It's easy for Cracked to poke fun at Doctor Strange — a TV movie that was not only terrible in its own right, but had the ill fortune to air opposite Roots, which means nobody watched it.
But 1978 was in a huge dark ages for genre SF/Fantasy TV. Seeing anything that smacked of a comic book movie was seven kinds of awesome for me as a teen. And even though Doctor Strange had almost nothing in common with the actual comic book except for (a) a doctor whose name was Stephen Strange, (b) the Sanctum's window frame, (c) an Asian sidekick named Wong, it was still just incredibly cool to see something like it on TV.
When your starving to death, you don't care if you're being handed a Peanut Butter and Beet Sandwich.
To be even more fair, there's not a lot else from 1978 worth rewatching today, either.
And, yes, in weak moments, you can still catch me saying, "In the name of R'yel, Scourge of Demons, I command you begone!" Because I'm that kind of geek.
(As a side note, a few years after the TV movie, my family visited Universal Studios (Hollywood, since that was the only one at the time), and on the back lot tour I saw one of the floating Ditkoesque islands from the Other Dimension, amidst the weeds and other bits and bobs stored out in the elements. It was both sad and magical.)
Originally shared by +Cracked:
The 5 Most Awesomely Bad Comic Book Movies – http://goo.gl/TQfXGE
In Doctor Strange's first cinematic foray, our hero looks like an over-the-hill European gigolo who does battle with a saucy Lucille Bluth. This new one has nowhere to go but up! #CrackedClassic
The list is fairly accurate. Doctor Strange was rough but I was still disappointed when it didn't spawn a series, or at least a sequel, because like you mentioned, the 70s were not exactly a golden age for Fantasy TV.
Did the Justice League actually air? How did I not see this back then. All of a sudden, I feel that I missed something important.
Love how Swamp Thing is credited with basically creating comic books as they are known today because "Swamp Thing was an OK movie that wasn't good enough to make people want to read his comic."
Also, Swamp Thing is one of those films I'd love to see remade. The story itself didn't suck but there was simply no way to create a character believably made of swamp stuff back then. Today's CGI could make him awesome.
+Marty Shaw I've seen some indications that JL never actually aired in the US. I've never even seen any indication of it existing before, so I've got some YouTube pages flagged to check it out. I expect it to be a more 1990 style of awful.