5 things to love about Doctor Mordrid (1992)

What’s it about:
Jeffrey Combs plays Doctor Mordrid (a thinly veiled version of Marvel’s Doctor Strange) a powerful sorcerer who protects Earth from supernatural threats under the guise of being a criminal psychologist. An evil villain called Kabal wants to find the Philopsher’s Stone and unleash monsters from the fourth dimension on to Earth. Only Mordrid and his neighbour Samantha can stop him.

5 things to love:

1. The cast is top notch. Jeffrey Combs is clearly relishing the opportunity to play a rare heroic role. Brian Thompson as the bad guy is suitably intimidating and Yvette Nipar (who co-starred in the 90s Robocop TV series) is at peak hotness.

2. The production design of Mordrid’s apartment is awesome and clearly where most of the budget went to.

3. The climatic fight between Mordrid and Kabal takes place in a museum where they both take control of dinosaur skeletons who proceed to battle it out. It’s a short sequence but lovingly composed by Dave Allen who also did the effects on other Charles Band produced films like Robot Jox and Prehysteria.

4. Spotting where writer C Courtney Joyner has ‘borrowed’ from the Marvel comic Doctor Strange. Apparently the script was originally supposed to be Doctor Strange but the rights elapsed so they just tweaked the story.

5. The scale of the story. Comparing this to most blockbusters nowadays it’s kind of awesome how small and intimate it is compared to X-Men Apocalypse and Batman v Superman.

1 thing it did need:
More for Brian Thompson to do. He doesn’t really have a lot of screen time and at 74 minutes the running time could have been padded out a little more.