Doctor Mordrid

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  August 1, 2009

  jfvirey

  As guilty pleasures go, "Doctor Mordrid" was both very guilty and very pleasurable. It's the kind of film that tries to tell an epic story spanning centuries (if not millions of years) in a very short 68 minutes of TV time (did I miss any gore or breasts?), and to suggest the thr...( read more)eat of the apocalypse and the enslavement of all mankind with three major characters, five or six sets, and about as many secondary characters and extras.
  
  "Doctor Mordrid"'s best asset is the ever excellent Jeffrey Combs as the title hero. He was my reason for watching the film in the first place, and I wasn't disappointed. He manages to create a character that is both powerful and vulnerable, a sort of superheroic nerd of the occult (half Mandrake, half Colin Wilson), which makes me regret that the film did not spawn a fantasy TV series, however much it looks like a pilot for one. Now that I've seen him in this role, I also regret he didn't get the part of Commander Riker in "Star Trek: The Next Generation." He may be more than eight inches shorter than Frakes, but he sure would have made a great Number One.
  
  Confronting him as the evil alchemist is Brian Thompson, who has been the bad guy in countless TV series, including "Buffy", "The X-Files" and no less than three Star Trek spin-offs (quiz: which one wasn't he in?) As for the "love interest", Yvette Nipar, she is probably best remembered as Detective Lisa Madigan in the Robocop TV series, though she also featured in a few episodes of "Brisco County" (which was what I had seen her in.)
  
  Apart from Combs, I particularly enjoyed the retro SFX, the alchemical paraphernalia, Mordrid's half-hi-tech, half-gothic apartment, his crow Edgar, and the Dave Allen stop-motion animation, which has always been a highlight of Charles Band productions, however short his sequences usually are. The old-fashioned coffee machine is also worth the look (no, not the contraption Mordrid uses, but the clunky early-90s machine in the police station.)
  
  The film is completely silly, but if you are able to put yourself in a place where you can enjoy "Hawk the Slayer", then you should love it. It's definitely in the Full Moon Top 10 (which may not be saying much for some of you.)
  
  (According to Imdb, this film was originally intended as a movie version of "Doctor Strange", but the names were changed when Full Moon lost the rights. This didn't prevent Charles Band from claiming it was based on an original idea of his...)

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• 
  
  August 27, 2007

  arcanejms

  It's the fuck you buzzer!

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• Doctor Mordrid