Any longtime Horror Drive-In reader is painfully aware of my disdain for superhero movies. Being an unwilling witness to the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer before watching MaXXXine yesterday didn't exactly improve my disposition. Oooh, lotsa f-bombs. Edgy.
My interest in the aborted Roger Corman version of The Fantastic Four began in 1993. I was a Film Threat Magazine fanatic in those days. Threat championed underground and independent pictures, and was a vital resource for those of us who looked beyond normal movie releases. Editor Chris Gore was doing important work, but there were increasing glimpses of a typical Star Wars/Gamer/Comics geek mentality in his behavior. I was startled by the cover of FT #12. I was used to seeing things like Reservoir Dogs, Dazed and Confused, and Freaked. The Fantastic Four was blazoned in full garish color.
OK, this version of FF was being made by Roger Corman, so that made it a little better.
Wait. Roger Corman, notorious low budget movie tycoon doing a Marvel superhero movie? Looking back it isn't all that surprising. Schlockmeister Albert Pyun did Captain America a couple years beforehand. A cheapo adaptation of The Punisher was made by New World Pictures in 1989. It wasn't the best of times for Marvel movies.
Film Threat did a huge write-up about the Corman iteration of The Fantastic Four, and frankly it looked terrible even by nineties Corman standards. It looked so bad I was tempted to at least rent the videocassette just to see the cheesy spectacle of it all.
A funny thing happened along the way: Nothing.
The Fantastic Four never came out. Not in any form. No videotape, no USA cable premier, nothing whatsoever. I didn't give it a lot of thought, but I was pretty sure I wasn't missing out on much.
I heard rumors here and there, and I began to see bootleg tapes and DVDs showing up at conventions. I was still mildly curious, but not enough to shell out money for one.
Of course Marvel has ballooned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history. Hell, it's probably the biggest. But what of that poor little Fantastic Four movie languishing in obscurity?
The answers came in 2015 with a documentary called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four. I waited until I found a dirt cheap DVD to watch it.
Decent, hard working film people made a valiant attempt to bring the Science Fiction-based Fantastic Four story to the screen with a Corman-sized budget. It wasn't the smartest endeavor. I have nothing at all against microbudget movies. I watch intelligent, worthwhile mumblecore features that cost under a thousand dollars. Trying to make an effects-heavy story like The Fantastic Four on a pauper's budget is a fool's errand. That never stopped Corman before.
Still, they did their all. Most of the participants are interviewed in Doomed. They range from fierce pride in having done their best to shamefaced humility about it all.
So what happened?
The exact machinations behind it all are a bit murky, but it seemed that an option for a cheap FF movie was on the table. Big plans for a Marvel movie empire were in the works. The idea was to allow a small company, say Roger Corman's New Horizons production team, make the film to satisfy legal details. Then it would be fairly easy to squelch the entire thing.
According to Roger, he was given a million dollars to cease and desist on distribution. His investment was $750,000, so he came out ahead. And the big suits went on to their victorious onslaught of Marvel properties onto an innocent public.
Was it really all that big of a crime? Were we really out much? The cast and crew were paid. No one lost on the deal. On the other hand, people don't do Roger Corman movies for the money. They do them so they can use them on a resume. The poor guys didn't even get that much.
Oh my God does the movie look bad. Atrocious. Rotten. The clips used in the doc are unbelievably terrible. One, in which the stretching arm of Mr. Fantastic comes up out of a car and waves goodbye, would make Ed Wood blush in embarrassment.
Doomed is a fascinating document about a nasty little chapter in movie history. It was dirty business, cynically planned from the onset of the project. I felt for the people involved, even if they were all chuckling about the experience.
I can't say Hollywood is any better today. Look at some of the reports of scum tactics from the studios in the screenwriter and actor strikes from a couple years ago.
The hope is that one day the movie will be released. Or perhaps all prints were destroyed. A copy leaked out decades ago, which resulted in all those cruddy bootlegs. It's highly possible a print is collecting dust in a vault somewhere.
If The Fantastic Four, the original Fantastic Four ever does see the light of day, I will probably watch it. I won't expect much, but I'm pretty sure I'll like it more than Deadpool & Wolverine.
Written by Mark Sieber
My interest in the aborted Roger Corman version of The Fantastic Four began in 1993. I was a Film Threat Magazine fanatic in those days. Threat championed underground and independent pictures, and was a vital resource for those of us who looked beyond normal movie releases. Editor Chris Gore was doing important work, but there were increasing glimpses of a typical Star Wars/Gamer/Comics geek mentality in his behavior. I was startled by the cover of FT #12. I was used to seeing things like Reservoir Dogs, Dazed and Confused, and Freaked. The Fantastic Four was blazoned in full garish color.

Wait. Roger Corman, notorious low budget movie tycoon doing a Marvel superhero movie? Looking back it isn't all that surprising. Schlockmeister Albert Pyun did Captain America a couple years beforehand. A cheapo adaptation of The Punisher was made by New World Pictures in 1989. It wasn't the best of times for Marvel movies.
Film Threat did a huge write-up about the Corman iteration of The Fantastic Four, and frankly it looked terrible even by nineties Corman standards. It looked so bad I was tempted to at least rent the videocassette just to see the cheesy spectacle of it all.
A funny thing happened along the way: Nothing.
The Fantastic Four never came out. Not in any form. No videotape, no USA cable premier, nothing whatsoever. I didn't give it a lot of thought, but I was pretty sure I wasn't missing out on much.
I heard rumors here and there, and I began to see bootleg tapes and DVDs showing up at conventions. I was still mildly curious, but not enough to shell out money for one.
Of course Marvel has ballooned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history. Hell, it's probably the biggest. But what of that poor little Fantastic Four movie languishing in obscurity?
The answers came in 2015 with a documentary called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four. I waited until I found a dirt cheap DVD to watch it.
Decent, hard working film people made a valiant attempt to bring the Science Fiction-based Fantastic Four story to the screen with a Corman-sized budget. It wasn't the smartest endeavor. I have nothing at all against microbudget movies. I watch intelligent, worthwhile mumblecore features that cost under a thousand dollars. Trying to make an effects-heavy story like The Fantastic Four on a pauper's budget is a fool's errand. That never stopped Corman before.
Still, they did their all. Most of the participants are interviewed in Doomed. They range from fierce pride in having done their best to shamefaced humility about it all.
So what happened?
The exact machinations behind it all are a bit murky, but it seemed that an option for a cheap FF movie was on the table. Big plans for a Marvel movie empire were in the works. The idea was to allow a small company, say Roger Corman's New Horizons production team, make the film to satisfy legal details. Then it would be fairly easy to squelch the entire thing.
According to Roger, he was given a million dollars to cease and desist on distribution. His investment was $750,000, so he came out ahead. And the big suits went on to their victorious onslaught of Marvel properties onto an innocent public.

Was it really all that big of a crime? Were we really out much? The cast and crew were paid. No one lost on the deal. On the other hand, people don't do Roger Corman movies for the money. They do them so they can use them on a resume. The poor guys didn't even get that much.
Oh my God does the movie look bad. Atrocious. Rotten. The clips used in the doc are unbelievably terrible. One, in which the stretching arm of Mr. Fantastic comes up out of a car and waves goodbye, would make Ed Wood blush in embarrassment.
Doomed is a fascinating document about a nasty little chapter in movie history. It was dirty business, cynically planned from the onset of the project. I felt for the people involved, even if they were all chuckling about the experience.
I can't say Hollywood is any better today. Look at some of the reports of scum tactics from the studios in the screenwriter and actor strikes from a couple years ago.
The hope is that one day the movie will be released. Or perhaps all prints were destroyed. A copy leaked out decades ago, which resulted in all those cruddy bootlegs. It's highly possible a print is collecting dust in a vault somewhere.
If The Fantastic Four, the original Fantastic Four ever does see the light of day, I will probably watch it. I won't expect much, but I'm pretty sure I'll like it more than Deadpool & Wolverine.
Written by Mark Sieber
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