Dr. Strange (1978)

This review is more than likely going to veer a lot into the realm of comic book nerdery, so you have my apologies at the outset.  

The honorific “Doctor” makes just about any word coming after it sound more important or alternately menacing.  Would Doctor Who be as cool if he were just Who?  Would Dr. Diane Shmelman be held in as high regard if she were just Miss Shmelman?  Would Doctor Death be less of a threat if he were just Death?  Well, yeah, maybe on that one.  Anyone’s name is augmented with honorifics; that’s kind of the point.  In an odd sort of way they bestow a mantle of adulthood on the bearer by the speaker, or at least they do when used in a forthright manner (though admittedly, this only really effective on kids and young adults).  But perhaps what they do best (at least in terms of showmanship) is confer the tone by which the holder’s character is meant to be gauged.  Witness: Mr. Majestyk, Ms. 45, Professor X, Captain Kangaroo, etcetera, etcetera.  Almost every honorific in recorded history has its share of badasses and morts attached to it, but to my mind, none are quite as potent as “Doctor.”  Funny thing is, unlike so many fictive characters who share the title, Dr. Strange actually is a medical practitioner.

The Ancient One (a stop motion creation voiced by the late, great Michael Ansara, and more than likely intended to be the dread Dormammu) informs elderly (yet still smoking hot) underling Morgan LeFay (Jessica Walters) that she has only three days to pierce the barrier between the dark realm and our dimension and vanquish the elderly and current Sorcerer Supreme, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills).  Employing the unwitting assistance of lovely, soon-to-be Buck Rogers Babe, Clea (Anne-Marie Martin aka Eddie Benton), Morgan very leisurely sets about her task.  Enter Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), a warm-hearted physician and a cold-blooded lover, who just so happens to be connected to all of this much more personally than he would expect (but hardly the audience).

Outside of cartoons, I believe Marvel Comics characters came to the live-action world of television adventures a bit later than their main rival DC Comics.  There was the Shazam television series starting in 1974, the Cathy Lee Crosby version of Wonder Woman who appeared in a TV movie that same year.  Prior to this there were, of course, series starring both Batman and Superman.  However, to the best of my knowledge, the first Marvel character to hit the live-action world was their own wall-crawling web slinger in 1977’s Amazing Spider-Man program (episodes of which were condensed and edited together into feature length form a few years down the road).  Funny enough, the character with the best track record on television (two original pilot films, a show running five seasons, plus several more television features afterward), The Incredible Hulk, is also the one with the least cinematic success (hopefully this will change in the near future, as he’s my personal favorite).  Following this Dr. Strange outing, Captain America would even get a couple of films in which action star Reb Brown was allowed to strut his proverbial stuff.  

But this time period was really a heyday (at least in my mind) for the popularity of comic book superheroes (a time which is seemingly repeating itself currently, though now it could be argued they are much more self-serious).  They had seeped into the popular culture and saturated the market with everything from stickers to posters to records to toys to costumes and on and on and on.  But if you look at the above-mentioned characters, they predominantly all had a presence in the pop culture psyche before they hit the screen (big or small).  Hell, most of DC’s characters referred to here were created before or around the onset of World War Two (and yes, I know Shazam aka Captain Marvel was not even created at DC, but that’s another discussion).  Hulk and Spidey were extremely popular in their respective comic titles, and both had also had animated runs to further cement their statures.  By this logic, Dr. Strange seems a…um…strange choice to elect for Hollywood treatment, but if you look at the culture of the time, it actually comes a bit sharper into focus.  There was a fascination with all things occult and supernatural at this time.  In all sorts of media, if there weren’t ghosts haunting your house, Bigfoot raiding your fridge, or devil worshippers living next door to you, there was something wrong with you.  Obviously, Dr. Strange, at least from a perfunctory perspective should have fit right in and even dominated this time, but he didn’t.  

This film is part of the reason why he didn’t (or at least explains it a bit).  Hampered as I’m sure they were by a tiny budget and a short schedule, what writer director Philip DeGuere turned out is perfectly passable for a Wednesday night television programmer.  And that’s the real problem.  The story has any number of interesting avenues it can explore, but it does nothing with any of them.  The story of passing the mantle to the new Sorcerer Supreme is handled offhandedly.  Morgan’s ability to manipulate people and its ties to sexual gratification is teased but never explored (and yes, it could have been done so in a way that would have passed the censors).  The action scenes have absolutely zero tension in them, and every obstacle is conquered with the facility of walking up a ramp rather than with the senses-shattering effort of climbing a giant mountain.  

But even discounting these things, and bearing in mind that origin stories are a chore to do in any sort of fresh way even in 1978, the filmmakers (as the powers behind just about every live-action superhero venture of the time) seem to completely miss the point of what makes this character and characters like him compelling.  It’s not that Spider-Man can climb walls and shoot webs.  It’s that he is forever trying to work off the unbearable guilt he feels over the death of his Uncle Ben (“With great power comes great responsibility”).  It’s not that the Hulk can throw men hundreds of feet or crack the ground with one stomp of his foot.  It’s that he is the embodiment of a suppressed rage and impotence and the inability of Dr. Banner to deal with these issues in a healthy manner.  Dr. Strange was an ego-maniacal neurosurgeon who was maimed in a car accident and came to know humility and enlightenment as well as discovering a new purpose in life through the mystic arts.  The interesting parts of these characters are not their super powers but their feet of clay.  It’s sharing in their human struggles, of identifying with their tribulations that makes them special.  The costumes, the powers, the property damage is spectacle, and though it has its place, it’s simply not enough to compel the long term devotion these characters have garnered.  By making Strange a really nice guy with an overactive libido, he is (mostly) normalized.  His ego is no longer a problem.  He doesn’t have to suffer the loss of his hands and his medical career.  All he has to do is smirk, spout a few “magic” words, and he’s suddenly Gandalf.  I can only assume that this sort of thing is done to appeal to as many children and age brackets as humanly possible, but the trick is it doesn’t work.  Banality does not engender commitment to a character.  I could go on, but I already have so I’ll stop there.      

 As a time-waster, as filler, this movie is acceptable.  As anything that distinguishes itself from the pack or is in any way memorable other than giving us a couple of nice shots of Ms. Walter’s bare legs, not so much.  And yet, I’m glad that this was made, just because it gave a very brief spotlight to one of the more obscure superheroes from Marvel’s stable.  

MVT:  I love the core ideas behind Dr. Strange as well as the stop motion monster effects.  The execution is lacking, but what’s beneath is rich for exploration.

Make Or Break:  Following from that, I liked the scenes featuring the Ancient One and LeFay.  They’re a triple threat.  They have a stop motion monster.  They have a beautiful woman in tight clothes.  They have Ansara’s grandiose voice acting.  If only the rest lived up to this.

Score:  6/10

Psychomania (1972)

 While this is not something I particularly want to get into, and it is not something reflective of the quality of Don Sharp's Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers), it is virtually impossible to not at least mention the fact that George Sanders killed himself shortly after completing the picture by downing five bottles of Nembutal. Aside from the helmets the gang in the film wear, it's the most talked (and written) about aspect of the movie. The full text of his suicide note is as follows: "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck." It is rumored that he saw a rough cut of Psychomania just before committing the act. I do not wish to make light of the tragedy of suicide, nor will I speculate on Sanders' thoughts before the end, but I wanted to get this out of the way so we could discuss what is a damned good film. Which is unfortunately about suicide.

Tom (Nicky Henson) is the leader of British bike gang The Living Dead. His mother, Mrs. Latham (Beryl Reid), is a psychic medium for rich jerks and is always assisted and accompanied by butler Shadwell (Sanders). It seems the whole Latham clan has had a proclivity for the black arts and the supernatural, and Tom has often wondered why his father mysteriously died in "The Locked Room." After Tom faces down his inner demons in "The Locked Room," his mother inadvertently exposes the secret to immortality and coming back from the dead. Tom commits suicide by riding his motorcycle off a bridge and comes back, invulnerable and stronger than ever. He convinces the rest of the gang to join him, but his girlfriend, Abby (Mary Larkin), is the sole holdout. Mrs. Latham doesn't want Abby to join the gang in immortality (she proclaims them "evil," go figure), and finally Abby is given a choice: Shoot herself and unite with The Living Dead, or be killed by Tom and just die.

In a strictly technical sense, this could be considered a zombie movie. The monsters are humans who have come back from the dead to torment the living. That's about where the zombie motif ends. Depending on how you define zombies in general (and zombie movies in particular) though, this doesn't meet the broadest criteria. The gang is not hungry for human flesh. They are not mindless, rotting husks, shambling around. They are not the rank and file of some arch-villain's army. They are, in fact, exactly as they were pre-death, only now more willing and capable of taking human lives. Between these facts, the ambiguous magical goings-on, and the mystery of Shadwell's origin, the film actually sits squarely in the realm of occult horror. 

In the wake of Rosemary's Baby, The Devil Rides Out, and others, Satanism and the occult were of massive interest in pop culture, and this film capitalizes on both that and the fading biker movie subgenre. The problem is it never fully commits to either. The black magic aspects feel more like window dressing than a focus for the film, because their handling is so murky. Tom's trial-by-fire in "The Locked Room" is indicative of this. He stares into a long mirror where he doesn't cast a reflection. Fog swirls in the mirror along with a frog (which is a visual touchstone of the film and a symbol for transformation and resurrection) and images from a deal with the Devil that Mrs. Latham made apparently also involving Tom. What the consequences are to Tom, we're never told. If she signed away her son's soul in return for her own immortality, one, it didn't take because she looks older in the present than she does in the flashbacks, and two, if Satan already owns Tom's soul, why would he grant him immortality in a separate bargain? It's this sort of make-the-rules-up-as-you-go attitude that undermines the overall effect of the film, but some effective atmosphere is created, nonetheless.

As a biker gang, The Living Dead are no Hell's Angels. They're no Pink Angels, either. As a matter of fact, I had some friends who I used to ride around on Big Wheels with that raised more hell than this gang. Okay, that's not entirely true. The Living Dead roll around town, knocking bakery trays out of deliverymen's hands, running cars off roads, and spending an inordinate amount of time playing "Follow The Leader" around a poor man's Stonehenge known as "The Seven Witches." Post-resurrection, they continue with this same sort of grabassery, but now they actually commit murder. The most shocking example is when Jane (Ann Michelle) rams a carriage with a child in it. But again, it's the handling (or mishandling) of the violence that takes what should be a sharp edge off it. There is no blood in this film (or very little from what I could see). Further, when we do see a violent act, the filmmakers cut away quickly and spare us the aftermath, or they'll show us the aftermath but not the act. This separation of cause and effect diminishes any sense of terror we may have as well as our revulsion of what are supposed to be the film's villains. I'm sure Don Sharp felt it was classier (certainly more "old school") to depict the violence this way, but it just doesn't have the impact it should. While we're at it, why does the gang continue in its old, hooligan ways after achieving immortality? Wouldn't you think they'd expand your horizons? Let's just chalk it up to the impetuousness of youth, shall we?

By now you're probably thinking that I didn't like Psychomania (despite my statement to the contrary in the first paragraph), but you would be dead wrong. No, the movie succeeds because of, not in spite of, its flaws. This is very much a film of its time, when ambiguity was a hallmark of avant-garde filmmaking (or at least pretending to give the audience credit for having a brain when many filmmakers just didn't know what to do with a film's themes [or just how to end the damned things]). As I said previously, the movie does have some nice atmosphere as well as some beautiful, iconic imagery. The very first sequence of the film is of the bikers riding around in the (early morning?) fog in slow motion. It bestows the film an ethereal quality that permeates the film but is rarely explicit. The shot of Tom blasting out of his grave on his motorcycle is one of the great images of horror cinema, I think. Add to this, a brilliant, mood-casting score from John Cameron that sounds like it belongs in one of the better Italian gialli films. The acting is solid across the board, and whether he liked it or not, George Sanders stands out with his enigmatic portrayal of Shadwell. It's heavily implied, though never overtly shown, that he is the Devil (who is always shown in a black hat and cloak), but Sanders still plays the butler role and remains (at least on the surface) to be a servant to Mrs. Latham. 

There's a mile-wide streak of black humor running through the film which helps immensely in keeping the entertainment value up. Tom explodes out of his grave and runs a pedestrian down. The next shot is him gassing up his motorcycle. Jane hangs herself by the neck from a tree outside Abby's house. When Abby reacts in horror, Jane smiles and starts mugging for her friends. The medical examiner's assistant is taken by surprise when Hatchet (Denis Gilmore) taps at the glass on the morgue's refrigerator and is subsequently asked by the biker if he's deaf. Tonally, it's incongruous with the satanic facets, but it works and helps distinguish the film as unique.

 I was trepidatious when I popped this one in the DVD player. I had only seen it once previously, and that was decades ago on late night television (you know, before it was all infomercials). However, any fears I had about ruining a childhood memory were not only allayed, but I also found myself liking the film even more than I did the first time around. I would ride with The Living Dead anytime. You should, too.

MVT: Sanders' performance does an outstanding job selling the occult angle of the film while not going broad and overplaying his hand. Granted, there's not a ton to work with scriptwise, but this consummate professional makes it work. Not the worst thing to be remembered for.

Make or Break: The "Make" is the final shot of the film. In the aftermath of what she's gone through, we're given a heavy indication that life for Abby is not necessarily going to improve. Sharp's keen sense of atmosphere delivers a memorable coda and instills a desire to watch the film all over again.

Score: 8/10