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On May 6, Cinemagic will open Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which marks Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi’s return to superhero movies and continues the saga of Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Marvel’s psychedelic world-bender.
But after the credits roll, Cinemagic’s audience will be invited just before midnight to enter yet another reality: a universe with slightly cheaper tickets, where analog imperfections crackle across the big screen and a lo-fi version of Doctor Strange reigns under a different name. In this world, the sorcerer goes by Doctor Mordrid, and is played by beloved cult actor Jeffrey Combs, star of the Re-Animator films.
Cinemagic’s monthly VHS Night is a celebration of straight-to-video curios like 1992′s Doctor Mordrid: Master of the Unknown. It’s become the Hawthorne movie theater’s flagship specialty series since two longtime employees, Ryan Frakes and Nicholas Kuechler, purchased Cinemagic last June.
From the jump, Frakes and Kuechler knew their core audience had “adventurous taste.” Now they’re feeding that appetite every first Friday of the month with largely forgotten VHS titles like Traxx, Trancers and Doctor Mordrid.
“Most people that come out to VHS Night don’t know what they’re in for,” Frakes says. “Portland filmgoers go out and try new things constantly.”
The series started almost by accident last December, when Cinemagic programmed a Joe Dante double feature but could only find Small Soldiers (1998) on VHS. Frakes and Kuechler immediately fell in love with the experience of seeing the tape aesthetic projected at auditorium proportions.
“There’s a nostalgic aspect of plugging in the VCR and seeing that blue screen,” Frakes says. “Every now and then, you get those runs of static through the feature that takes people back.”
When it comes to VHS Nights, nostalgia is certainly a draw. Kuechler recalls grabbing Doctor Mordrid off a video store shelf in Sandy, Ore., circa 1996, and etching the image of Combs wielding fire and asteroids into his memory. Similarly, when Cinemagic advertised its screening of Trancers last winter, visitors who’d never seen the movie commented that they immediately remembered the box art.
But there are other, more cinephilic reasons to explore the straight-to-video era. Kuechler affectionately likens it to an extension of the Roger Corman ethos. Talented, burgeoning artists tackled science fiction, horror and action schlock with equal parts haste and ingenuity.
“For a lot of these movies, they were made for VHS from day one, so they can be filled with props, makeup and effects that look completely good on VHS,” Kuechler says. “I think a lot of them are just properly good movies, budget notwithstanding.” (Whether Doctor Mordrid is a “properly good movie” probably depends on the viewer’s ability to balance amusement and appreciation.)
When Doctor Mordrid‘s studio, Full Moon Features, lost the rights to make a Doctor Strange movie, the father-son directing duo Albert and Charles Band went ahead and did it anyway, making tweaks to differentiate their Doctor from Marvel’s.
Despite the behind-the-scenes chaos, the film entertains, thanks to the bizarre and highly watchable Combs (an actor so versatile that he played 10 different Star Trek characters). Playing a would-be charming hero who doesn’t quite know how to converse with mere mortals, he’s a perfect fit for a peculiar film filled with amulets, pet ravens and stop-motion dinosaur fights to savor.
Like all the VHS Night choices, Doctor Mordrid hails from the theater’s own tape collection. The owners hope that more standout titles, like the otherwise unavailable Traxx, will be screened every year or so, carving Cinemagic’s local niche outside the first-run space.
Frakes says eight months into owning Cinemagic that he is committed to listening to regulars. Many nights after special screenings he and Kuechler could easily head home, but they always wait in the lobby to take an exit survey. Gauging their core audience’s enthusiasm is how Cinemagic crafted this after-dark aesthetic, devoted to genre movies and a dead technology in front of an audience that is very much alive.
“I’m still waiting for the day we run one and I’m going up to say hi and there’s just one person in the auditorium,” Kuechler jokes. “But apparently not!”
SEE IT: Doctor Mordrid: Master of the Unknown plays at Cinemagic, 2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-420-9350, thecinemagictheater.com. Doors 11:30 pm Friday, May 6. $5.