ROGER CORMAN'S THE FANTASTIC FOUR (1994)

DIRECTED by Oley Sassone

SCREENPLAY by Craig J. Nevius & Kevin Rock

STARRING  - Alex Hyde-White as Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic,  Rebecca Staab as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman (Mercedes McNab as young Sue Storm),  Jay Underwood as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Phillip Van Dyke as young Johnny Storm),  Michael Bailey Smith as Ben Grimm,  Carl Ciafalio as The Thing,  Joeseph Culp as Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom,  Kat Green as Alicia Masters,  Ian Trigger as The Jeweller,  Annie Gagen as May Storm.

PLOT  -  Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom are two brilliant and gifted science students living in a boarding house with fellow student, Ben Grimm. The boarding house is run by May Storm who lives there with her two children, Sue and Johnny. 

A comet named Collossus is due to pass into Earth's orbit, Reed and Victor have built an experimental machine designed to harness it's energy with a view to benefiting mankind. However, the experiment goes wrong - the machine overloads and blows up, leaving Victor horribly burnt and presumed dead. Reed vows to continue with his research in honour of his fallen friend.

Ten years later - Reed has built a rocket ship designed to tail the comet when it returns and again harness it's energy. Reed with the help of Ben and a now adult Sue and Johnny man the spacecraft. Little do they know, a vital crystal component designed to shield the craft's crew from cosmic radiation has been stolen by the criminal known as the Jeweller. The craft takes off.

The crew are bombarded by cosmic radiation.

The craft crashes back to Earth.

Miraculously the crew survive, but they find the radiation has physically changed them and granted them uncanny super powers. Reed can stretch any part of his body to any length, Sue can turn invisible, Johnny can generate and control fire and Ben has been transformed into a rocky skinned super strong monster. Together they become the Fantastic Four.

However, unknown to them Victor Von Doom has also survived and he's had ten years to grow bitter and insane. Doctor Doom is about to make his move and the newly formed Fantastic Four had better look out...

PERFORMANCES  - These days it seems you can't move at your local cinema multiplex without coming across a movie based on Marvel superheroes. These are, of course, lavish big budget affairs with state of the art special effects and "A" list Hollywood actors portraying the assorted super powered heroes and villians...but it wasn't always like this, not by a long chalk...

Back in 1994, Marvel superheroes weren't the cinematic flavour of the month. This foray into the world of Marvel Comics was produced by B-movie master Roger Corman on a staggeringly low budget, and believe me - it shows...Christ, does it show.

The film was only made so that the company that owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie could keep those rights, its arguable that it was ever actually intended to be released but as soon as Marvel bigwigs took one look at the low budget mess that had been made of thier very first modern superheroes they actually paid the production company MORE MONEY THAN IT ACTUALLY COST TO MAKE THE DAMN THING IN THE FIRST PLACE to quietly bury the film and ensure that it remained unreleased.

Thus it came to pass, but now thanks to the modern miracle that is the Internet,  it is possible to now watch this lost B-movie trashterpiece in all it's dubious glory, if you know where to look (Hint - try YouTube).

Obviously, you're not going to be getting any A-list actors here but are they actually bad ? Well...surprisingly enough...No, they're not. I mean, they're not going to win any Oscars or anything but for a B-movie they're perfectly serviceable. The other thing you have to remember is that these then young and upcoming actors where sold a dream. They where told by the production company that they where being cast to appear in the "next big summer blockbuster", they legitimately thought they where going to become stars on the back of this shitfest, they where, of course, utterly shafted, and I think (by all accounts) many of them started to smell a rat midway through production, but the fact remains, these performers actually did thier LEVEL BEST to deliver a decent film because all thier hopes and dreams for thier careers where riding on this. Such is the cutthroat world of Hollywood.

Alex Hyde-White plays Reed Richards and he actually captures the essence of The Fantastic Four's illustrious leader pretty well (despite being hampered by an unconvincing hairpiece that gives him Mr Fantastic's trademark greying temples). Reed is a driven and dedicated scientist first and a "man of action" second. He gets some nice scenes, which despite being poorly scripted, do manage to capture Reed's geeky enthusiasm for science. This comes over particularly well in the scene where Reed hypothesises that the powers the group have been granted are based on thier own individual personalities (ie - Sue is shy and doesn't like to be noticed, so she turns invisible etc.), as explanations go it's pretty ropey but Hyde-White at least manages to sell it.

Rebecca Staab also captures the "essence" of Sue Storm, at least she does of the early 60's version of the character as scripted here. By the 90's, in the comics at least, the character of Sue was much more forthright and "badass" whereas here she's very much in line with the earliest version of the character (which makes sense seeing as this adapts the origin story). Stabb (who reminds me of a blonde version of Molly Ringwald) plays Sue as being a dutiful and slightly shy girlfriend to Reed (which is slightly disturbing  seeing that she was about twelve years old when an adult Reed meets her in the prologue,  but different times and all that...). She doesn't get a lot to do really, but once again she captures the character "as was" well enough.

Jay Underwood is the literally hot-headed Johnny Storm, again he captures the original character's kid-brother cockiness and gets some comedic moments when his powers are first manifesting (he seems to fart out fire at one point), he also gets a decent dramatic scene where he starts to panic about what he's turning into and starts to lose it a bit. Again, nothing spectacular but it works well enough.

Something that does confuse me is why they decided to cast two actors in the role of Ben Grimm/The Thing. Michael Bailey Smith plays him in his human form and Carl Ciafalio plays him in his mutated form. Not only are the two completely different physical builds - Bailey Smith is tall and muscular whilst Ciafalio is shorter, fatter and less muscular (surely Ben should grow in size when he transforms into the Thing not get smaller ?), but thier voices also sound COMPLETELY different (Ciafalio even has a totally different accent). It makes no sense and ruins the character. 

Ben also gets a romance with a blind girl, Alicia Masters (Kat Green). The extent of Green's "blind acting" seems to consist of her staring into the middle distance and never blinking. It doesn't convince. Human Ben clumsily knocks into Alicia and its "love at first sight" (or love at first "face feel" in Alicia's case), it all happens way too quickly and again doesn't convince.

Joeseph Culp plays the FF's arch nemesis Doctor Doom. Culp is massively hampered in his attempts by the costume he has to wear (which looks OK, if a little "plasticy"), this is mainly down to the mask which manages to completely obscure a good fifty percent of his dialogue. Given that Doom is a ranting, raving madman it sounds exactly like what it is...a man shouting in a plastic mask. Apparently Culp was mortified when he saw the final film and begged the producers to let him re-record all his dialogue and add this "cleaned up" version via ADR (which would have been standard practice in a movie with a higher budget). The producers refused, ruining what would otherwise have been a fairly decent stab at portraying Doctor Doom onscreen.

We also get a pretty pointless secondary villian in the form of The Jeweller (Ian Trigger), he was apparently originally meant to be the FF's other arch foe - The Mole Man but they couldn't get the rights to use him, so instead we get saddled with this cheap knockoff. Trigger hams it up well enough but the character is just so distractingly half-baked that he just comes over as being really annoying. I just wanted the Thing to punch his head off if I'm being honest.

Oh, and both Doom and the Jeweller's credibility is further hampered by the fact that they're both saddled with annoying "comedy" henchmen. You can tell they're "comedy" henchman because whenever they're onscreen they're always accompanied by annoying "comedy" music on the soundtrack. Needless to say both pairs are about as funny as an AIDS diagnosis.

SFX - Good grief - here's where things get REALLY shitty. Strap yourselves in because its going to get emotional.

The only special effect that works in the entire film is the animatronic head that they use for the Thing. This actually does look good and pulls some convincingly lifelike facial expressions. 

He looks about as authentic to the original comic character as its possible to get. I'm betting that a good 90 percent of the film's budget went on this mask because everything else looks like total shit.

Want to show the human Ben Grimm transform into the Thing ? Then make the screen spin like a washing machine...

They ACTUALLY do this !!!

Want to show a spacecraft crash landing to Earth ? Simple, use some crappy model shots and then cut to all your actors standing in a field looking dazed whilst some random bits of theatre scenery burns limply in the background...

Then we get the first appearance of the Fantastic Four's "awesome powers". Mr Fantastic's stretching powers are usually shown by Hyde-White being shot at bizzare camera angles that make his limbs look out of proportion.

They sometimes use a rubber "telescopic" hand or failing that a rubber arm being waved around.

Sue Storm's powers of invisibility are "achieved" using a bog standard video effect that was available on most camcorders that you could get hold of in the 80's.

Johnny Storm mainly just fires flames from his hands (unlike the comics where he looks like his whole body is made of fire), this is done with bad animation usually.

It's not until the final five minutes that Johnny fully "flames on" and they definitely saved the shittest till last. Johnny in full-on Human Torch mode is rendered in the cheapest looking 90's CGI that I've ever seen. It looks like a really bad early PC or PlayStation One game. 

Literally ALL CGI ages faster and more dramatically then any other type of effects work, but this must have looked terrible even back then.

It gets worse, Johhny is blasted by Dr Doom's laser and spins out of control in one of the most badly animated sequences that has ever been put to film.

Utter. Utter. Utter. SHITE !!!!

VIOLENCE  - Villainous henchmen get beaten and blasted left right and centre, though you never actually get the impression that any of them have been severely injured at all.

In the final gripping showdown between Mr Fantastic and Doctor Doom, Reed uses a telescopic punch to knock Doom off the side of a "high up" castle parapet (which looks like its being filmed in a theatre). Doom loses his grip and plunges to his...er...doom. Naturally it all looks as crappy as we've come to expect.

RATING  - This a terrible film. True, its entertaining for entirely the wrong reasons but its bloody awful all the same. The sad fact is, there could have been a good little movie lurking in here somewhere if only it had been given a bit more TLC by the producers, instead it was literally shat out and then taken out to the back paddock to be metaphorically shot in the head. The actors (whilst not technically great) and the script (whilst also not being technically great either) at least try thier best to capture the spirit of the original Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Marvel comics, but alas they where hamstrung from the start by cynical corporate politics which meant the film only got rushed out so that its rights holders could greedily hang onto thier precious licence.

I'm going to forgo my usual ratings system and give this film THREE separate ratings - one rating for the film as it stands, a rating for the effort the actors put in seeing as they got so badly shafted and lied to by the production company, and a final rating for the shitty way in which the production company treated everyone involved (NOTE - Corman himself ISN'T to blame, he was just commissioned to make the thing and was doing a job like everyone else).

Here goes...

3 out of 5 for the film itself (its probably only actually worth a 2 but it does get by on a certain amount of dubious charm).

4 out of 5 for the efforts the cast and crew put in, these people were sold a dream and worked hard but ultimately got screwed over, so they deserve some kind of recognition at least.

Finally - 1 out of 5 for executive producer Bernd Eichinger and his various "yes men" and cronies who where responsible for this mess for the most greedy and cynical of reasons imaginable. As Stan Lee himself said about this whole situation -"I didn't much care for it". 'Nuff said.

ART - Below official poster art for the film before it was strangled at birth...

Although the movie was never officially released, there are bootleg copies available...

Also available is the documentary "Doomed" which tells the full fascinating behind the scenes story of this cinematic car crash.