The Fantastic Four (1994) New Horizons/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure RT: 90 minutes Rated PG (some violence) Director: Oley Sassone Screenplay: Craig J. Nevius and Kevin Rock Music: David and Eric Wurst Cinematography: Mark Parry Release date: N/A Cast: Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, Michael Bailey Smith, Carl Ciarfalio, Joseph Culp, Kat Green, Ian Trigger, Annie Gagen, Phillip Van Dyke, Mercedes McNab, Ricky Dean Logan. Box Office: N/A
Rating: *
Sometimes it’s necessary to separate a movie’s artistic merits from the overall enjoyment factor in order to write an accurate review. There’s no question that The Fantastic Four is a bad movie for reasons I will go into shortly. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. It’s bad but watchable. It’s one of those movies you need to see for yourself at least once. That is, if you can get your hands on a copy.
You see, The Fantastic Four has never been officially released in any format. It was supposed to come out in January ’94, but the studio pulled it indefinitely. Different reasons have been given for this, but the most popular one (espoused by the man himself, Stan Lee) appears to be that it was never intended to be shown to the public. It was made solely for the purposes of co-producer Bernd Eichinger retaining the rights to the property. Whatever the reason, the only way to see the Roger Corman-produced superhero flick is to obtain a bootleg copy, typically available at comic book conventions. It’s not a quality copy, but The Fantastic Four isn’t exactly a quality film, is it?
The storyline itself is okay. It starts with college buds Reed Richards (White, The Toy) and Victor Von Doom (Culp, Mad Men) trying an experiment with a passing comet only to have it go horribly wrong. Reed believes Victor to be dead when in actuality the alive but disfigured man is taken away by a couple of Russians.
Ten years later, Reed attempts the same experiment on board a spacecraft, this time joined by friends Ben Grimm (Smith, Charmed) and siblings Sue (Staab, Love Potion No. 9) and Johnny Storm (Underwood, The Boy Who Could Fly). Once again it goes wrong, this time due to a necessary component, a large diamond, being replaced with a fake by an ugly little spud called “The Jeweler” (Trigger, Countess Dracula). Their spacecraft crashes to Earth and soon thereafter, the foursome find that they have superpowers. Reed can stretch his appendages like they’re made of elastic, Sue can turn invisible, Johnny can psychically generate fire and Ben becomes a rock-like being called “The Thing” (played by Ciarfalio).
As I’m sure you know, Victor becomes Dr. Doom and has it out for our heroes. Not one to play nice with other villains, Doom wants to get his metallic mitts on the giant diamond and use it to power a giant laser with which he intends to destroy New York City. We can’t have that, can we?
I suppose the best way to describe The Fantastic Four is incredibly campy. Would you expect anything less from Corman, the original schlockmeister himself? He had a budget of $1 million to work with and it sure looks like he didn’t get his money’s worth. The special effects are terrible. The Thing costume looks like something you’d see at Comic Con. It’s one of the cheesiest, shoddiest productions I’ve seen this side of an Ed Wood masterpiece. It doesn’t help that the quality of the picture on the DVD is a second or third-generation copy. The acting is also terrible. At no time does it ever rise above an amateur level. Still, it’s better than the 2015 version.
In addition, The Fantastic Four is poorly edited and badly lit. The narrative is muddled at times. This is sloppy filmmaking. It’s just not a good movie. HOWEVER, it works as a cinematic curiosity. The mere fact that you can say you’ve seen it gives you a feeling of satisfaction. It’s bad, but laughably so. And it’s never boring. It runs only 90 minutes so you’re not investing too much time in this bow-wow of a superhero flick. Who knows if it will ever be made available to the public (in the legal sense, that is)? If it ever is, I nominate it for the RiffTrax treatment.
