Secret comic book movies: Dr. Strange (1978)
By Mike McNulty
The second, but unsuccessful attempt, from Marvel at making ongoing television series, Dr. Strange does have a little bit of magic.
Of all the comic books one could adapt into a television series, Doctor Strange seems like a, well, strange choice. The Master of the Mystic Arts doesn’t have the same pedigree as Spider-Man or the Hulk.
Depending on the writer, he also tends to have the “Superman Problem” multiplied ten-fold; after all, without a clear set of rules, magic allows a character to do almost anything. It also, as evidenced by the Marvel Studios films, requires lots of special effects. Plus, like Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi, Strange also works better as a mentor than taking the lead.
None of this seemed to matter with writer, director, and producer Philip DeGuere, though. In 1978, having achieved success with The Incredible Hulk, Universal and CBS gave the future Simon & Simon (1981 – 1989) creator the go-ahead to create a television pilot for Dr. Strange. Moreover, Doctor Strange co-creator, Stan Lee, had more direct personal involvement with the pilot than any of the other Marvel TV adaptation being developed. By most accounts, this was a genuine labor of love for all involved, especially for DeGuere.
So why then did this series never make it past one TV movie? In the first place, the pilot was expensive to make, with DeGuere filming past the allotted shooting schedule. Second, it went up against ABC’s rebroadcast of Roots (1977), one of the highest-rated television miniseries of all time. And third, it wasn’t considered very good. It isn’t hard to do a Google search of this movie and come across an article mocking it relentlessly.
Yet is the Dr. Strange pilot actually as bad as folks make it out to be, or is a cult classic that, because of bad timing, didn’t get the recognition it deserved? I would argue the answer lies somewhere in the middle.