Movie Monday: Dr. Strange

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1978 TV movie Dr. Strange!

Dr. Strange, Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts, was the subject of his own live-action TV movie, part of a wave of superhero adaptations that included The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Spider-Man. Each of those projects met with varying degrees of success, so I guess Marvel was feeling ambitious, offering up one of their lesser known, more fantastical properties to TV producers.

I have only seen Dr. Strange twice--once when it first aired, and then again on VHS when the video store I worked at had a copy. So I thought it'd be fun to revisit it, in the wake of all the big budget Marvel blockbusters of the last few years:

Dr. Strange has a fairly intense opening--over still shots of various otherworldly places, people, and drawings is music that would have fit right in in a 1970s Italian horror film. If you didn't already know Dr. Strange was based on a comic book, you'd have no idea from the opening crawl.

We meet Morgan LeFay (Mrs. Bluth herself, Jessica Walter) talking to some vague, sinister-sounding being about the fight versus good and evil. Morgan is given her mission, one that involves destroying her mortal enemy, who comic fans can recognize as The Ancient One, the lord of mystic arts in our world. Morgan is told that The Ancient One is about to hand over the reigns to his successor, and that she must stop that at all costs!

We then meet Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) in the Sanctum Santorum, caring for his master, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills). Lindmer seems to know trouble's a-brewin', so he instructs Wong to track down someone who is also somehow involved, Dr. Stephen Strange:

Dr. Strange has been busy, both with his practice and his busy social life: with his 70's 'fro and 'stache, he's clearly the (ahem) cock of the walk in this particular hospital. But that doesn't keep him from being a good doctor: we see him care for some patients, and he seems to be a skilled, caring physician.

Lindmer and LeFay have a showdown on the streets of NYC. Lefay doesn't seem to have a true corporeal form, so she takes over the body of a young student named Clea (Anne-Marie Martin) to get the drop on Lindmer and push him off a balcony. The young woman wakes up, realizing what she's done, and runs off screaming. Lefay thinks she's killed Lindmer, but he wakes up and wanders home, clearly the worse for wear.

Lefay continues to haunt Clea, causing her to run out into the street where she's almost hit by a car. She's taken to the hospital, where she is cared for by...you guessed it, Dr. Stephen Strange!

Dr. Strange, who has been having similar dreams, realizes something is amiss here. Lefay is also there, watching Strange closely. Clea, suffering amnesia, is admitted to the psychiatric ward. Lindmer also shows up, and meets with Dr. Strange. Using Jedi-like powers on Strange's uncaring fellow doctors, Lindmer introduces Strange into a, well, strange new world of things beyond science and medicine.

After Clea lapses into a coma, Dr. Strange goes to visit Lindmer at his mysterious home:

After Clea lapses into a coma, Dr. Strange goes to visit Lindmer at his mysterious home. It's here where Dr. Strange breaks away from it's earth-bound trappings, stuff you could see on any TV show, and tries to take us into a whole other world:

Morgan LeFay's direct supervisor is the above glowing eye-thingy, who is never named but is either Mephisto or Dorammu, both villains who have tangled with Dr. Strange in the comics. He (it?) threatens LeFay that if she does not kill Strange--who is clearly in line to take over for Lindmer--she will be confined to a life of eternal torment. It's all sticks, no carrots in the underworld!

Stephen Strange is scared of all this, so he rejects Lidnmer's offer to teach him more and leaves, taking up with Clea, who is now out of her coma and out back to normal (somewhat). LeFay shows up at the Sanctum and attacks Wong, who also has mystical powers:

But he proves no match for Lefay, allowing her to attack Lindmer. LeFay then goes after Clea, putting her back into a coma. She tries to entrance Dr. Strange, taking him to her home dimension.

LeFay promises him anything he wants--power beauty, wealth--and it seems like Strange is going to follow the path of the Dark Arts! But when he sees what LeFay has done to Lindmer, Strange rebels and uses his newfound powers against her.

Dr. Strange manages to escape LeFay's clutches, and returns to his home dimension. Dorammu does what he says he would do, turning LeFay into an old hag and letting her rot alone in some corner of Hell, in a fairly intense scene.

Back home, Wong and Lindmer wake up, and Lindmer reveals that he wasn't defeated by Lefay, he was merely playing possum to test Strange into seeing if he would make the right decision--reject earthly pleasures, and take up the cause of defending mankind from evil via the mystical arts:

Dr. Strange returns to his practice at the hospital, as well as picking back up with Clea. Via a TV report, we see that Morgan LeFay is back, too...this time as a sort of self-help guru (a nice gag), vowing to help young people since they, as she says ominously, "the future."

The movie ends with Dr. Strange impishly using his powers on a local street magician, who isn't quite sure how he pulled off an impressive trick. Strange laughs, and then turns towards the sky, ready for the future:

...just the beginning!


Considering how completely Dr. Strange has disappeared (it was released on VHS in the 80s, with exactly zero notice from Marvel, and has never been put on DVD), you would think that means it's a total disaster, but it's really not: the performances aren't too bad, and it treats the "world of the mystical arts" thing seriously. By keeping things hazy and draped in shadow, I think it looks way less cheesy than the Spider-Man and Captain America TV shows that were on at the time.

The part where Dr. Strange goes wrong is that it spends way too much time on hospital drama; lots of screen time goes by with Strange bickering with hospital staff, the kind of stuff you could see in a half-dozen medical dramas at the time (I half expected Trapper John, M.D. to show up at some point). I can only assume that some of the executives involved with this show--which was fairly unusual stuff for network TV at the time--wanted to hedge their bets by putting in as much traditional TV material as they could, to balance out all the magic, other-dimensional fooferaw.

Obviously CBS, the network airing Dr. Strange, had zero faith in this, deciding to air it up against Roots, where it of course failed to garner any ratings. Even though I watched Roots along with my family, I still remember taking the night off from it and watching Dr. Strange upstairs in my parents' bedroom. I remember thinking it was pretty cool, and for years wondered why it had so completely disappeared.

Peter Hooten does a decent job as Strange...the big 70s fro is a little much to take, but maybe he'd trim that back a bit if Dr. Strange had gone to series. Jessica Harper chews the scenery as Morgan LeFay, but that's understandable in a show like this. Clyde Kusatsu is solid as Wong, a serious man who doesn't have a lot of time for folly, especially when it comes to training this new doctor.

Maybe all of this was just too fanciful to work as a regular series, and even if Dr. Strange had been a hit it wouldn't have led to a series like The Incredible Hulk. Still, I think it's a decent effort, and doesn't deserve the MIA status it currently has.

Movie Monday: Moonrise Kingdom / Prometheus

This week we're going to do something a little different--instead of reaching back to some obscure title, I'm going to talk about two major films in current release. I haven't been seeing a lot of movies in the theater lately, but I just happened to see both Moonrise Kingdom and Prometheus within a week of each other, so I thought why not have a double feature for this week's Movie Monday?

Before we start: don't worry, I will not be spoiling anything from either of these movies!

Moonrise Kingdom is set, as all of Wes Anderson's tend to be, in its own little universe, in this case in a small island community in New England. The narrator (Bob Balaban) sets the scene, warning us that the events we're about to see take place just a few days before a historic storm.

A young cub scout named Sam (Jared Gilman) decides one to up and leave camp, which is run by the officious but good-natured Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). Once Ward discovers Sam is missing, he sounds the alarm, alerting the local constabulary (Bruce Willis, a seeming odd fit for a Wes Anderson movie). Also missing is a young girl named Suzy (Kara Hayward), and it soon becomes abundantly clear they have run off together.

We get to see their courtship through a montage of letters they wrote to one another, and even though Sam seems nerdy and bookish, compared the to beautiful and already statuesque Suzy, they are obviously kindred souls: Suzy just can't seem to get along with her parents (played with sad resignation by Francis McDormand and Wes Anderson regular Bill Murray) and is deemed a "difficult child."

Sam and Suzy narrowly escape capture from Sam's fellow scouts, in an altercation that turns violent (there's a moment involving violence towards an animal that made me uncomfortable, even more so when I realized Anderson used the a similar plot device in The Royal Tenenbaums--I'm guessing he didn't have pets as a child).

The film cuts back and forth between Sam and Suzy's Blue Lagoon-esque voyage of discovery, and the lives of the adults. Willis' sheriff clearly cares for Sam, and just wants to bring him home safely; Norton's Scout Master Ward is similarly sympathetic, but seems more concerned about the Natural Order being disrupted for its own sake.

Bill Murray is, well, Bill Murray--always funny, but now with a bigger taste of melancholy added to the mix. His Walt Bishop is someone who is supremely comfortable in life, and is also terribly bored, so he spends his time goofing around, mostly to entertain himself, like when he tells his three young sons he's going outside to drink and chop a tree down:

The film surprised me a bit by changing plot in mid-stream, and showing us that the kids will not be denied. As the storm approaches, everyone ends up at the local church, where Sam and Suzy make their last stand:

Wes Anderson gets a lot of criticism, and rightly so, for his seeming obsession with all the homemade accoutrement of his characters: the funny wardrobes, the esoteric books and records, the toys that reveal the characters' inner turmoil. In some of his lesser films, Anderson seems like one of those kids who pinned bugs to a board, more concerned with dutifully categorizing and documenting rather than just enjoying the thing in front of them. Since his breakout film, Rushmore, it seems like it's been a series of diminishing returns with each new movie, like the world his characters inhabit is getting smaller and smaller.

I'm happy to report that I think Moonrise Kingdom bucks that trend, coming alive in ways that (IMO) The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited did not (though I did enjoy both those films). And I think the lion's share of that is the work of the two young leads, Gilman and Hayward--as child actors, I think they had a freshness and awkwardness that more polished, adult actors do not, and that can't help but come across, no matter how much Anderson's instincts as a director would be to turn them into characters in a Wes Anderson Movie.

The scene where Sam essentially picks Suzy as the love of his life is utterly charming and I thought quite touching; taking their relationship from one of doomed young love to something more timeless and beautiful. I was genuinely rooting for these kids to make it, no matter how hare-brained their schemes were. The ending of the film is simultaneously satisfying and realistic, and I left the theater happy that I went on this journey.

Wes Anderson's films are bound to be an acquired taste; they'll never be big market blockbusters. But from what I've read Moonrise Kingdom is cleaning up in the art houses it's playing in, which to me signifies that he has perhaps regained some of the audience that started to drift away over his last couple films. It's no masterpiece, but I thought Moonrise Kingdom was charming and funny; a sweet story well told.

Okay--now we get as far away from the world of Wes Anderson as possible with Ridley Scott's Prometheus, a sorta-kinda-maybe prequel to his 1979 classic Alien.

There's no real way to discuss the events of this movie without spoiling stuff, so I'm going to stay away from that stuff and just cover the film more generally.

Prometheus is never boring. Right from the first scene (which features none of the main cast, and remains mostly unexplained), I found myself captivated what I was seeing on the screen. Visually, the film is gorgeous, filled with creepy and/or wondrous sci-fi landscapes, wonderful sets, and classic yet futuristic-looking sci-fi costumes. I was totally engaged from beginning to end.

My main problem with Prometheus is, it's utter nonsense. Worse than that, it's dumb movie that thinks it's a smart movie. It brings up all sorts of heady questions about life and death, Heaven and Earth, only to drop them all about halfway through. The characters have conversations about motivations and who's in charge that would have been had five minutes into this whole project, not years later in deep space when it's too late to do anything about them.

Almost every single character in this film takes huge risks, the kinds of brainless, careless stuff that makes them more like the morons you see in slasher movies, not brilliant professionals sent on a historic mission. Think of who we've sent to the moon--the moon, which is comparatively next door--and compare them to the knuckleheads that the Weyland Corp. (a holdover from the Alien movies). It's like if Neil Armstrong, half way towards landing on the moon, decided to hell with the mission, let me see if I can do a loop-de-loop with the lander, just for fun!

The main character, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), has a throwaway line about, if aliens created us, who created the aliens, meaning that of course God had a hand in it (her crucifix is repeatedly displayed throughout to signify that while she might be a scientist, she still has faith). Yet when that very scenario essentially plays out, she has a giant scene where she's crying and screaming to the heavens, about how her faith has been shattered. Why? Didn't the thing she guessed might happen ten minutes into the movie just happen?

Charlize Theron's character is almost always hovering around the edges, generally never participating in the main action, as if it's saving her to really come in at some point and be significant. When she finally does engage in the main action...nothing comes of it. The movie dispatches her, and that's that. You needed an Oscar-winning actress for this?

I could go on and on, but I'm going to jump ahead to where I think this movie went wrong the most: in it's desperate attempt to make this film part of the Aliens franchise (and it is doing that, that's why getting Ridley Scott to do it is such a big deal), it's weighs down the whole Aliens "mythology" with thematic weight that it can't sustain.

In preparation for seeing Prometheus, I went back and watched Alien and Aliens, and was impressed all over again by how good those movies are. But they're not thematically deep--basically Alien is about being unprepared when you're in over your head, and Aliens is about human hubris in our belief that we can control anything and use it to our own ends. But the xenomorphs are essentially just icky monsters, a sci-fi extrapolation of the kinds of monsters we might encounter here on Earth; I never took them as representing anything other than that. In Prometheus, they're brought on stage to stand in for Evil or Sin or whatever, and it just doesn't work.

Prometheus proves that Ridley Scott, who is in his 70s, can still make a crackerjack movie, filled with brilliant set-pieces and compelling visuals. But the script is so woefully misguided that I'm not sure anyone could have made a coherent movie from it. Which is a damn shame; despite all the terrible post-Aliens Alien movies that have come down the pike, I still have affection for the franchise and would have loved to have seen another solid installment. Instead, we get a mushy-headed movie that is neither fish nor fowl; it's too dumb to be a true classic piece of science-fiction, and too pretentious to be a gut-wrenching action thriller set in space.


For Further Reading: Check out this interesting theory on what Prometheus is really about. The author makes many good points, stuff that didn't occur to me, but still (IMO) doesn't negate anything I've said above. Also, once you're done with that, read this hilarious breakdown of the movie, which takes a more critical view of the nonsense that transpires in Prometheus!

Movie Monday: The Baron of Arizona

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1950 historical drama The Baron of Arizona!

During our many, many hours at the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con, my Ace Kilroy partner Dan O'Connor and I talked movies. I like to think my movie knowledge is fairly wide and deep, but ever since video stores went the way of the horse and buggy I've found it a lot, lot harder to find obscure and/or older titles, and those are pretty much the only types of movies Dan bothers with anymore.

Anyway, he mentioned a Sam Fuller movie called The Baron of Arizona--based on a true story, it's historical western starring Vincent Price! Not only had I not seen it, I'd never even heard of it! But once he told me what it's based on--more on that in a moment--I realized I had to see this movie, pronto, and make it the next installment for Movie Monday. So, without further ado:

The film opens in an elegant drawing room, with a bunch of men in suits, smoking cigars and drinking. It's 1912, and they are celebrating President Taft's signing the proclamation which made Arizona the 48th state. One of them, a man named John Griff (Reed Hadley) starts to tell the story of "The Baron of Arizona", a swindler so brazen that he almost single-handedly claimed the entire state for himself.

We then flash back a miserable, rainy night, inside a beat-up old shack containing a beat-up old man. Amid the thunder, there's a knock at his door. He opens it, and:

The man (Vincent Price, of course) introduces himself as James Reavis, carrying a sheath of papers and pursuing an interesting claim: that the United States is honoring land grants made before the Mexican-American War of 1948. This means a young orphan girl named Sophie is, to hear Reavis claim, a Baroness, which means when she is an adult she will inherit thousands of acres of land, which Arizona mostly consists of.

After telling Sophia of her destiny, we see the extent to which Reavis carried out his deception. It involves faking a carved stone that supposedly marked the claim back in 1750:

Reavis, in tremendous performance by Price, is utterly charming and also totally sociopathic. He dotes on Sophia, claiming to care for her. She is a poor, uneducated child, so she tends to believe everything this smooth man tells her. She asks him to read her a story from a book, which Reavis does. Via a pullback, director Fuller reveals that Reavis is making the story up on the spot, reading from a more adult tome:

Part of Reavis' plot involves going "undercover" as a monastery, and gaining the monks' trust so he can gain access to their ancient manuscripts, which he can use to forge details to back up his land claim. This plot takes what seems like years, and the amount of effort and detail Reavis puts into this plot is almost comically heroic--I mean, you have to sort of admire a guy who wants it this bad (he reminds me a bit of Livia, the scheming Roman Queen from I, Claudius).

When some of his chicanery is revealed, Reavis grabs a horse and takes off, leaving the monks confused. He meanders his way into part of a band of gypsies, where a young gypsy girl--who seems just as ambitious and conniving--falls for him and wants to run off with him:

Years pass, and Sophia grows up into a beautiful woman (Ellen Drew), and Reavis declares his love for her, and wants her to be his bride. Some people are skeptical of Reavis, but Sophia is hopelessly smitten, and agrees to marry him.

Eventually Reavis comes to face to face with his adversary Griff, who works for the Department of the Interior. Griff knows in his gut that Reavis is pulling a fast one, but is he also somewhat impressed by how successfully Reavis seems to have been in pulling this off:

Most of the film is fairly restrained--its mostly just people talking, with only very brief moments of action (like Reavis' getaway from the monks, for instance). But after its revealed that Reavis might just find a way to pull this off, the townspeople who are afraid of being thrown off their land turn into a mob and grab him, ready to string him up:

The savagery with which they attack Reavis is genuinely frightening; maybe if the star had been a more traditional leading man it might not have worked as well. But since this is Vincent Price, a man who played lots of characters who came to violent, grisly ends, you wonder if just maybe The Baron of Arizona is, in fact, gonna get it.

But Reavis is slick, and manages to talk his way out of the hangman's noose. The plot unravels, and Reavis is sent to prison. But when he is released, Sophia is there, waiting for him. It appears that Reavis does genuinely love her, and the film ends with them reunited.


I really, thoroughly enjoyed The Baron of Arizona. Knowing this film was based on a real guy, who really did try and pull this flim-flam off, gives the movie an extra kick of verisimilitude. Apparently Fuller and his screenwriters took some liberties with the truth, but who cares? This is not a documentary here, it's an old-time Hollywood movie with an amazing early star turn by the legendary Price, who uses all of his charm to essay the role. Reavis seems like a real sociopath, someone so used to deception that there probably wasn't much of a real person left.

There are some striking shots here, and the supporting performances are solid as well. But the real draw is the Fuller/Price team--somewhat surprisingly, it appears they never worked together again, a real shame. Fuller's total lack of interest in bullshit--both in his work and his personal life--is the perfect fit for the story of a man who was nothing but bullshit.

The Baron of Arizona isn't easy to find (it's only available--officially--as part of a Sam Fuller boxed set), but it's well worth searching out. After all, how many historical western dramas starring Vincent Price are you ever going to see?

Fun Fact: one of the stunt doubles for The Baron of Arizona was none other than Ed Wood!

Movie Monday: Cry Danger

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1951 film noir Cry Danger!

Take a trip down some seedy back roads in Los Angeles, riding along with Dick Powell as a guy recently sprung from jail...having done five years for a crime he says he didn't commit!

Cry Danger opens with Powell, playing a tight-lipped, sardonic puss named Rocky as he gets off the train, on the first day of his new life. Of course, this being a film noir, the past is just waiting to reclaim him:

In this instance, "the past" is a police detective named Cobb (Regis Toomey), and a one-legged ex-marine named Delong whose testimony got him released (Richard Erdman).

Cobb is none-too-sure that Rocky isn't really guilty, and is hiding the stolen loot somewhere. Delong, who drinks too much, reveals to Rocky that he made up the alibi--who would doubt the word of a wounded veteran, after all--on the hunch that Rocky really did do it as well, and is hoping to split the loot.

All Rocky cares about is clearing his name, and the name of his best friend Danny Morgan, who is still in jail for the crime. They go to a local trailer park--a real seedy joint--so Rocky can visit Nancy (Rhonda Fleming), Danny's wife and clearly a former flame of Rocky's:

While Rocky's situation is deadly serious, he greets everyone he meets with a level of sarcasm so dry it's like a martini made of sand (how's that for hard-boiled?). Rocky and Delong rent a trailer, and the film gets a bunch of laughs over how run down the place is:

Rocky thinks that the mastermind behind the robbery was a bookie named Castro (the great William Conrad). At gunpoint, Rocky demands $50K, but Castro refuses, instead giving Rocky $500 to bet on a fixed horse race ("I'm 60% legitimate", he proudly states).

Shots are fired at the trailer park, and Delong's saucy girlfriend Darlene is killed. Nancy thinks it was she and Rocky who were the targets, and after some more investigating, Rocky returns to Castro, putting him through a round of Russian Roulette.

This is the movie's best scene, as Rocky spins the chamber, fires, and repeats, all as Castro sweats like a pig at an Oscar Meyer plant in July (sorry, it's easy to get carried away with the film noir talk) and spills the beans:

Castro tells Rocky the ugly truth about the robbery, and Rocky is not happy about what he learns. Detective Cobb starts to change his mind, thinking that Rocky just might be innocent. Castro tries one last act to save his skin, which only leads to more bloodshed:

Rocky is offered once last chance to get the money and (presumably) head out and lead a new, happy life, but he can't do it. The film ends with a deliriously gorgeous sunny Los Angeles sky, hanging in ironic counterpoint to all the smashed dreams and dead-end existences for almost all concerned.


Cry Danger is a lot of fun--the performances are all solid, from Powell to Fleming to Conrad to Erdman (who I first saw, and loved, in Stalag 17, as the annoyingly earnest Sgt. "Hoffy" Hoffman). The dialogue drips with contempt, aimed at everyone from everyone. Almost every scene has a delightful snap to it, as if the filmmakers wanted to only give us the barest minimum info needed--which is pretty much exactly how the characters behave, as well.

Throw in some long-gone L.A. scenery, some amazing period cars (Delong's ride is particularly sweet) and the fact that whole thing wraps up in about eighty minutes, Cry Danger makes for a great, diverting little slice of film noir. (Fun Fact: Richard Erdman is still around and still working--he plays Greendale habitue Leonard on Community!) It's on Netflix WI right now, I very much recommend checking it out.


This week's movie was suggested by RetroHound.com's Robert Lindsey!