Dr Strange

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the eponymous Sorcerer Supreme in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he's not the first to portray the comic-book Master of the Mystic Arts on-screen. Peter Hooten (looking a little like a young Tom Berenger) stars in this origin story that's only thinly based on the 1963 concept of the character by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Here, Hooten's hero is a New York medic caught up in a good v evil battle between an old wizard (classy John Mills) and seductive sorceress Morgan LeFay (played by Play Misty for Me's Jessica Walter). The 1978 pilot for a never-to-be-made TV series is certainly of its time, with a showy synthesizer score and Hooten's moustache, curly perm and cheesy lines hard to ignore. In one amusing scene, Mills even apes the Jedi mind trick of old pal Alec Guinness from Star Wars, released the year before. Like other 70s live-action adventures for Marvel superheroes (Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America), this hokey affair pales against the epic pyrotechnics of their 21st-century equivalents. However, comic-book movie completists should find some kitsch entertainment here, if only from the outfits.