#DoomsdayPrep: It’s a Dr Strange TV Movie, Michael. What could it cost? 10 Dollars?
In the desolate, mystical wastes of the before times (Dundee Scotland, circa 1980), there were vanishingly few options for the kid who was into sci-fi and fantasy. There was Star Wars, of course, and Star Trek The Motion Picture and, if you were lucky, Disney’s The Black Hole. But in September 1980, CIC Video conjured up a new enchantment: Doctor Strange – The Movie. Never broadcast in the UK, it did at least make its video rental debut here seven years ahead of it hitting its home market. Was it good? Not really? But was it rented multiple times? You bet. Back in those days, when viewers’ imaginations had to do most of the heavy lifting, there was enough tenuous connectivity to the vintage comic books I’d been buying from the second hand book stores for 10p each to make not only viewing but repeated viewings worthwhile. But, by the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, it has not aged well!
Philip DeGuere Jr’s 1978 Dr Strange is another curious relic of the era when Marvel’s cinematic ambitions were largely confined to the frugal, beige-hued limitations of CBS’s television schedule. While their counterparts were making theatrical audiences believe a man could fly, Marvel were looking to capitalise on the surprising success of Bill Bixby turning into Lou Ferrigno painted green. Peter Hooten stars as Stephen Strange, though he is less the Sorcerer Supreme and more a Temu Tom Selleck. This Stephen Strange eschews much of the foundational aspects of the character he’s not a surgeon and neither is he the arrogant man whose cosmic karma comes due we know from the comic books or the recent MCU movies. Instead, 1978’s Dr Strange is a psychiatric resident with a flair for polyester and a moustache that occupies a significant portion of the frame. While it does eventually find its way into darker dimensions, for most of its runtime it operates with a distinct lack of supernatural urgency, preferring to wander through a world of soft-focus hospital corridors as a pseudo medical procedural romance rather than diving headlong into the mystic arts.
It spends a considerable amount of time establishing Strange as a compassionate ladies’ man – possibly with its eye on a series pick-up – before any metaphysical elements are permitted to intrude, despite a brief prologue which sees Jessica Walter, long before she became a legend of acerbic wit, embody Morgan Le Fay and tasked by an entity resembling a cosmic lava lamp to eliminate Earth’s current guardian, incumbent Sorcerer Supreme Lindmer (John Mills). Mills, a titan of British thespianism, gladly picks up his cheque and treats dialogue about “The Nameless One” with the same gravitas he might afford a Shakespearean soliloquy. It’s the combined efforts of Walter and Mills that provide the film with its most reliable energy, lending the film a gravity that the pacing frequently threatens to dissipate.
Budgetary constraints prove to be more powerful than the mightiest conjurations and the journeys to and from The Astral Plane owe more to the opening titles of contemporary Doctor Who than any crackling Jack Kirby illustrations, yet the film at least possesses a tactile, handmade quality that modern digital sheen often lacks. Within the Sanctum Sanctorum, the production design captures a specific occult aesthetic, all velvet drapes and incense-adjacent mystery, that showcases the era’s fascination with the supernatural, yet fails to explain why there are caves just off the hallway of the unremarkable brownstone at 22 (not, notably, the 177A from the comics) Bleecker Street. There’s precious little action that you might not see in a dime-a-dozen cop show of the time (lacklustre car chase, dashing through various streets) and when it comes to eldritch combat, it mostly just involves Hooten, or Walter, or Mills staring intensely at a prop – with a post-production neon outline added if they’re lucky.
Clyde Kusatsu shows more promise as Wong, navigating a story structure that prioritises the “case of the week” feel over any other-world-building and despite Kusatsu’s best efforts, Wong is confined to the role of valet-cum-mystic-intern rather than the formidable magician in his own right. Despite this, chemistry between the leads occasionally manages to pierce through the heavy-handed exposition and there’s a sense that had it continued on to a series, it might have had a reasonable chance of being half way decent by the end of the second season.
As it is, this one-and-done version of Dr Strange aims more for the grip of a sophisticated supernatural thriller rather than a superhero showdown, and while it rarely reaches those heights, the sincerity of the performances prevents it from becoming a disposably kitsch curiosity; a disco-inflected sedentary adventure that perfectly encapsulates the odd juxtaposition of 1970s hospital drama and cosmic sorcery.
