1305-Doctor Mordrid

Film Year:  1992

Genre:  Fantasy, Superhero

Director:  Albert Band, Charles Band

Starring:  Jeffery Combs, Jay Acovone, Brian Thompson, Yvette Nipar

MST Season:  13

Host:  Emily

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

"Based on an original idea by Charles Band."

lol.

Doctor Mordrid is probably a more interesting movie today than it was when it was released.  As of this writing, the Marvel Cinematic Universe under Disney has become the indisputable king of the blockbuster of the last decade, with their latest release at this point in time being a sequel to their magical sorcerer superhero Doctor Strange.  What does this have to do with Doctor Mordrid?  Hold on to your capes, we're getting there.

Since the first Avengers film broke box office records in 2012, it's hard to remember a time in which the yearly top grossers didn't feature at least one property based on a Marvel comic, but there was a time in which Marvel was pawning off its movie rights to bargain bin studios.  Their first feature film, Howard the Duck, had huge pedigree in producer George Lucas and distributor Universal Studios, but alas the film wound up a box office disaster while chief competitor DC Comics had already had hits in a handful of Superman films and were about to unleash the pop culture phenomenon of Tim Burton's Batman upon the world.  It was hard to convince the big studios to take a leap with their properties after this, but they managed to pay a few bills by making a few low budget films based on The Punisher and Captain America with not so picky producers who just wanted the title more than the property.  Hell, at this point there was production by Roger Corman on an ultra-cheap Fantastic Four movie which (unbeknownst to the crew filming it) was never going to see official release.  Marvel's most popular character, Spider-Man, was languished in development hell with legendary crap factory Cannon Group, who tried unsuccessfully to make a movie in the 80's before complicating the rights of Terminator director James Cameron's attempt to adapt the property in the 90's before washing his hands of it and making Titanic instead (which was probably the best decision ever made in history).  Eventually that film would get made to Marvel's first massive box office success (no, Blade and X-Men don't compare to the money this pulled in) under Evil Dead director Sam Raimi, who incidentally directed this year's Doctor Strange sequel.

Still with me?  Okay, here we have Doctor Mordrid.  It might not shock for anybody to learn that Doctor Mordrid originally was being set up as a Doctor Strange adaptation when Charles Band initially showed interest in doing a film adaptation of the property.  For whatever reason, a deal was not made, though a film that was heavily influenced by the character and was stylized after comics in general was put into production as "Doctor Mortalis" with, get this, comic book legend Jack Kirby on board as a concept artist.  Eventually the project settled at Band's Full Moon studio and was turned into Doctor Mordrid, a film that rips off Doctor Strange in many, many ways but legally can't be Doctor Strange.

This film has Jeffery Combs playing the totally-not-Stephen-Strange wizard Anton Mordrid, who has spent the past century trying to subdue his totally-not-Baron-Mordo fellow wizard Kabal from unleashing hell on Earth.  Mordrid's hunt for Kabal leads him into the path of a tough but lovely police consultant who happens to live in the building Mordrid resides at and the two connect as they hunt for the deadly wizard while Mordrid keeps his unearthly secrets from her sight.  Kabal's power begins to rise with the aid of punk cultists and Mordrid finds that his final battle with Kabal might happen sooner rather than later.

The question at large is exactly how copyright infringing is this movie?  Since no legal action seems to have been taken against it, I guess just enough of it is different from the source it's derivitave of to not be worth a court case.  But if you're a fan of comics at all, you can definitely see Doctor Strange's DNA in this movie.  You can tell what characters are supposed to represent comic counterparts and see the playful stuff added to the film to try and make Mordrid his own character, but how successful that is would be arguable.  There are more similarities to Marvel's lore in Doctor Mordrid than there are between Pacific Rim and Atlantic Rim, the latter only really taking the robots vs. monsters concept and running with it.

As a movie without knowledge of its ties to any source material, Doctor Mordrid is charming trash.  Doctor Mordrid is a playful, low budget, good vs. evil fantasy that clearly thinks all fantasy should be marketed towards children but denies that audience the pleasure by shooting straight for an R rating with a scene of full frontal nudity (which was cut from the MST version).  Instead it aims straight at that cult audience that just wants a good time.  Doctor Mordrid, despite its childishness, is indeed a good time.

A lot of the heavy lifting in this movie is done by the cast, who play this movie straighter and with more effort than the movie probably deserves.  Cult icon Jeffery Combs is fabulous as our mystical hero, giving Mordrid the mischievous mystique that only Jeffery Combs can provide.  Bit character actor and Highlander baddie Brian Thompson rocks a blonde mullet and tries his best to resemble Fabio and this is probably one of the most suited-to-him roles I've ever seen him play.  I also need to give a shout out to our female lead Yvette Nipar, who is tragically given little to do other than to be the audience's surrogate eyes-of-discovery in the film and be the token love interest, but she does all of this with grace and excellent screen presence that made me yearn for more of her character.  Richard Band also needs to be mentioned for his score to the picture, which is actually a quite a good riff on the types of scores Danny Elfman would produce for a movie like this.  In fact, there are more than a few cues that sound like Elfman himself lifted for his score for Spider-Man in 2002.

That being said, the movie does feel a bit scant.  It runs barely longer than 70 minutes and I was disappointed to see it end.  The movie could have used a bigger finale, though I'm not sure how you could top stop-motion dinosaur skeletons wrestling.  Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the fact that Doctor Mordrid is only present in this conflict as an astral projection slightly cheapens it, as to while there is peril to reality there is no immediate mortal danger to Mordrid himself.  When Kabal is defeated, it feels a bit unearned, as heroic showdowns would have more weight if Mordrid were present in person to deliver the final blow himself.  Instead Kabal is knocked the hell over by a mastodon tusk.  The movie's most pleasurable climax then comes when Mordrid's lady friend kicks a man frozen in time square in the testicles.  Now that's how you should win the day!

However this movie came about, and whether you consider it an honorary Marvel movie or not, Doctor Mordrid is fun for fans of low budget silliness and is well worth watching if names like "Charles Band" or "Jeffery Combs" tied to a movie excite you.  I know they do excite me, personally.  Doctor Mordrid is a flick that does the bare minimum of what a hero movie should do:  entertains for an hour then disappears into the night.

The Episode

Offering a peak behind the curtain, when the line-up of films was announced for MST's new season, I watched a most (but not all) of the films in preparation for this blog so I could at least get the film reviews in the tank and ready to go.  Doctor Mordrid was a film selection that I fell in love with, because it was such a stupidly fun movie on its own and my gut told me that it would make for a great episode.  But my gut also told me both Beyond Atlantis and Munchie were going to be difficult to make funny, so I'm not sure we should be putting stock into that anymore.  I need to just lay back and trust this team to do their jobs.  But those high expectations remained and Doctor Mordrid does fail to meet them.

Kinda.

Let's just say "I wasn't laughing as much as the last two episodes" is a disappointing assessment, but it's not a damning opinion.

The thing about Doctor Mordrid is that the movie can be more fun than the simple act of making fun of it.  Because of that, the riffing does struggle to overcome the doofus charisma of the film that they're trying to make more entertaining.  That being said, while the episode can coast on the entertainment value of the film itself, the riffing can be quite funny.  I love the commentary on how Mordrid has lived in New York for hundreds of years only to have Emily respond "And thanks to rent control laws I still only pay four bucks a month for this apartment!"  As someone summons the villain of the film they suddenly shout out "Jesus Christ!" only to have Servo call out (commentating on his appearance) "No, Rick Flair!  WOO!"  GPC2 gets a few good shots in during her brief theater appearances, as she does a fairly perfect Aladdin reference to the reanimated dinosaur at the end claiming "Ten million years can give you such a crick in the neck!"  The end credit riffing is fun, as Emily and the Bots debate whether or not Doctor Mordrid is a Christmas movie (ala the Die Hard is a Christmas Movie debate).  There are also riffs in this episode that I feel are destined to become underrated but secretly the most hilarious lines for the moment, such as Kabal's "Communist Manifest-Stone" and a well placed reference to the musical Cats that had me laughing for days.

This is another one of those episodes where just about every host segment is a recreation of a scene in a movie, which can be fun, though Doctor Mordrid starts weak and gets stronger.  Tom Servo parodies Mordrid's lecture early in the film evolving it into a crappy stand-up act, which reminded me of Servo's locust stand-up from Beginning of the End and was about as funny (read:  not very).  A bit more successful is Emily playing Mordrid as a landlord, but even that wears thin.  Continuing to get better, there is a bit where Crow parodies the hypnosis story from the film on Emily and Servo, which is pretty solid.  The episode ends on a fair high when the Bots form their own super team and Emily is enlisted to be their easily defeated opponent, who's power is losing.

Over on Moon 1, Kinga and Max get another visit from Dr. Kabahl, the Strange Financier from the Future.  They note that his name is similar to the name of the villain in this movie and wonder if it's a coincidence.  Time will tell if that goes anywhere, but in the meantime Kabahl asks them to bring one of the original hosts back to host new episodes.  Apparently Kinga and Max need to time travel to do this, which makes little sense but whatever.  This sets up a new Mad appearance by the great J. Elvis Weinstein as Dr. Erhardt, who travels to fetch either Joel or Mike, Kinga and Max don't care because they're both doughy white guys from the midwest.  This is to set up Joel's return to the series as he hosts the next episode, Demon Squad, and has another to be determined episode later this season before joining Jonah and Emily in the theater for the all-host special The Christmas Dragon.

Man it's hard to believe in two weeks we'll have a new Joel episode.  That's absolutely wild.

To an extent the riff of Doctor Mordrid feels like it's a little too content to stay afloat with the watchability of the movie and take it easy, saving gutbusters for harder movies like Munchie.  I would have wished for a little more stamina during this movie though just to push it over the top.  I still think Doctor Mordrid could have been the best episode of the season, but I will settle for it just being a fun episode.  Laughs are laughs, and I had a good time.

Good

The Livestream

I was happier when this livestream didn't exist.  I want to thank Doctor Mordrid screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner for joining in on the conversation and providing insight to the film.  But his debunking that this flick was not originally written as a Doctor Strange film meant I had to alter my review of the film, and I had that in the bag for months!  I had watched a bunch of this season's films to prep up my reviews for them, and I did discuss this being a Doctor Strange adaptation.  Then Joyner, this blessed man who wrote this fun movie, dropped this bombshell on my life and my heart sank because I almost felt like I needed to start from scratch.  Luckily he did confirm that the film was Doctor Strange influenced and stemmed from an attempt from Band trying to get the license in the 80's, so I didn't need to change it as much as I initially thought I'd have to.  In the end I had to rewrite an entire paragraph with updated info and make wording corrections.

In addition to our special guest, our panel includes producer Matt McGinnis, host Emily Marsh, Crow voice Kelsey Ann Brady, and writer Tim Ryder.  A lot of discussion tonight is about the film itself, which is probably understandable because they have a gateway to some insight on the production.  Not only that, Matt notes that the fanbase response to this movie after it was announced was through the roof.  I can vouch for that, because I was one of the fans who was really excited!  He also claims the writers were really excited for this particular movie and they all claim writing the episode was a fun experience.  They have questions for Joyner, who happily answers them and praises the production as exceeding his expectations, as his initial expectations were more based on what Charles Band normally produces.  I'd definitely agree with him here.  Doctor Mordrid has exceptional looking production value compared to the type of films Full Moon normally produced.  Just comparing the film to the other Full Moon production of this season, Robot Wars, Doctor Mordrid is a much more smartly crafted movie that knows what's it's capable of.  Tim's primary question for Jayner comes from writer Tammy Golden, who is convinced that Jeffery Combs and Brian Thompson have never met each other because they don't share a scene where they're both in the same frame and facing the camera (if the characters are together in frame, one normally has their back turned).  Jayner just says they were on set together and that's that.

I'm siding with Tim and Tammy on this, because this movie is suspiciously framed.  When I did my screenshots I was hoping for a good one with both Combs and Thompson, but I couldn't find one in the entire bloody film.  Eventually I settled on the one above, and just silently wondered the same thing they did.  Coincidentally this echoes a talking point on modern filmmaking, specifically this year's Doctor Strange film, where Elizabeth Olsen and John Krasinski share a scene together in the film but were never onset at the same time.

Interestingly enough, during this livestream I had felt like I had seen C. Courtney Joyner before but I couldn't quite place his face.  It turns out he was a regular contributor to Daniel Griffith's documentaries for the Mystery Science Theater DVD sets, and I did that meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where Leonardo DiCaprio points at the TV in real time.  He talks about being involved in the process and his love for the films and even his love for the MST series.  He thinks that this show is a fun work of film preservation in it's own way, where it introduces almost forgotten films to new audiences.  Tim Ryder then brings up a discussion on the Discourse forums about fans that collect films unriffed.  I'm happy to report I am one of those fans, and I have a list of my films in that very thread.  And yes, Doctor Mordrid is one that I own (on blu-ray!).

Almost as a "Prove it!" question, Joyner is asked what his favorite episode is.  He then goes to the early, early days of the series and cites he loved how fresh the show seemed at the time and names Robot Monster as his favorite episode, which is fair enough.  He also cites Cat Women of the Moon, which was never on the show (but it was on RiffTrax).  He might be thinking of Women of the Prehistoric Planet though and got titles confused because they sound so similar.

There is not a lot of talk about the episode itself, so Emily and Kelsey sometimes feel like they're taking a backseat in this stream (Kelsey is pretty quiet for most of it).  Emily does have interjections about what she loved in the movie, including her love for the character Gunner.  But there are also points where they discuss their favorite roles of Jeffery Combs, of which Emily just says "Star Trek" (in which Jeffery Combs has played about a hundred different characters for, so which one?) and Kelsey just responds "I'm NOT looking at IMDB!"  It almost seems like Emily and Kelsey are here just as a requisite of on-screen talent reading the backer names throughout the stream, which they do well.  For this particular episode it seems appropriate, because the movie is unquestioningly the star of the hour.  But it's a shame because one would like to see them integrated into the festivities more.

But this was a fun stream because I love learning about these curiosities at the center of the series, and Joyner is a splendid storyteller, and even discusses calming Jeffrey Combs' nerves over an audition for The Frighteners by showing him Meet the Feebles, which was also a Peter Jackson film.  And I do love everyone coming up with their own superhero knockoff, as Kelsey rips on Mystique with "Mistook" and Emily brings up Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, to which Matt pitches his idea for a movie starring the character.  Interestingly, Arm-Fall-Off-Boy has already been in a movie, as he was played by Nathan Fillion in last year's The Suicide Squad.  He was renamed TDK (short for The Detachable Kid), but he still had those arms fall off!

And as far as I'm concerned, any stream that brings up Arm-Fall-Off-Boy is a success.