{"id":12597,"date":"2025-07-22T22:42:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12597"},"modified":"2025-07-22T22:42:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:42:40","slug":"the-fantastic-four-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/07\/22\/the-fantastic-four-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fantastic Four (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Fantastic Four<\/strong> (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Horizons\/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Oley Sassone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Craig J. Nevius and Kevin Rock\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David and Eric Wurst\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mark Parry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sometimes it\u2019s necessary to separate a movie\u2019s artistic merits from the overall enjoyment factor in order to write an accurate review. There\u2019s no question that The Fantastic Four<\/strong> is a bad movie for reasons I will go into shortly. That doesn\u2019t mean I didn\u2019t enjoy it. It\u2019s bad but watchable. It\u2019s one of those movies you need to see for yourself at least once. That is, if you can get your hands on a copy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You see, The Fantastic Four<\/strong> has never been officially released in any format. It was supposed to come out in January \u201994, 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\u2019s not a quality copy, but The Fantastic Four<\/strong> isn\u2019t exactly a quality film, is it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ten 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 \u201cThe Jeweler\u201d (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\u2019re made of elastic, Sue can turn invisible, Johnny can psychically generate fire and Ben becomes a rock-like being called \u201cThe Thing\u201d (played by Ciarfalio).<\/p>\n

\u00a0As I\u2019m 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\u2019t have that, can we?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose the best way to describe The Fantastic Four<\/strong> 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\u2019t get his money\u2019s worth. The special effects are terrible. The Thing costume looks like something you\u2019d see at Comic Con. It\u2019s one of the cheesiest, shoddiest productions I\u2019ve seen this side of an Ed Wood masterpiece. It doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s better than the 2015 version.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition, The Fantastic Four<\/strong> is poorly edited and badly lit. The narrative is muddled at times. This is sloppy filmmaking. It\u2019s just not a good movie. HOWEVER, it works as a cinematic curiosity. The mere fact that you can say you\u2019ve seen it gives you a feeling of satisfaction. It\u2019s bad, but laughably so. And it\u2019s never boring. It runs only 90 minutes so you\u2019re 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.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fantastic Four (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Horizons\/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Oley Sassone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Craig J. Nevius and Kevin Rock\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David and Eric Wurst\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mark Parry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, Michael Bailey Smith, Carl Ciarfalio, Joseph Culp, Kat Green, Ian Trigger, Annie Gagen, Phillip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/The-Fantastic-Four-1994-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12608,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597\/revisions\/12608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}