There was a 1978 Dr Strange TV movie that didn't get released on DVD by Shout Factory until a couple of years ago. I watched it from Netflix in 2016 and eventually found a copy that was cheap enough to pick up. None of the other fellows had seen it, so we watched it first.
John Mills plays the sorcerer that will become Peter Hooten's Master and teach him some magical stuff. Clyde Kasatsu plays John's right hand man. Jessica Walters plays the evil Morgan LeFay, she's come back to Earth to wreck havoc. Anne-Marie Martin plays the young woman who gets caught up in evil and needs savin'. The movie plods along introducing all the characters. There's a bit of a battle between Jessica and John, then Peter gets thrown in there. He's not too happy being the chosen one but he eventually settles down to the job. This was supposed to be a pilot for a possible TV series but that wasn't to be. Sadly the movie just isn't that exciting. It was mostly a silly whim purchase. I would recommend it more for it's place in history, as lackluster as that is. Still, this movie does so much better when viewed with our next movie.
The Immortal Wars wins the title, hands down, for the dullest and most vapid movie that needs to be seen with extreme fast forwarding. Yet we sat through the whole things, struggling to stay awake. On top of that, there isn't any war and no one is immortal, as far as I can see. It's the work of Joe Lujan, he wrote, directed, exec produced, edited, did wardrobe and costume design, production design, set decoration, special effects and visual effects. He's totally to blame for this horrid piece of unimaginative crap. I haven't seen the comic it was based on, there might be some blame to share.
It's a shit future, some people have some sort of powers, they're rounded up and made to fight in a to-the-death battle on a TV show. The movie doesn't explain how that all would work but that's common with these sort of stories. We just get a narrow slice of whole picture. Sometimes it's easy to forget to wonder what's the fuck's going on, say when the movie is exciting or entertaining, but this movie doesn't have that advantage. Eric Roberts is in charge of the TV program and he plays a fairly good prick of a guy. No stretch for him, some of the other actors have a bit of a struggle. Speaking of struggle, the hand to hand fighting is poor, the script is poor, the pacing is poor, nearly everything on screen is poor. Then they drag the whole movie through a CGI dip, making the images all tinted and dirty. The movie drags along and there's nothing good to say about it. There are better similar movies out there. Friday Night Movie night Joe is right when he said, "I'd rather be watching The Running Man again". Wouldn't we all.
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