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Doctor Strange made his first appearance in the MCU in 2016, but studios have attempted to make a Doctor Strange movie for decades. At one point producers over at Full Moon Entertainment bought the rights to make a Doctor Strange movie, but eventually lost them. So what did they do? Create a movie exactly like Doctor Strange but change the Sorcerer Supreme's name to Mordrid. Easy as that.
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If the people of Earth knew what you really were
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they would kill you. They are primitive in many ways, but I took an oath to help them
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And that's exactly what I'm going to do. Dr. Mordrin might not ring any bells today
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but in 1992, he was the closest thing anyone was going to get to a live-action Doctor Strange feature film
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Though the question still remains, how did this barely-not-sorcerer-supreme bootleg film actually find its way onto screens
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Well, that story is almost more interesting than the eternal extra-dimensional battles of the good Doctor himself
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Dr. Stephen Strange was created by Steve Ditko with a little dialogue help from Stan Lee in July of 1968
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He first appeared in Strange Tales number 110. Since then, fueled by Ditko's quirky, otherworldly artwork
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the man who would become Dr. Strange has gone on to become a beloved superhero and magician
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tasked with protecting the globe and sometimes the universe from threats both domestic and other-dimensional
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The character made his first live-action appearance on film in the 1978 made-for-TV movie and backdoor pilot project
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titled simply Doctor Strange, starring Peter Houghton and written and directed by Philip Daguerre
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It wasn't very good. Most people probably know the Sorcerer Supreme from his appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
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However, aside from the made-for-TV movie, Doctor Strange was first given live-action life as Dr. Mordred, a 1990s feature film with style
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panache, and a surprising amount of inventiveness that was trapped by the limitations of its budget
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The endeavor was brought forward by Charles and Albert Band. For those not in the know
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the bands were movers and shakers in the low-budget genre space in the 1980s and 90s
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Albert Band was a producer throughout the 50s and 60s, most notable for being the central creative
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mind behind The Young Guns, I Bury the Living, and Face of Fire. Eventually, the elder band
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partnered with his son Charles to found Empire Pictures, a production company that's goal was
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to produce cheaply made, high-quality films with an exploitation element. They did this for about a
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decade The most successful of these films was the beloved Stuart Gordon cult classic Reanimator Eventually as the bottom fell out of the independent theatrical market Charles Band founded a new company Full Moon Entertainment
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a production company with the goal of producing cheaply made, low-quality films for the direct-to-VHS market
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They were wildly successful, producing films like Puppet Master, Trancers, Subspecies, and Ginger Deadman, among dozens of others
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The model that Full Moon would use to get projects off the ground was pay for a well-known artist to create a movie poster for a project with a very high concept idea
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show it to studios or foreign sale producers, get an advance against the foreign distribution rights
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and then go produce the film for as cheaply as possible. So how does Doctor Strange come into this story
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Well, Charles Vand was always a comic book fan. In fact, he modeled much of his strategy of making interconnected filmic franchises
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on the way the 1960s Marvel's comics worked. He even included small making of featurettes on many of the VHS releases in order to mimic Stan's soapbox
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Which brings us to Jack Kirby, the undisputed father of Marvel Comics
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Kirby created virtually everything that has proven to be a foundational building block of the 616
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And if he didn't do it, Steve Ditko did. So in the early 90s, Charles Band approached Kirby about developing some concepts for feature films
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One of the ideas generated by the King of Comics was a proposed feature film titled Dr. Mortalis
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The project would have been about an occult magician who hunted monsters
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The similarities to Doctor Strange got Charles Band thinking about the possibilities of making a Doctor Strange-like film
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The public story that Band and his team ran with for a while after this was that they, in fact, did have the rights to Doctor Strange, but then lost them
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So they decided to pursue a copyright-free version of it afterwards. Is that true
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Probably not. Charles Band just wanted to make a Doctor Strange movie, and when the Kirby collaboration veered close enough
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to the subject of the Sorcerer Supreme, Band just couldn't resist. And we hope to do many more
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Many more. Yes! Enter Jeffrey Combs. Combs was a blossoming cult genre star
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thanks to his breakout role as Dr. Herbert West in Re-Animator and Bride of Re-Animator
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So when Band approached him with the idea of starring as a bootleg version of Doctor Strange it proved too great a temptation to say no to Thus Dr Mordred Produced cheaply the film was created with the expressed purpose of being a Doctor Strange film
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that could definitely, legally, be considered its own entity. The formula for success that many full moon pictures employed
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have minimal locations, a high concept idea, and usually lots of small creatures
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Well, this project had two of those attributes, but instead of tiny baby monsters running around
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it has wizards. The film was co-directed by both the bands and featured a cast of notable
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oh yeah, it's that guy actors. The most memorable being Brian Thompson of Star Trek
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X-Files, and Mortal Kombat Annihilation fame. The film follows Anton Mordred, a wizard sent to
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Earth by a being called the Monitor. Unlike the traditional role Strange occupies, Mordred has
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been here for hundreds of years, waiting, watching, observing, looking for the ultimate evil to raise
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its head. Over the course of the film, we see him come up against an evil wizard named Cabal, played
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by the previously mentioned quintessential 90s bad guy, Brian Thompson. Cabal is attempting to gain control of the Philosopher's Stone in order to open a gate
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to hell, just as you'd want any 90s villain to do. My friend will eat your charges
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The most expensive element of the film, aside from some limited optical effects and pretty
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cool-looking stop-motion is the rip-off Sanctum Centaurum set, the home base for our favorite
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definitely not Stephen Strange. The bulk of the movie transpires here. It's an amazing set
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and they get every dollar they can out of it, so much so that the initial key villain conflict
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happens here, for no real reason other than it's the most expensive set, so they have to have Cabal
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and Mordred shoot a couple hand lasers at each other and talk about the end of the world
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The demons will be loose, and all you'll be able to do is hear their immortal screams
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The actual intricacies of the plot of Dr. Mordred fall squarely into the tropes and pitfalls
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of the usual full moon fare. Some scenes are way too short, the fighting scenes
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exteriors, and anything not in the Sanctum Centorum. While other scenes drag on forever
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plot conveniences and structural elements lead our main character to being the landlord
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of the scientist he needs to team up with What limited time the movie spends outside is in parks or other places where the locations can be stolen for free And outside of the core trio of good guy bad guy and love interest all the other characters have obviously been shot out in a few days Jeffrey Combs is a
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much better Doctor Strange, I mean, Doctor Mordred, than the film deserves, honestly
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The crystals of Endor, it will take more than that. I have more. In fact, he was viewed as so
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successful in the role that Full Moon was debating building a cinematic universe around him
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However, that didn't happen. After this idea fell apart, Combs was in talks to star in a solo sequel to Dr. Mordred titled
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Dr. Mordred, Crystal Hell. However, that never materialized for various reasons. One being Combs became very busy appearing in various roles in Star Trek, another being
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that the proposed script was deemed too expensive, and the third being the distribution deal that
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Band had dried up overnight, effectively halving the budgets of his already low-budget outings
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Overall, the film sucks in the best way possible. It's adjacent to exactly what you want
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You get Jeffrey Combs being Doctor Strange, some shots of stop-motion VFX
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and a really great Not the Sanctum Santorum set. This film skates by on pure enthusiasm
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Our powers can be amusing. Or cynical cash grab ethos. Your personal mileage may vary
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I personally view it as a love letter to 60s Marvel, in an era where being unironically into superheroes was not cool
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It's an earnest film with almost enough resources to pull off what it's attempting to accomplish on a narrative level
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And for me, that's enough. I'd much rather watch someone attempting greatness and failing miserably
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than struggle through a bland corporate rehash of something people supposedly liked 20 years ago
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Even if the thing in question is made under dubious copyright claims. That's the key to Dr. Mordred for me
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And the reason why I suffer through so many horrible other full moon films
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When they're bad, they're really bad. But when they're even in the ballpark of good
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it feels like you're watching a come from behind double overtime buzzer beater
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You know the obstacles that the creative people involved in the film are working against
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Apathy, schedule, unruly circumstances, and scripts that were created in three weeks
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And yet, when they manage to find a way to have something personal to say
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it's like witnessing a miracle
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