
is genuinely successful, despite the cheesiness along the way. In
fact, with how quintessentially early-'90s the film is, its
cheesiness has with time become a strength, as it functions very well
as a piece of nostalgia, even for those who didn't see it when it was
new. At a recent comic con I got the chance to ask Jeffrey Combs
about the film. He still seemed to remember the experience fondly
(and certainly as a memorably unusual role for him), although he said
that since he wasn't a big comic book reader as a kid, he actually
didn't realize just how much a rip-off of Doctor
Strange it
was until someone pointed it out to him after its release. He also
remarked on how hilarious he has always found the subtitle, “Master
of the Unknown,”
since, as he said, “it basically just means, master of... something
or another. We're not sure what he's a master of – no one knows.”
Let's see you master that kind of ambiguity, Cumberbatch.
Be strange. Share this review, ya weirdo.
Score:
- Christopher S. Jordan