The Fantastic Four (Unreleased, 1994)

With the impending release of Marvel's gargantuan Infinity War spectacle, it's kind of hard to believe there was a time when superhero movies weren't these million-dollar blockbuster productions with huge actors signed on for years at a time. But there was! And while the Tim Burton Batman and the 70s Superman were viable successes, they were outliers and didn't blow up into a huge trend like we have now. The Fantastic Four from 1994 is a film that was never even released and can be legally watched on YouTube just like you're searching for a Kendrick Lamar video or something. And it's, uh, really something.

Director: Oley Sassone

Starring: Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staub, Jay Underwood

IMDb

Co-written with Nathan.

The history behind this thing is that, apparently, Executive Producer Bernd Eichenger wanted to retain the rights to the characters before they expired, so he had to have this at the 11th hour in 1994. So he teamed up with famous producer and director Roger Corman and they ended up putting this movie together, full of a bunch of actors you've never heard of.

It wasn't required that it would be released, just that it existed. And though some people like Stan Lee claimed it was never intended to be released, Eichenger and Corman denied that and claimed that it was. But if you believe the myth, essentially, this is an entire movie with a full cast and crew made just so some guy could make other Fantastic Four movies. Wow. If you ever needed a reason to feel worthless... there you go.

The thing is, it's not even too bad of a movie! Sure, the budget looks pretty low and the effects are goofy as fuck, but it wasn't like this was the top of the crop in terms of that for 1994. The acting isn't bad at all and the story is honestly pretty standard for these kinds of movies.

You get Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom, the latter of whom surely had the most punchable name in school and got beat up all the time, driving him to science. They try this wacky experiment as a comet is passing by, but I guess their numbers were off and Victor gets horribly burned and electrocuted. Whoops! I hope the kid from Species III still gets to do his stupid experiments and the science lab isn't a martyr to this cause now.

Years later, Reed recruits these two random people who lived near him, Sue and Johnny Storm, to go into space and try to do the experiment again. Because they would totally let him do this after his first experiment left one guy maimed. How did he even get to do this at all? What coke-addled executive let this yoohoo go into space again? And it just makes sense to take two random, un-trained people in space, because why would I want ASTRONAUTS going on my super cool science mission? Fuck expertise! Give me amateurs!

But it doesn't work, because a hideously deformed man wearing a monocle and a fedora, called The Jeweler, breaks in and steals their magic jewel thing from the spaceship, which was apparently the only thing keeping them from being fried and their genes rearranged. He replaces it with a replica of the same jewel, you know, just the kind of thing you carry around!

So then they get shot out of the sky and crash-land in a random field, somehow coming out mostly unscathed and with no major injuries. They did get superpowers though, which Reed is mostly nonplussed about. He's just like “yeah, whatever, guess we'll see what happens.” Never even an iota of concern even as the other three are all freaking out. I guess the thought of taking Sue to bed is his main concern.

They get taken in by a lab run by Dr. Doom, who sits on a throne surrounded by flaming pyres and speaks in constant community-college-Shakespearean tones. It's pretty goddamn silly. It's obviously Victor, who was presumed dead by Reed but apparently spent his time after being burned turning into a supervillain with his whole lab and trying to blow stuff up. But Reed didn't know. It's crazy to me that these guys were friends and then after the accident, he's just like nah, I'm not telling anyone where I am, WORLD DOMINATION TIME!

Meanwhile, the Jeweler guy plots to kidnap this blind girl, because I guess he's so delusional that he thinks the reason he can't get a date is because of his looks. How silly! It's because of his shitty personality. I can't even believe they're doing a 'kidnapped woman forced to be a bride' plot. What is this, the fucking 1960s? They do it later with Dr. Doom, too. It's like why not make the same dumb, cliché mistake twice in a row?

And it's so surreal every time this Jeweler character is on screen, because the music gets all campy-goth-style like a musical and he talks like an even worse Shakespeare imitator than Doom does. It's really like they took this character out of a whole different movie and put him in this.

Ben gets mad and ends up leaving, fearing he'll never fit in, as back in the 90s, giant orange rock men just weren't accepted by society. He just kind of wanders the city and it doesn't take long for him to run into the Jeweler's weird underground society of deformed-looking people, feeling that this is the only way I guess. My favorite part is that the others don't even try to find him. They're in the middle of making up a name for themselves, the Fantastic Four, and making costumes! But finding one of their actual team members that make up the 'Four'? Nah, fuck that! Who cares if we have to turn it into 'Fantastic Three' and spend money doing that?

Through some more convoluted events, they find The Thing and then end up fighting Dr. Doom. Doom fires a laser to destroy New York City, motivated no doubt by its obscene rent prices. Johnny does the whole Human Torch thing and the CGI here is actually gorgeous in how silly it is – it turns basically into an early computer game animation, and it looks amazingly silly. But it is a bit endearing. I bet they put as much work into this as people nowadays do on Marvel movies.

Okay. That might not be true. But I'm sure it's true compared to the writing in a DC movie.

That's Fantastic Four, ending with a shot of all of them coming out of a church after a wedding – they're all married now! Or maybe just Reed and Sue. Oh, and Ben and the blind girl he saved from Doom/Jeweler, too. Because I guess saving a girl means she is yours as a prize! People can be prizes! Isn't that great?

That's the movie though. It's silly, it's utterly ridiculous, the budget was clearly low... but it ain't bad. I've seen worse. I mean, most of this is pretty average so far as writing goes. It may be full of cliches and dated bullshit, but I'll take it over any non-Wonder Woman DCEU flick any day.

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