the audience applauded

As Good As It Gets

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I'm a big marvel fan, truth be told it doesn't even have to be Marvel I just like superhero themed movies and television shows.Trouble is within the Marvel Universe the one and only film I didn't enjoy was Dr Strange, I simply didn't "Get it". It bored me, it baffled me and I found myself frustrated that a character I couldn't stand was getting added to the movie franchise.I knew that plenty of cheesy marvel movies had been made across the 60's/70's/80's but I wasn't aware Steven Strange was among them. Part of me wishes I hadn't found out.Very tacky and thoroughly 70's this early attempt at Dr.Strange is really quite bad but no worse than the remake.Battling the evil sorceress Morgan LeFay while having his tweaked origin story told we see our hero do..........very little actually.It's not awful, it's just tacky. I found myself wishing Thanos would appear and rip his head off just for it to end, also because I think that would be a really cool thing to happen. Fingers crossed that happens in the Infinity Wars.The Good: Certainly fairly charming The Bad: It just all looks so very very terrible Dr Strange looks like a 70's porn star That costume!Things I learnt from this movie: If a super villain is attracted to you they'll leave you alone

TV movie (intended as a pilot for a possible series) about the Marvel magical superhero, Dr. Strange. Morgan LeFay (Jessica Walter) is sent to Earth by a demon to prevent an aging sorcerer (John Mills) from passing his power onto someone else. To this end she possesses a young woman named Clea (Anne-Marie Martin) and tries to get her to kill the sorcerer. Clea is traumatized by this, which leads her to being taken to the hospital where she is treated by psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), who just so happens to be the sorcerer's intended successor.While it's easy to dismiss this because it's a TV movie and those are largely cliché-ridden and forgettable today, I should point out that this wasn't always the case. In the 1970s TV movies were actually really good on the average, with a lot more creativity and variety than we see today where it's the same recycled soaps, thrillers, and romantic comedies over and over. This does have a limited budget, so those expecting things like Strange creator Steve Ditko's surreal imagery will be disappointed. But if you leave unrealistic expectations at the door and judge it on its own merits, I think you'll find it's a quality movie. Peter Hooten is a little wooden for a leading man but doesn't embarrass himself. Anne-Marie Martin (billed as Eddie Benton) is pretty good and very easy on the eyes. John Mills classes things up significantly. Jessica Walter is delicious fun as Morgan Le Fay. Perhaps the movie's greatest strength is Paul Chihara's score. Again, TV movies today just don't have this level of quality. Next to the Incredible Hulk TV series, this was the best of Marvel's efforts in the '70s and '80s to bring one of their heroes to life on the small or big screen, excluding cartoons. Those who can't enjoy TV movies or those who are fans of the comic book who can't see past their inflated expectations will not like it and should probably skip it altogether. I think most others who watch it will see it's very good for what it is.

The current wave of live-action cinematic superheroes is nothing new to our screens. Since 'Superman' first revolutionised the comic book industry in 1939, there have been film adaptations. In the 1940's there were many serials (Batman, Superman, and Captain Marvel for example). Then in the 1950's and 1960's The Adventures of Superman (1952 - 1958) and the campy Batman (1966 - 1968) the superheroes became household names on television. Then, in the 1970's, DC comics, through the ABC television network, produced the highly successful Wonder Woman (1975 - 1979) series, with the Amazonian beauty of Linda Carter. With the prospects of DC's most famous character's big screen incarnation, in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie (1978), Marvel, with their groundbreaking silver-age characters, needed a platform for their characters. Whilst they had success with their animated Saturday morning shows, live-action and the TV series was the place to promote them.From 1977 to 1982, Universal television broadcast The Amazing Spider-man (1977 - 1979), The Incredible Hulk (1978 - 1982), and two TV movies, Captain America (1979) and Captain America II: Death Too Soon (also 1979). The quality was of course varied, and the Hulk was its most credible triumph. Then in 1978, writer/producer, Philip DeGuere, produced a feature length television movie of one of Marvels most "psychedelic", cerebral characters, Doctor Strange. Created by comic legend Steve Ditko, it seems like quite a huge leap of faith to create a plausible adaptation within the restrictions of television production. This leads to some of the more fantastical elements of the comic books to be altered, or left out entirely - but this is of course an understandable exclusion.Doctor Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), a Psychiatrist working in a New York hospital who has been chosen by Thomas Lindmer (John Mills) to take his place as the new Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. However, an evil Sorceress, Morgan LeFay (Jessica Walter), has plans to kill the Earth- bound magicians. After throwing Thomas off a bridge, Clea Lake (Eddie Benton), has been telepathically controlled by the evil witch, Morgan, and it is down to Dr. Strange to save her from the astral plain, then conquer the cosmic universe to become the sorcerer. It does have the limitations of 1970's television production, and falls flat very often with the dialogue - including excruciatingly annoying laughter from Strange and Clea, as they laugh at their unfunny exchanges. However, it is an admirable effort to bring a more obscure Marvel character to a live-action context. With Stan Lee as a consultant (as with all the other aforementioned shows), Lee states that this was his most enjoyable experience out of all of them. It was intended as a pilot for a series, but this was never produced - a television interview with Morgan LeFay towards the end, actually gives clues as to the way the show could have gone, and to be honest, it seems like an incredibly good concept. Morgan LeFay would have indoctrinated into her realm of magic the youth of America, through the zeitgeist idea of the self-help programme, something that was big business in the '70's. Alas, the idea was never seen through.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

---SPOILERS, NOT PLOT RELATED---Comics fans will probably be disappointed with the number of liberties taken with the characters and their motivations (Strange gains his powers after being mutated by an alien machine, instead of through years of study and discipline; his mentor is an English dandy who just happens to live in Manhattan, instead of an ancient reclusive sage who lives in Tibet; Wong is a westernized valet instead of an Oriental mystical disciple; Clea is a ditzy grad student at NYU instead of an extra-dimensional sorceress-in-training; etc.), but the production values are surprisingly good for a low-budget TV production. Most of the supporting cast do their jobs credibly, but Peter Hooten is a cypher. He plays Strange as a somewhat vapid, self-absorbed disco-era playboy and projects no real sense of personality. Instead of being shocked or horrified by the mystical horizons revealed by the other characters, he just seems lost and maybe disinterested. As an example of failed 1970's Marvel Comics TV adaptations (the others that come to mind are "Amazing Spider-Man" with Nicholas Hammond, and "Captain America" with Reb Brown), this is the best of a very bad lot. A marginally better "Strange" derivative is "Doctor Mordrid" with Jeffrey Combs and Brian Thompson.