Marvel Mondays #16: Doctor Mordrid (1992)

So here's a weird one. Remember how I said a few weeks ago on this blog that there would be times where we'd be taking in some films where the connection to Marvel was a bit tenuous? This is one of those times. Rather like the early '80s, the early '90s were a quiet time for Marvel in terms of cinematic output. With their two late '80s efforts (Howard the Duck and Captain America) both bombing horrifically and the various attempts at relaunching the Incredible Hulk and other spin-offs never really getting anywhere, the period between 1990 and about 1997-98 saw Marvel enter what could pretty much be called the wilderness years. In time, Men In Black, Blade and the X-Men would kick off the resurrection of the genre that's pretty much continued ever since culminating in the MCU films but prior to that there were a few odds 'n' sods type efforts which slipped through the net, generally to little or no success.

"Doctor Mordrid", released in 1992, is a case in point. The back story goes that indie film makers Full Moon had bought the rights to do a new Dr Strange film but unfortunately they took so long making it that by the time it was ready for release, the contract had run out and they couldn't use the name. Not wanting to let their efforts go to waste, they simply renamed the titular character and put the film out anyway. So...given that it's effectively a Dr Strange film in all but name, what the heck, it's going in.

This isn't our first encounter with Dr Strange of course - we reviewed the 1978 film about the character way back in November and, mainly thanks to the efforts of Jessica Walter as the chief villainess Morgan Le Fay, it was probably the best of the late '70s Marvel films. Though obviously that's a bit like winning a "Tallest Dwarf" contest. This version sees a few slight changes - rather than being a medical doctor, Strange/Mordrid is a university professor who specialises in demonology. The film kicks off with him having a conversation with the Ancient One who appears in this film as a pair of eyes floating in outer space - let's just say that if you remember the video for Billy Idol's '80s classic "Eyes Without A Face" then you may find it a bit difficult not to start singing "Les yeux sans viiii-saaaa-geeee" at this point. Apparently, a major threat is coming to face humankind and Mordrid needs to consult the Philosophers' Stone to keep on top of it (sorry JK Rowling but this was five years before Harry Potter so you can't sue).

Anyway, Mordrid is also the landlord for a block of flats in New York and his tenants include an irritable old lady and a bloke with a huge dog who are always arguing with each other and a police researcher, Sam, who's just moved in down the hall and keeps getting caught in the middle of their disputes. Hey, even cosmic guardians have earthly problems too apparently. He also has a study full of cool cosmic library stuff in the middle of a New York tenement block and a pet raven called Edgar Allen rather awesomely.

However, those problems are nothing compared to what's going on in the wider cosmos - at the start of the film we see the main villain Kabal ambushing a security truck in Brazil by hypnotising one of the guards into shooting the other one before unloading the truck and then turning the gun on himself. Also, dunno if this is just me but does anyone else think that Kabal looks oddly like wrestler/rockstar Chris Jericho from his early longhair days? Just me then? Okay.

We find out that Kabal and Mordrid were both students at the same warlock school many centuries ago but while Mordrid stuck to the straight and narrow, Kabal was much more malevolent and wanted to use his powers to enslave humanity. After a conflict between the two, Kabal was imprisoned in some big cosmic castle (which looks like they got it in a clearance sale from the '70s Doctor Strange film).

Mordrid heads to the castle to find out what's going on and finds the guardian Gunner blinded and Kabal escaped. However, Mordrid is able to restore Gunner's sight and finds out that Kabal has headed to earth with the aim of getting the necessary precious metals needed to release the other demons imprisoned in the fortress which Gunner is guarding over.

To this end, he's enlisted the help of a couple of thugs called Adrian and Irene who look like they've stepped out of a Guns 'n' Roses video circa 1989. Adrian is enlisted as Kabal's henchman while Irene ends up stripping naked and then being sacrificed by Kabal in order for him to drain her life energy.

When Irene's murder case turns up at the police station, Sam suggests that her police colleagues go to see Dr Mordrid as she recognises the symbol branded on the girl's head to one of the ones that Mordrid showed her in his flat. Unfortunately, the cops get completely the wrong end of the stick and Mordrid manages to talk himself into getting arrested.

After being grilled at the cop shop, Mordrid eventually persuades Sam to recover his amulet (which has the power to briefly freeze time) from the lab and they use it to make their escape. In the meantime, Kabal has given Adrian the power of immunity for 24 hours and he promptly challenges a cop to a fight and Molotovs his car which leads to him getting arrested as well. Exactly how this fits into the plan is never really explained - you'd have thought having an extra henchman on the ground would be preferable to having one in the police station as a distraction tactic. Or perhaps he just sussed that Adrian is rather irritating and didn't really fancy having him around as a "helper".

Mordrid and Sam escape to the park where Mordrid realises that Kabal has headed to the museum on the other side of town to recover the last artifact that he needs for his demon summoning. As he's unable to get there on time, Mordrid uses his ability to leave his body and send his spirit there.

Mordrid and Kabal have their confrontation at the museum and you know what that means...

BADLY ANIMATED DINOSAUR SKELETON FIGHT!

Well, technically a T-Rex skeleton and a woolly mammoth skeleton fighting but hey, who's counting? Kabal is on the verge of releasing the (badly animated claymation) demons but he takes his eye off the ball and ends up gored to death by the woolly mammoth skeleton. Well, you certainly can't accuse the makers of this film of not being inventive with their on screen deaths.

World saved, Mordrid teleports back to the park but he and Sam are interrupted by Adrian who goes to stab them but is frozen by the ring and gratuitously kicked in the nuts for his trouble. With the cops closing in, Mordrid is summoned back to the magic plane by the Ancient One as too many people are now aware of his presence on earth. Sam agrees to look after his flat while he's gone.

Fast forward six months ago and Sam is spending Christmas alone at the flat watching "It's A Wonderful Life" when Mordrid returns and asks if she wants to travel to the magic plane with him which she agrees to once they've had a mug of eggnog each. And that's where the film ends rather festively.

Although it's cheap and cheesy, at least "Doctor Mordrid" is reasonably good low-rent fun. With suitably hammy acting, enjoyably silly special FX sequences and enough of a plot to keep you engaged, it makes for a reasonably enjoyable 75 minutes (our shortest film on the blog so far and a record that I suspect may well hold up for the rest of this series) of viewing time. Inevitably though given the low budget and Marvel withdrawing their endorsement, it was pretty much a straight-to-video effort and a sequel was not forthcoming. Indeed, the next time we'd see Dr Strange would be under his Marvel name about 20 years later. But that's a film we're a long long long way off reviewing at the moment...

FINAL RATING: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 (5/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
2. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
3. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
4. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
5. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
6. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
7. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
8. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
9. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
10. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
11. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
12. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
13. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
14. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
15. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
16. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Ever wondered what would happen if you tried to put a Fantastic Four film together on a budget of about twenty quid? Well, wonder no longer...

Marvel Mondays #15: The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990)

Although Bill Bixby's two previous Hulk films (see recent reviews) had failed to generate the hoped-for new Hulk TV series, they had at least brought the character back into the public consciousness and following their success, NBC decided to allow Bixby to do a third film. Despite its title, "The Death of the Incredible Hulk" wasn't actually supposed to be the final Hulk film but unfortunately circumstances would intervene as we'll see later.

The film picks up with David Banner (now using the name David Bellamy which must have caused a few belly laughs among any Brits who used to watch nature programmes at the time) working as a janitor at a science lab in Portland. However, as always with Banner, there's more to him taking a menial job than meets the eye - one of the scientists at the lab Dr Ron Pratt has been working on a cure for gamma radiation which Banner realises could finally be his shot at getting rid of his Hulk condition once and for all (we see at the start of the film when a group of hoodlums try and jump Banner for his pay cheque that the Hulk is very much still alive and well).

Meanwhile, we're introduced to a Russian spy named Yasmin (played by Elizabeth Gracen - the character isn't technically the Black Widow but, let's face it, totally is) who has been brought back in by her old criminal organisation for that old "one last job" favourite due to her sister Bella, also a spy, currently being a prisoner of the gang. The job in question involves stealing Pratt's research so that the gang can use it for their own nefarious ends (as appears to be standard with '80s Marvel films, it's never really explained what these are during the film). To this end, she gets chatting to one of the lab's security guards in a bar and then gets a copy of his fingerprint from the glass he leaves behind before stealing a security guard's uniform from the local dry-cleaners.

Back at the lab, Pratt has worked out that Banner has been breaking into his lab at night and correcting his formulas forcing him to come clean about the experiment and his condition. With the help of Pratt's wife Amy, the pair commence on working on things together and manage to conduct a controlled experiment where Banner transforms into the Hulk but is held in place by a forcefield allowing Amy to film the process. This is the first time Banner has ever seen himself as the Hulk and he's understandably a bit spooked.

Banner and Pratt plan to conduct the experiment in full to remove Banner's radiation the following night, not least because Pratt's funding is under threat. However, things go awry when Yasmin, disguised as a security guard, attempts to break into the lab. Pratt catches her midway through stealing a bunch of floppy disks but in the ensuing struggle he gets knocked out and put in a coma by Yasmin. Seeing this causes Banner to Hulk out and chase Yasmin and her co-assassins out of the lab but Pratt ends up taken to hospital and the experiment ends up being aborted.

Yasmin returns the disks to the lab but it turns out she took the wrong ones. Her boss Kasha threatens to put her in a room with his chief torturer Zed but to save her skin, she promises to bring Banner in and get him to spill the beans. On his way home from the hospital the following night, Banner finds himself being chased across fields by a couple of cars belonging to the bad guys and holes up in a petrol station. Yasmin, leading the villains, tells him that if he gives himself up they'll make sure he isn't hurt. However, as Banner's leaving, one of the other spies shoots Yasmin telling her that she's outlived her use as a member of the organisation and that her failure to recover the correct disks was the last straw. Banner helps her to fight the bad guys off but one of them mentions to Yasmin with his dying words that her sister Bella, far from being a captive, is actually now the leader of the organisation and was responsible for bringing her back on board.

Banner and Yasmin hole up at a cabin in the woods near the lab where he helps to stitch her up and she agrees to help him out given that both of them are now fugitives. The next day they return to the hospital where Banner manages to bring Pratt out of his coma by referring to him as "Stinky". Long story... To escape the hospital guards, Yasmin disguises herself as a nurse and puts Banner in a wheelchair so the two can escape. They're tailed by the bad guys to a junkyard where two of them try and crush their car but Banner turns into the Hulk and fights them off by using his strength to lift the diggers off the ground!

Thinking that the battle is won, Banner and Yasmin return to the cabin and share a night of passion together. As both of them are now free from their worries (or will be once Pratt does the final experiment on Banner), they decide to flee the States and start a new life abroad. Unfortunately fate intervenes as Zed and a group of bad guys kidnap Pratt and Amy on their way home from the hospital and take them to a nearby airfield where Bella is running things. Left with no option, the pair disguise themself as a wealthy couple to trick one of the henchmen, working as a car salesman, to give them directions to the place before leaving him in the trunk of his car for the police to find.

Banner and Yasmin track the bad guys to the airfield and beat seven bells out of them before rescuing the Pratts. However, as Banner is escaping with Ron and Amy to hand them back to the police and safety, he sees Bella and Zed (who've just shot Kasha as he tried to escape with them) chasing Yasmin down the runway in an aeroplane and trying to mow her down. Enraged, he turns into the Hulk and jumps on the plane forcing it to take off. Bella attempts to shoot him but Hulk grabs her gun and forces the fire downwards causing the petrol tank to ignite and the plane to explode.

We see Hulk falling through the air before landing on the tarmac with an almighty thud. Yasmin, Ron and Amy run over to him as he transforms back into Banner but unfortunately it's too late to save him. With his dying words, Banner tells Yasmin not to worry about him as at least he's free now.

Sadly, after getting my hopes up with the first two Hulk films, this third one is a bit of an anticlimax. Lacking both the enjoyability of "The Incredible Hulk Returns" and the darkness of "The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk", it's just dull with a plot that feels incredibly dragged out and very little to keep you geniunely interested. Having a crossover with Black Widow (okay so it technically wasn't but you know what I mean) could have worked well and Gracen is solid enough in the role but there's just such thin pickings with this script that it can't save the film unfortunately. As an interesting aside, the original plan was that Yasmin's character was going to become the She-Hulk during this film but I'm guessing that idea was scrapped before the plot was finished.

There were plans to do a fourth Hulk film called "The Revenge Of The Incredible Hulk" which would have seen Banner resurrected but no longer able to transform into the Hulk but then re-acquiring the ability in order to defeat a group of villains. A possible tie-in with Iron Man was talked about as well - it would have been interesting to see how they'd have done that with '80s film technology! However, Bixby became ill with prostate cancer and sadly lost his battle with the disease in 1993 meaning that this film turned out to be the final instalment in the Hulk series - a real shame as like I say, it was by some way the weakest of the three '80s films and it was really no way for the series to bow out. However, Hulk would be brought back to the big screen by Ang Lee in 2002 played first by Eric Bana, then Edward Norton and finally in the Avengers series by Mark Ruffalo. All of which we'll deal with in good time when we get round to reviewing them in the months ahead. As far as this film goes though, it's really only for Hulk completists I'm afraid...

FINAL RATING: 👊👊👊 (3/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
2. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
3. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
4. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
5. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
6. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
7. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
8. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (4/10) (1979)
9. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
10. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
11. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (3/10) (1979)
12. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
13. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
14. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
15. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Doctor Strange gets a reboot. Except that the producers can't call it that...

Marvel Mondays #14: Captain America (1990)

You may remember a couple of months back we took a look at the two 1979 Captain America films starring Reb Brown on this blog and weren't particularly kind about either. The first one was just dull with hardly any action sequences, some seriously wooden acting and the world's stupidest villain who thought that the best way to blow up LA was to drive there at 40mph with a neutron bomb in the back of a lorry while the second had Christopher Lee as the main villain and a couple of unintentionally funny fight scenes but that was literally it. Fast forward a decade or so and Marvel decided to give the whole thing another go, producing the film in house (a good 18 years before Iron Man officially launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and even bringing Stan Lee on board to help with the project to ensure that it stayed a bit more faithful to the comics than its predecessors did.

No way this could fail then you'd think? Sadly no. The film was a total bomb and was panned by critics (it still holds the lowest rating, 8%, of any Marvel film on the Rotten Tomatoes website) - if you want to know why it took Marvel 18 years to do an in-house film again then I suspect this may be a big part of the reason why. Hold your noses folks, we're going in...

The film starts in pre-World War II Italy where a group of Mussolini's soldiers kidnap a piano-playing child prodigy and murder his family so that they can use him as part of a project to create a new supersoldier. At the launch of the project, one of the scientists, Dr Maria Vasselli, panics when she sees what they're planning to do to the kid and does a runner, defecting to the west.

Seven years later, with the war in full swing, we find out that the Americans, aided by Vasselli, have now perfected their own version of the formula and are planning to use it to create a whole legion of super soldiers. The first volunteer is a young polio sufferer from California called Steve Rogers (played by Matt Salinger, the son of "Catcher In The Rye" author JD Salinger) and we see him saying goodbye to his family and girlfriend Bernice before setting off to become the government's guinea pig.

The experiment is a success but a spy infiltrates the lab where it's taking place and shoots Dr Vasselli, killing her. Rogers manages to take the agent out by throwing him into a bank of electrical equipment but is shot twice himself. However, with his supersoldier abilities, Rogers recovers within 24 hours and is ready for his first mission. Apparently a Nazi unit led by the Red Skull (the Italians' supersoldier from the start of the film, now played by Scott Paulin) are planning to fire a missile at the White House from Germany (hold on, a ballistic missile capable of travelling thousands of miles in 1943?! Didn't realise Red Skull had invented time travel as well!) and Cap is to be parachuted in to stop them.. It's also revealed that due to the fact that Vasselli didn't keep any notes on her experiments that Rogers is destined to be the only supersoldier from the experiment. Bugger.

Rogers manages to infiltrate the base and has a fight with the Red Skull but as ol' Skullman has been trained to be a lethal killing machine for the last seven years as opposed to the last few days, he ends up getting his arse handed to him and is tied to the missile as it prepares to launch. However, he grabs Red Skull's hand just as the button's about to be pushed leading to Skull having to chop off his own hand to get free from being fired up into the sky with him.

The missile is fired at Washington but Rogers manages to kick it a few times which somehow makes it change its course and miss the White House although the whole incident is witnessed by a youngster called Thomas Kimball who just happens to be wandering around outside the President's house at 4 in the morning and takes a photo of it. The missile ends up somehow firing itself all the way to Alaska (!) where it crashes into the snow without exploding leaving Rogers buried in the ice. Hey kids, if you love stupidly big plot holes this is clearly the movie for you...

Fifty years later in 1993, Rogers is discovered by an Arctic exploration team and returns to life. We discover in the meantime that Kimball has recently become the president of the United States (though he still dresses in that suit jacket and jeans combo normally beloved by fortysomething teachers trying to look "trendy") with his childhood friend Sam Kolawetz (played by Ned Beatty from "Deliverance") becoming chief investigative journalist a the New York Daily News. His first policy has been to implement a new ultra-green environment policy involving massively cutting back on fossil fuel and plastic production. This upsets his chief general who flies to Italy and meets with the Red Skull who, in the intervening years, has had plastic surgery to make him look semi-normal and become a captain of industry.

We also find out that Skull was behind the murders of JFK, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and also now had a daughter, Valentina, who is his chief assassin. However, he decides against murdering Kimball as he doesn't want to create another martyr for the liberal cause and decides instead to kidnap the president when he comes to Italy for an international conference and then brainwash him.

News of Rogers defrosting has reached both the president and Kolawetz and after a chat, the latter decides to drive north in an attempt to find him. However, Red Skull has also learnt of the news and sends Valentina to eliminate Cap before he can get back to America. By the time they find him, Rogers has walked across the border into Canada. Valentina and two of her assassins promptly show up to intercept him on dirt bikes - however, Cap manages to knock Red Skull Jr out with his shield just as Kolawetz handily pulls up to offer him a lift southwards.

However, Cap still thinks it's 1943 and his seeing that Kolawetz has a tape recorder made in Japan and a car made in Germany makes him think that he's been kidnapped by a spy who's trying to convince him that it's the 1990s. Rogers tricks Kolawetz into getting out of the car by saying that he's about to be car sick then nicks it and drives off south. We then get a montage of Cap first driving until his petrol runs out and then stowing away in the back of a truck to some godawful sub-Springsteen '80s power ballad.

Rogers eventually finds his way back to Redondo and Bernice's house but when he ends up meeting the 70-year-old version of his one-time girlfriend he realises that Kolawetz was indeed telling the truth. Bernice subsequently married and had a daughter Sharon (both played by the same actress) but never moved house because she always thought Steve would come back. Sharon takes Steve to her house to watch some history videos and bring him up to speed with everything that's happened in the world but while they're gone, Valentina and the Red Skull's thugs turn up and murder Bernice causing her husband Jack to have a heart attack. Kolawetz (having somehow found his way out of the Canadian mountains) turns up to warn them but only gets offed himself for his efforts.

While at the hospital with Jack, Rogers hears on the news that the President has been kidnapped while in Italy and puts two and two together to deduce that the same people who are after him were responsible. He and Bernice revisit the diner which was built above the original lab where Cap was given his superpowers. Said diner is now a retro-diner and Rogers breaks in to the long-deserted lab by breaking through a wall in the ladies' loo! They find Professor Vasselli's diary and plan to use it to find out more about the Red Skull but are interrupted by Valentina and her thugs. Cue a punch-up with the worst lighting effects ever which makes it nearly impossible to see what's going on.

Cap and Sharon trace Red Skull back to Italy and the town he was originally abducted from as a youngster. The next half hour or so sees them doing some recon there and getting into a few fights with the Skull's followers and can probably be safely skipped over as very little of interest happens. They finally trace Skull to a castle about 50 miles from the town and set off but after dropping Steve off outside, Sharon is kidnapped by Skull's henchmen and taken to his prison.

Cap finally suits up and heads into the prison to rescue Kimball and Sharon. The trio manage to fight off Red Skull's thugs with Cap and Sharon pursuing Skull and Valentina to the castle roof where it turns out he's built an atomic bomb in a grand piano which has the power to wipe out most of southern Europe (!). However, Steve plays him a recording of his kidnapping by the fascists (which they'd found at his old house earlier), and this provides enough of a distraction for Cap to knock Skull off the clifftop with his shield before he can detonate the device, take out Valentina on the rebound, inadvertently break the fourth wall (suffice to say he's no Ryan Reynolds in "Deadpool") and leave. We then find out that the environmental agreement was passed at the UN and everyone lived happily ever after.

There's really no nice way of putting this I'm afraid - this film is just absolute garbage. While it at least has a better attempt at a plot than the two 1970s Captain America films and stays truer to the original comics than they did, that's literally about the only thing it gets right. The script is rubbish, the acting is wooden beyond belief (Matt Salinger actually achieves the near-impossible by making Reb Brown look like a half-decent actor and Paulin's hammy over-acting isn't much better), the action scenes are poorly done and the whole thing just drags and drags and drags, especially the second half. It's really no wonder that the whole idea of a Captain America film was put back in the deep freeze for nearly two decades after this. Luckily the next time it was thawed out in 2008, the MCU project was well underway and Cap would turn out to be one of its surprise successes in terms of film quality. Unfortunately though, those films are still several months away from being covered in this blog but hey, it'll be worth it when we get there. Honest.

FINAL RATING: 🎯🎯 (2/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
2. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
3. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
4. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
5. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
6. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
7. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
8. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (4/10) (1979)
9. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
10. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (3/10) (1979)
11. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
12. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
13. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
14. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: The Hulk goes out with a whimper rather than a bang...