Well, basically in the late '80s Stan Lee came to an agreement with a film maker called Bernd Eichinger to release a "Fantastic Four" film. Eichinger shopped it around the big studios but there was no interest, presumably because everyone remembered how badly things had gone wrong with George Lucas' "Howard The Duck", the last really big budget Marvel film. By 1991, the license was about to run out and Lee wasn't about to grant an extension. So Eichinger basically just said sod it, roped in indie producers New Horizons to produce it on an extremely low budget and the film was written, shot and produced.
What happened next is open to who you ask - either Marvel got wind of the fact that an ultra-low budget film version of one of its most popular comics was about to be released and quickly moved to shut the project down as they didn't want the brand name tarnished or the whole thing was just a ruse by Eichinger to ensure the rights for the franchise remained with him as per the terms of the contract (he would be one of the main writers behind the 2005 version of the film) and he never had any intention of releasing it in the first place. Either way, the film was due to be released in early '94 but never saw the light of day. However, bootleg copies started to show up in subsequent years (let's just say this film is fairly easy to track down on Youtube should you feel so inclined) and it quickly gained a reputation as being pretty much the ultimate Marvel B-movie goof-fest. Let's investigate a bit further shall we? Side note though - apologies for the poor quality screenshots on this 'un, as you can probably guess they were taken from an online bootleg rather than a DVD...
The story begins with three college buddies and housemates, Reed Richards, Victor Von Doom and Ben Grimm who all lodge with their landlady Mrs Storm and her two children, teenager Sue who has a crush on Reed and her little brother Johnny. Reed and Victor are two science whizzkids who've been working on a project to harness the energy of a comet which passes the earth every ten years. Incidentally the young version of Sue is played by Mercedes McNab who fellow teen vamp aficionados might remember as playing mean girl turned lovable vampire ditz Harmony in "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". She's pretty much the only actor in this film I've even heard of by the way which probably says a lot.
Due to the comet approaching faster than they'd expected, Reed and Victor have to set up their experiment hurriedly and inevitably it misfires with Victor getting fried by an energy ray. Ben manages to rush in and eventually knock him out of the way of the laser but at the hospital later, it's revealed that while Ben survived, Victor didn't. However, after Reed and Ben leave, we see a couple of surgeons opening up Victor's body bag in the hospital morgue and preparing to operate...
Ten years later and Sue and Johnny have both followed in Reed, Victor and Ben's footsteps and become science students themselves. Reed and Ben have continued their research since the failed experiment previously and have managed to get the funding to launch a space mission to go up and study the comet a bit more closely. However, the night before their mission is due to take place, a thief called the Jeweller breaks into Reed's lab and switches the diamond with a fake one. He is being watched by the supervillain Dr Doom who was planning to sabotage the operation himself but now decides that seeing as the equipment's been tampered with that he won't need to.
Inevitably, when the spaceship with the Fantastic Four (as Mrs Storm refers to them) goes up, it gets hit by the comet and vapourised. However, Reed, Johnny, Sue and Ben all wake up in the middle of some hills unscathed even though their spaceship has exploded around them. As the evening goes on, they realise that each of them has gained superpowers - Johnny can now ignite stuff using his body (as demonstrated when he sneezes and sets fire to a bush), Reed can now extend his limbs and Sue can become invisible. Ben seems unaffected until the next morning when some soldiers turn up to take the quartet home and he's suddenly turned into a huge monster with rock skin (and a fondness for the phrase "It's clobberin' time!" which he uses before every single fight he's in to the point of extreme annoyingness).
The four are taken back to the lab for debriefing but their stay there turns out to be a lot longer than they'd expected. It's only when they try to escape that they realise they've actually been held captive by Dr Doom who was intending to steal their powers for his own use. Doom sends his guards in after them but the Four make light work of them and escape.
Doom is also trying to recover the diamond that the Jeweller stole from Reed's lab. He sends two of his henchmen (including one who looks oddly like Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters) to bargain with him but it turns out that the Jeweller is actually the head of a group of freaks who live in an underground cave with him. Realising they're outnumbered, the guards leave quietly with Doom opting to take care of the situation himself. The Jeweller has also kidnapped a blind sculptor called Alicia who is a romantic interest of Ben's.
Back in the city, the Fantastic Four have established a building as their headquarters and are trying to work out how to stop Doom who Reed has now worked out is his old pal Victor. However, Ben decides that he can't stay with the group as unlike them he doesn't look normal enough to blend in with everyday society. After a bit of wandering he ends up being taken in by the Jeweller and his cronies. However, soon afterwards their lair is raided by Doom and his followers with the diamond taken along with Alicia who Doom realises he can use as a bargaining chip against Ben.
Ben returns to the Four's lab and reunites with the gang who've now had some natty new costumes designed for them by Sue. They decide to head for Doom's castle to put a stop to his plans but find it unguarded. Of course, it's a trap and the four are hit by energy rays which hold them in place so Doom can drain their power. However, Reed manages to somehow slide his foot under the bottom of his holding ray and knocks the machine over allowing the Four to escape. While the team beat down the guards and Ben rescues Alicia, Doom quickly activates a laser pointed at New York and does a runner with Reed in pursuit.
Realising that something needs to take down the laser, Johnny quickly turns his whole body into a torch and flies off to race the laser in a sequence that looks like it came from the film "Tron" ten years or so earlier. Meanwhile, Doom and Reed slug it out on the balcony with Doom eventually falling off the ledge. Reed attempts to save him but Doom simply disengages his hand from his arm and falls away. As Reed and Sue leave, we see Doom's severed hand start to move suggesting that this isn't over yet.
Meanwhile, Johnny manages to outrun the laser just before it hits New York and uses his power to neutralise it. With the world saved, the team return to HQ with Reed and Sue getting married in the film's final scene.
Okay so it looks more like it was made in 1984 than 1994. But if you can get past the terrible production, the somewhat pointless sideplot with the Jeweller, the silly special FX and the ultra-low budget restrictions, Fantastic Four is...okay for what it is I guess? At least it's fairly faithful to the comic books even if it's done in a lower-than-lo-fi way and I'd argue that it falls on the right side of the "so bad it's almost good" category line and certainly there's parts of the script which suggest that it maybe wasn't meant to be taken too seriously in the first place. I'd even go so far as to say that if they'd done this script tarted up with a budget that consisted of more than whatever they could scrape together from down the back of the sofa then it could've actually been a reasonably decent film. As it is, for 90 minutes of low-rent fun...well, you could do much worse put it that way.
This isn't the last we'll be hearing from the Fantastic Four in this blog by any stretch of the imagination - the series would be rebooted no less than three times in the 21st century. Unfortunately, unlike this effort, these films were very much played straight but without the quality significantly improving. But that's another moan for another blog...
FINAL RATING: ➃➃➃➃ (4/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
2. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
3. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
4. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
5. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
6. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
7. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
8. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
9. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
10. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
11. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
12. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
13. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
14. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
15. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
16. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
17. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Someone thought that crossing the X-Men with Harry Potter was a good idea. They were wrong...
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