- Title: The Fantastic Four (1994)
- IMDb: link
After holding onto the movie rights for nearly a decade, and with the clock ticking down, German producer Bernd Eichinger reached to Roger Corman to produce a super-hero film on the cheap for only $1,000,000. With only a month of shooting, but several months of post-production, the film seemed to be ready for Labor Day 1993, until it wasn’t. Parties disagree whether the film was ever meant to see the light of day, or simply as leverage to keep the rights in Eichinger’s hands, but either way the film was pulled and never release theatrically. And so the stories began about The Fantastic Four movie that never was. And yet, speaking before Fantastic Four: The First Steps hits theaters, one could make a case that it’s better, or at least certainly not worse, than any of the FF films that did get released over the next 30 years.
Finding its way to comic cons around the country over the years on bootlegged DVD before eventually making its way onto the Internet (where, if you look hard enough, you can still view it in its entirety), the film is definitely cheap and plays on the camp of the story (which, to be fair, aligns with the Silver Age comics). It’s also notable for being the only Fantastic Four film to make note of the problematic age gap between super-scientist Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) and Sue Storm (Rebecca Staab) who falls for him as a teenager.
Much like Fant4stic 20 years later, the plot of the film drafts Victor von Doom (Joseph Culp) as a scientist who works with Reed on the experiment which will ultimately lead to super-powers for the team. However, in an early version of the experiment Victor is apparently killed, while 10 years later Reed works alongside Ben (Michael Bailey Smith), Sue, and her brother Johnny (Jay Underwood) to try one more time to harness the power of the same comet passing close to the Earth. The second time, however, the experiment fails due to the intervention of a thief called the Jeweler (Ian Trigger) who steals an outrageously oversized diamond and replaces it with a fake that creates the accident that grants each of the four their powers.
The Jeweler, the weakest aspect of the film by far, is sort of a cheap version of the Mole Man who is kept around for a running B-plot as he also becomes obsessed with Alicia Masters (Kat Green) who Ben will save after his transformation into the Thing. Mixed in are the machinations and jealousies of Doctor Doom who goes into full super-villain mode complete with giant super-laser. Enter the Fantastic Four, in full costumes, to save the day.
Despite its meager budget (which actually gives it a bit more charm all these years later), the film offers a fairly good depiction of Doctor Doom (enhanced by mostly shooting him in shadow). The group’s costumes leave a bit to be desired, but they get the job done, and the budget effects for the Thing and Human Torch actually work fairly well given the limited technology. And the film’s acting is passable, although some of the story elements and plot points do let the actors down. Despite being 1/100 of the cost, the film is lightyears better than the craptastic 2005 version and arguably just as good (and equally problematic, albeit in other ways) as its sequel. It certainly isn’t fantastic, but for a franchise that’s given us nothing but turkeys (at least so far), you could certainly do worse. Hollywood certainly has.
