I offer to you a tragic tale this week to offset our awesome comedy from last week. This tale, too, will be awesome, only in different ways so strap in and hang on as we look at one of the unsung victims of the Hollywood money machine...
Remember when Marvel films used to be good? What's that you say? Marvel films are good? Well, sure, they make lots of money, and they're well reviewed, and it could be argued that there's still a good bit of passion behind each project, but I would contend that there's just a little something, a sort of je ne sais quoi missing these days. Okay, I have a theory, but I'm trying to build some suspense here. Cut me a break. I'm talking about the days before Disney, really the days before Marvel even had a handful of go to studios to make films. I'm talking the wild west days of licensing options, and low budget cheese fests that made you giggle and forget the world for about 90 minutes. I'm talking about the 90s, well, and the 80s.
Today, there are more Marvel films than anyone truly cares to count, and I'm just talking about ones that have been made since the relative start of this century. I'm going to try anyway because that's what I do, but just trust me when I tell you that it's a long list. If we look at just the MCU, there's: The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Panther. That's just what's been released to date! On the horizon, we have Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War 2 (working title), a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That's a ton of movies! And we've only just done the MCU. Now let's look at what Fox has done this century. We have *inhales deep breath* X-Men, X2: X-Man United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, Logan, The New Mutants, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Fant Four Stic, Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Fox is also going to be able to finish production on Gambit, X-23, X-Force, and Deadpool 3 either before, or after their upcoming merger with Disney. Sony, or subsidiaries thereto, have do Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Ghost Rider, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.They also have Venom on the way this year. Universal, who collaborated with Disney on The Incredible Hulk in 2008, also made 2003's dud Hulk. New Line Cinema puts their name in the hat with Blade, Blade 2, and Blade Trinity. Then Artisan Entertainment graced with another underrated comic film, The Punisher. Marvel Studios followed that one up with Punisher: War Zone. This list seems pretty exhaustive at this point, at least to date. Sorry about the length of this paragraph. You could say that this article has begun to list a little bit. Eh? Eh? No? Okay, fine. Let's move on.
For those of you keeping score, since the year 1998, there have been 46 Marvel films to date with another five scheduled to be released by the end of this year. That means by December 2018, Marvel will have been releasing films on a schedule equivalent to two and one-half films per year for twenty years! I may stand alone in this opinion, but I'm pretty tired of the whole thing. I'm ready for Hollywood to find a different fixation for a while. It wasn't always like that though. Let's take a look at pre-1998 to see what Marvel was doing then. The first Marvel film ever released was Captain America... In 1944. Then Marvel laid pretty low for a while. There were some shows, and some TV movies, but I'm not going to include those because this article could get out of control just off of the lists alone. But in 1986, Howard the Duck was released. This was followed by The Punisher in 1989, and another Captain America in 1990. So... Pre-1998, there were four films. Alright, you could say it was kind of a dark time to be a comic book fan, but again, these were cheese fests that could really show you a fun time, if not an intelligent one, and there is something to be said for that. Now it needs to be said that licensing and options to license where Hollywood and comics are concerned is an ever loving mess to traverse. A lot of these films pre-Blade were produced and released so that the studio could leverage options to use related characters later. These contracts usually stipulated that the studios had to do something with the properties that they had within a certain period of time, or else the options would revert back to the owner, in this case Marvel. Ergo, when Universal Studios put out Howard the Duck, it was probably so that they could retain the rights to the Incredible Hulk, which they'd gotten in order to make the show in the 70s. Between movies and TV shows, they were able to keep the license up through the present day. See how it works now? Good, neither do I, but it's important to understand that going into today's article as this idea of use it or lose it is going to play a big role in our tragic tale.
In the early 90s, before Marvel became one with the House of Mouse, Marvel was most definitely a house divided, but with good reason. They weren't terribly interested in much more than making comics and comic related things like comic collector's cards. It was for this reason that they would farm out duties like TV show development, or film development to outside studios. Once again, the waters could be treacherous though. A studio might get rights to a character, but not all related characters. This usually happened as a result of some overlap with other properties. For example, as we're already kind of getting there, when Constantin Film leveraged the rights to The Fantastic Four, they were denied access to Mole Man, who first appeared in the first issue of Fantastic Four. Seems silly, right? Well, granting access to Mole Man in the late 80s/early 90s would have, in theory, also given Constantin rights to use the Incredible Hulk, who Mole Man had teamed up with at some point earlier, which then would have snowballed not only into Hulk territory, but since Hulk had done team ups with Spider-Man and Wolverine, it would have cascaded into those properties as well. Marvel couldn't allow this as Sony had rights to Spider-Man via the 90s cartoon, and Fox had rights to X-Men, again, via their freakin' sweet 90s cartoon. As a result, when Constantin pursued Fantastic Four, Marvel only gave them rights to the actual Fantastic Four heroes, and basically Doctor Doom because those were the only characters that Marvel could be sure wouldn't result in one studio stepping on the toes of another studio.
Those who have seen recent Fantastic Four films will recognize that these films rely quite heavily on some fantastic CGI. Back in the 80s, and even in the 90s, the option to use CGI to that extent just didn't exist. This meant that any film that Constantin produced using Fantastic Four would either have to have a huge special effects budget in order to pull off the type of sequences that were necessary to sell the production, or it would have to look awful. Enter Roger Corman:
Anyone who has an affinity for B movies should be reasonably familiar with Roger Corman. For those who are not, some highlights are the Death Race series, the Carnosaur series, and several creature feature B movies for the Syfy channel. His style is unmistakable and his movies, although the pinnacle of cheesy, are just a ton of fun to watch. I can't recommend his work enough! Roger Corman is the guy you go to when you have no budget, an unrealistically tight deadline to meet. It's no wonder then, that when
Bernd Eichinger of Constantin Film found himself under the gun to do something with Fantastic Four, he turned to Corman to get the job done. The idea was simple, in 1992, right as Constantin Film's options were set to expire, Eichinger hired Corman to produce a film for an official budget of:
I say that's the official budget because story has it that the actual agreement was that Constantin would proffer up $750,000, and Corman's company would ante up an additional $750,000. Whether this was the actual agreement, or just how it ended up happening, the world may never know.
Production officially began on December 28, 1992, you'll recognize that as being three days before 1993 started, and thus three days before Constantin would lose his option. Oley Sassone was hire to direct, and a crew was put together with a cast to do a shoot that wouldn't last more than 25 days. Guys, that's an outrageously short time in which to film a movie! It's just insane! Now, everything started off swimmingly. The filming happened, mostly, Marvel started to hype the film a little bit, and Constantin was footing the bill as expected. However, around the middle of 1993, and with a release date of Labor Day that year no less, things started to smell fishy. Constantin started skimping on the resources, Stan Lee himself started to down play the entire project, and the release date was tentatively pushed back to January 19, 1994. All still seemed okay though. The film was to get a huge gala release at the Mall of America so everything at least seemed to be above board. Constantin even released a trailer for the film to run with Corman's newest release Carnosaur. People were getting excited and that ultimately ended up being a problem. But, the cast were stoked, and although there were a couple of sequences that needed to be filmed after principle production had ended, they were all doing their part. The cast members paid out of pocket to attend a few conventions, they signed autographs and even made an appearance at SDCC. It was here that when asked about the film, Stan Lee basically said, "We're not going to talk about that." He threw some serious shade on the production right there in front of hundreds of panel attendees and the cast from the film! That's when folks within the production really started to see that there might be issues with the film.
With no funding coming from Constantin by this point, Sassone and his production team started to do what Corman production teams do best, guerrilla film production. One of the editors admitted in an interview for the documentary Doomed! that he kept a master print on him at all times, and when he had other work that allowed him access to editing tools, he would stay at that place until the wee hours of the morning working on Fantastic Four. He wasn't getting paid, and probably could have been fired off the project that he was actually working on, but was so in love with this one film that he was willing to risk everything to see it completed. Sassone needed a sequence of the Thing walking around a darkened city street being scoffed and mocked. They couldn't get Carl Ciarfalio back to do these incidental shots so they shoved their casting director into the suit and shot it with him. They got Ciarfalio back to dub some grunts, but they were under the gun in a serious way, and this was just one of a series of janky miracles that they would end up pulling. Now, anyone who reads this rag knows that I'm pretty fond of film scores. Believe it or not, one exists for this film. Even after the funds had dried up Sassone found a couple of composers who fell in love with the movie. These were brothers David and Eric Wurst. They loved it so much that they spent $6,000 of their own money to hire a 48 piece orchestra and record. The score ended up being about 12 minutes long. They just wrote a few all-purpose themes and then used them carefully throughout the movie.
It was at some point in early 1994 that Eichinger informed Sassone and Corman that the film would never actually get a theatrical release. This was a huge blow to both, and both were understandably upset even as Constantin confiscated all material pertaining to the project and threw it in a vault somewhere. That probably would have been the end of it, but Sassone had kept what served as a final print to show to friends. To hear him tell it, he took it to a place to get transfers made to VHS so that he could at least show close associates that he had, indeed, made a Marvel movie. Shortly after that, unlicensed copies started to crop up at conventions of all types. Here's a picture of my actual copy that I bought at Dragon*Con in 2015:
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| It really does exist, I swear. |
It's through these bootleg copies that the world was able to enjoy a film that was basically used to extend the clock a bit on an option for a company that saw dollar signs attached to a property, but could figure out how to use it. Constantin would release a Fantastic Four cartoon, and eventually, in 2005, Eichinger and crew would release a big budge Fantastic Four movie, but knowing all of this, it easy to hold their diabolical shenanigans against them. Whew! Now that we all know all about the scandalous backstory, let's finally look at Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four!
This is a pretty straightforward movie because Sassone wanted to be as faithful to the source material as he could. As a result, the film covers the origin story of the team as told in Fantastic Four # 1, and the origin story of Dr. Doom as told in Fantastic Four Annual # 2. Hopefully, we all know, at least to a degree, the origin story of the Fantastic Four. In this film, Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom are friends in college. They've devised an experiment that they'll be able to conduct as a result of a passing comet. The experiment goes awry and Von Doom is horribly scarred as a result. Reed feels responsible to a degree and allows his feelings of guilt, coupled with the fact that Reed presumes Victor dead leave that relationship at an end.
After ten years, we see Richards is living at a boarding home run by Sue and Johnny Storm's mom. It gets... a little creepy here as Sue has a crush on Reed who is a great deal older than she, but I think it's still technically legal... barely. Ben Grimm is a friend of the group and know Reed from college. They've all planned to go up into space in a ship that Reed has designed in order to continue the experiment that Reed and Victor started a decade prior. Reed even dedicates the experiment to his long dead friend. They do so and once again, they're all bombarded by cosmic radiation, which mutates them all. Following the bombardment, the ship crashes back to the Earth. Victor sends goons posing as Marines to capture the group so that he might experiment on them for his own gain. However, Reed hatches a plan and they escape. They flee to the Baxter Building, which has been a thing pretty much since the creation of the Fantastic Four, and lay low for a little while. Sue makes those cheesy costumes, but Ben is not having any of that. He resents that he's a rock monster and everyone else at least get to appear normal so he leaves and stumbles across the henchmen of the Jeweler, who was supposed to be Mole Man, but we already talked about that. See? I told you everything would come together.
Doom is pursuing Jeweler because he had hired the Jeweler to steal a rare diamond that was needed to power a laser that Doom had planned to use to destroy New York City. However, Jeweler found a blind woman named Alicia, and had become smitten with her so he swapped the real diamond for a fake, and was going to give the real one to Alicia. All goes terribly awry though as Doom's henchmen find the Jeweler's lair, and steal the diamond back, dispersing the Jeweler's henchmen and Ben in the process. It should be noted at this point that much like the Hulk, Ben has found that if he reaches a state of ultimate zen, he can sometimes revert to his human form this is played as a result of an attraction that he has for Alicia. But as soon as the bullets start flying, he turns back into the thing. He flees to the over streets, and finds himself being mocked and ridiculed. Ben decides then to return to his friends. After returning and reporting, Reed realizes that Dr. Doom is actually Victor. He concludes that the team are the only ones who can stop Doom from leveling the city so they go to his castle in Latveria. There they tangle with Doom's henchmen, and in a final battle, Reed and Victor duke it out. Victor appears to commit suicide as he drops off of an incredibly large fall. However, after falling into mists far below, he glove, which is still hanging on to a ledge moves ever so slightly suggesting that Dr. Doom may yet make a return.
Johnny morphs into Human Torch to deflect the laser beam from Doom's weapon away from NYC and into space. Ben is able to free Alicia, and formally introduce himself. He's afraid that upon feeling the rocky exterior of his body that she'll reject him, but she does not. Awwww!!! The four of them resolve to use their super powers for good, and officially become the Fantastic Four. Reed and Sue get married at the end and everyone lives happily ever after, except for everyone who was involved in making the film.
Alright, let's get one thing out of the way, this is not a great film. It is a good film, and if we're putting in context of what has grown to be a pseudo-franchise, then it's still the best film created around this property. The 2005 film was flashy, had a better special effects budget, and bigger name actors, but it lacked heart, wasn't terribly fun to watch, and dragged on for forever before it finally started doing anything worth watching. I haven't personally watched Fant-Four-Stic, but I've heard tales and they leave me sleeping a little easier at night safe in my ignorance of that celluloid abortion. What this movie has over a lot of Marvel films, although not necessarily those stemming from the MCU, is professionals involved who care about the source material and what that represents to fans. Pretty much everyone involved in making this film wanted to make sure that they did right by fans. That's a far cry from the attitude we see today, especially from Disney, that fans are just going to like whatever crap we decide to package based on brand recognition alone. The people involved in this film cared about the project, and to the extent that they helped fund it out of their own pockets. They were so passionate about the project that the paycheck became irrelevant. I'd like to see how Kevin Feige would react if the paychecks suddenly stopped rolling in. I know that he cares about Marvel quite a bit, but I wonder just how far that affection extends. This movie had people behind it who were giving way more than they actually had to see the project through to completion, and that shows. The fact that we can watch it at all is a testament to the love that those involved had for the project.
I will say, this movie does have a pretty tight script. The story might have a few holes, but it plays out pretty smoothly, and you're not left wondering about things a whole lot. The acting is... passable usually, but there are a few moments of over the top cheesiness. Just remember, it's supposed to be that way. That's Roger Corman's calling card. And if you ask me, it fits with the vibe of the Fantastic Four. The special effects, as we've discussed, are not great. However, for a movie with no more than a $1.5 million budget, they are pretty good, even perhaps mildly impressive in that context. It's not a terribly memorable watch, but it's a lot of fun to put on with a small group of friends in order to enjoy communally. I promise that said friends will have a blast with the cheesy score, low-budget effects, silly acting, and over-the-top situations. It's a great party movie! And it captures, at least in spirit, the Fantastic Four very well. I give it a solid recommendation. It's not terribly hard to track down if you'd like to watch it. In fact you can watch the entire film for free right here if you'd like! I think it's at least worth one watch, particularly if you've slogged through the train wrecks that have been Fantastic Four films throughout this century. I hope that you'll take 90 minutes and seventeen seconds to enjoy this unknown cult classic and that you'll stick around to see what I find to throw under the microscope next week!
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