I think one of the unfair comparisons to movies and television shows of the day is about FX quality, when folks didn’t have the computer graphics capability of today. It’s like hearing people complain about movies in black and white.
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Totally agreed. I love old movies, and know the challenges and sheer expense of doing even what would now be the simplest visual effects. I always marvel at how clever the pre-CGI effects people were. In-camera effects are still also quite impressive when done right – matte paintings and forced perspective shots, for instance. There are a lot of hand animated light effects, and a stop-motion demon character in that Dr. Strange TV movie, as I recall.
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I remember watching this on a Saturday afternoon in the 1980s. It wasn’t bad, but my main memory was going, “Wait. Isn’t that Anne-Marie Martin from SLEDGE HAMMER! as the damsel-in-distress?”
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I’m not just saying I’d watch it today, I’m saying that in 1978?
I probably was all over it.
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I was gonna say, this is exactly what a Dr. Strange would look like in 1978.
Probably NOTHING happens for the first hour, then slowly a few things happen, and everything in this promo is from the last half hour.
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She knew how to play cray cray. (See Play Misty for Me)
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I agree but with superheroes in the 70s they just did. not. get. it.
It’s like they were aiming them at people born well before Action Comics #1. Plus they were really worried about being criticized for having violence in something kids would be interested in, so there was no actual fighting, ever. The Hulk might throw a person a long way but that’s it. I don’t think he ever punched anyone, that i can recall. He’d approach someone, in slo mo, and grab him and the person would be flying in the next shot.
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Thanks, Tipper Gore!
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The Reb Brown Captain America might have been cheesy as hell, but that didn’t stop all of us neighborhood kids from running around with trashcan lid shields all summer.
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This was pre Tipper Gore, and part of my own childhood (like you, I recall watching Roots with my parents instead of this show). It goes back to how Star Trek invented Kirk-Fu, the nerfed brawling that the stunt coordinator came up with, because even in the 1960s and 1970s there were producers who cared about lawsui- I mean, child welfare and how this growing medium called television should evolve.
I was striving for something along the lines of “Thanks, Obama!”
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Oh! I remember watching this and loved it. At that time any unexpectedly interesting film was a joyous occasion. TV was usually shit. From that time I remember too The Shroud of The Mummy, Questor, and a film about a limousine that was really the Devil. Terribly substandard for our actual taste, but the stories were original.
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In the vast wasteland that was “Sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book stuff on TV in the 1970s,” this TV movie was so freaking awesome that even to this day I forgive it its many, many (many!) sins. Maybe Hooten will show up in one of Cumberbatch’s multiversal visions soon …
True fact: On a Universal Studios (Hollywood) tour a few years later, our bus drove past the weather-decaying “floating islands of the astral plane” from the movie. Very fun, but very sad.
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It’s Polling Time! It’s Polling Time, children!
- A Night to Remember (1958)
- Titanic (1997)
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voters
Time Bandits (1981)
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No argument re TB, but my poll compares two films involving the Titantic, one in B&W, the other… well… you know.
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Yes. A Night to Remember was good enough to even hold my nephew’s attention. 
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Ahem…
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I yield to your reference!
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