The first time they made a Fantastic Four movie....

March 24, 2024 1:42 PM

I'll just put this here. Maybe people will enjoy it. Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four (Full Movie) 2015 [1h24m]
posted by hippybear (31 comments total)

The link doesn't work for me, but this one does
posted by chavenet at 2:09 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

I own this movie on a VHS tape somewhere, probably right next to the tape I bought of the Generation X tv series pilot that aired a few years later.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:16 PM on March 24

I think we've seen this at MST Club. If it's the right one, it has an awesome version of Doctor Doom.
posted by JHarris at 2:20 PM on March 24 [3 favorites]

I seem to remember that the stretching effects were… let’s just say the budget didn’t stretch to that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:27 PM on March 24 [2 favorites]

This is fascinating. I also had the VHS. The soundtrack music was pretty good, as well.
posted by Rash at 2:55 PM on March 24

I, too, had a bootleg of this movie on VHS. There’s some fun to be had despite the no-budget FX. I do seem to remember Joseph Culp (son of Robert Culp) really struggling under the Dr. Doom costume and overdoing gestures because of it.
posted by Eikonaut at 3:07 PM on March 24

I think if you watch the documentary, you'll find that it was a conscious choice based on body language by Mussolini, amongst other choices.

It's a really good documentary about the making of a movie, very much filled with love for the project, and if you're commenting here and are not watching it, you're missing out.
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

It kinda looks better than you'd expect, given the era and the budget and so on. One could argue it compares favorably to subsequent Fantastic Four movies, none of which have the excuses of being cheap, or being made before the heyday of CGI.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:20 PM on March 24

I remember hype for this film showing up in WIRED magazine, because of the very idea of using CGI for a superhero film. It was new and novel, at the time!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:27 PM on March 24 [2 favorites]

hippybear, at an hour and 24 minutes I can't watch the doc right now, but I'll try to later!
posted by JHarris at 4:31 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

The modern FF movie whiffed so hard on interpreting Victor von Doom. You shouldn't scale Doom down and try to make him a normal evil guy. You just have to embrace the pomp and melodrama.

You don't fit Doom into your story. Your story must accommodate DOOM!
posted by Scattercat at 4:35 PM on March 24 [16 favorites]

Found it in the Internet Archive, if you want more than just clips and its creators talking about.
posted by Rash at 4:38 PM on March 24 [9 favorites]

That's amazing, Rash. Thank you!

Honestly the footage I've seen of the animatronics for The Thing's mask look astounding. Light years better than Howard The Duck.

There's so much love for the film in the documentary... that's the main reason I linked it. People were genuinely trying to make a AAA film on an indie budget.
posted by hippybear at 4:41 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

Just because the FPP is a little unclear, the documentary about Roger Corman's movie is from 2015. The actual Roger Corman movie is from 1994.
posted by rikschell at 5:52 PM on March 24 [2 favorites]

There are also non-Roger Corman Fantastic Four movies released in 2005, 2015, and 2025.
posted by rikschell at 5:53 PM on March 24

Trying to recall now how I was even aware of this production, at the time. Possibly the first I heard of it was on Usenet a year or two later, which is how/where I scored my tape, which was a horrible dub, at least second or third generation. I do recall hearing these tapes were easy to acquire at comic book conventions in the mid-90s.
posted by Rash at 6:01 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

Wondering now if the new, unreleased 'Batgirl' will show up in archive.org. (But one can't show too much interest in that film for fear of resembling Rusty Brown.)
posted by Rash at 6:06 PM on March 24

Wondering now if the new, unreleased 'Batgirl' will show up in archive.org.

Maybe eventually?

Coyote vs Acme is another one that is going to be memory-holed.

The People's Joker, also, although maybe that's getting a bit of street cred and a bit of circulation?

I fucking hate late stage capitalism hollywood.
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM on March 24 [4 favorites]

I do recall hearing these tapes were easy to acquire at comic book conventions in the mid-90s.

The bootleg tape/DVD sellers are still around at the medium-sized conventions. I have certainly seen them for sale at a recent local show.

The Corman FF tape was a staple at these grey-market booths, along with Albert Pyun's 1990 Captain America movie, starring J.D. Salinger's son!
posted by JDC8 at 9:43 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

The People's Joker is a weird thing since it's essentially a fanfilm. Probably the best way to legitimize it would be for the producers to claim it's a parody; otherwise, it's copyright infringement. (I know there's a whole saga around this film, but I don't know many of the details, so for all I know the parody defense has been tried.) Of course, YouTube is littered with less ambitious fanfilms (there's a good Poison Ivy one that has Eric Roberts in it!), but they could all go away in an instant if Disney or WB sent out a C&D. WB evidently decided to notice The People's Joker, and well, that's the way it goes.

Things like Batgirl are a little different in that the rights-holder made these films. I guess they can choose to destroy them, but it does feel a little like burning down your house for the insurance money. One hopes that eventually they'll get leaked.

The Corman Fantastic Four movie? Does Disney own that, or is it just kind of in limbo? Disney owns the characters, but I'm not sure it owns the movie. So in a way, it's kind of a retroactive fanfilm, possibly. Disney might not be willing to buy the film -- Disney would definitely not buy the film; why would they? -- but they could certainly keep anyone else from distributing it. (Legally; I too saw it on VHS in the early '00s, and I'm sure it's easy to find on the internet.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:53 PM on March 24

Scattercat, that's why I liked Ol' Doomy in the movie! His first appearance, he's at the top of a long staircase extending up into distant blackness, flanked by floating orbs, I think there might even have been a couple of braziers. It was ludicrous, but that's the only way you can be faithful to Doom. In the comics he refers to himself in the third person! You can never go too big with Doom. Doom's id is mood. (a palindrome)

On the topic of WB destroying things they made for a tax writeoff, that's an obnoxious loophole of tax law that really should be closed. But the way they did this, I can't see how they haven't taken a big reputation hit among everyone involved in making movies. Why would someone devote over a year of their life to making a big motion picture if executives decided, not only not to release it, but destroy your work too? Warner Bros Pictures executives may have coyly decided they're not really in the business of making movies, first and foremost, but nearly everyone actually involved in production must think differently, they're not in these demanding jobs to "create value," one way or another, they're in it to make fucking movies.
posted by JHarris at 1:46 AM on March 25 [4 favorites]

FanFare thread.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:47 AM on March 25

The People's Joker, also, although maybe that's getting a bit of street cred and a bit of circulation?

It's getting limited theatrical runs starting in two weeks, my friends.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:18 AM on March 25 [4 favorites]

FYI, there was a huge cover story on this movie in the October 1993 Film Threat. Although I am sure scans of this entire magazine exist online, good luck finding them using the absolute dogshit that Google has turned into, lol.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:19 AM on March 25 [1 favorite]

Scanned version of the article from Film Threat volume two, issue #12. Bonus: Film Threat volume one scans and their video guide magazine scans.
posted by JDC8 at 8:34 AM on March 25 [2 favorites]

Why would someone devote over a year of their life to making a big <project> if executives decided, not only not to release it, but destroy your work too?

Well that's easy: because they were paid for their work. As a contractor, several times big software projects I was working on were abruptly canceled (or gradually 'de-scoped'), when the government decided they didn't actually want them. The frustration the people in this documentary express is quite familiar, from those experiences (which showed me the folly of getting all enthusiastic and putting in a lot of extra effort and overtime into what was just a job).
posted by Rash at 9:17 AM on March 25 [1 favorite]

It's similar, but not the same; when you're a contractor, getting another contracting job is not that difficult. No one is going to ask to see the work you developed for the government. They'll just ask where you've been working. When you're in a movie, and producers of your potential next movie ask what you've been up to lately, it helps to actually have a movie to point them to. Without that, you...kinda haven't been doing anything.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:52 AM on March 25

Why would someone devote over a year of their life to making a big if executives decided, not only not to release it, but destroy your work too?

Hollywood accounting and still happens frequently (recent example, Coyote vs. Acme). The Doomed documentary is worth checking out even if you don't have interest in the original movie or super hero films in general as it does explore this issue.
posted by Ashwagandha at 1:03 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]

For me, the ultimate explainer for Doom was this one comic somewhere in I think the early seventies, when Crystal was on the team. Doom lures them all to Latveria by I think kidnapping Sue Storm, locks them in his castle full of traps, and successfully predicts and counters every move they make. His ultimate weapon is a sonic attack built into a giant pipe organ because of course it is.

But just as he is readying his big monologue and preparing to blast the whole team to pieces in front of a helpless Sue's eyes, his idiot ex-Nazi assistant Hauptmann barges into the trap chamber with a flamethrower thinking that he'll win Doom's favor by killing the Fantastic Four while they're vulnerable. But unlike the sonic organ, a flamethrower puts all the beautiful art on display at risk. (Of course the priceless art is still on display during the castle-full-of-traps gambit. What are you, some kind of peasant?)

More importantly, though, Hauptmann has *ruined the vibe*. This was Doom's carefully orchestrated climax and now this clumsy oaf is stumbling all over it and the mood is utterly spoiled. Doom turns his ultimate weapon on Hauptmann and then frees everyone, including Sue, because now it's no good. What's the point in achieving total victory over your most hated foe when the *aesthetics* are off?
posted by Scattercat at 12:46 AM on March 26 [6 favorites]

Ashwagandha, first off, I did watch it, let's get that out of the way. It didn't tell me that much that I didn't already know, mostly for me it just added some names and assigned some blames.

And, you can watch Roger Corman's Fantastic Four, it didn't see release but it was leaked, which at least serves to show what the makers' efforts accomplished. And it wasn't a tax write off, it was so the makers could retain their rights to the Fantastic Four license.

Batwoman and Coyote vs Acme, we're given to understand, were outright deleted. You can't leak what no longer exists. Maybe they're still in a vault somewhere, in one form or other, but if that were true would they be legally liable to the IRS, for not completely destroying what they made?

My point though isn't to do with one-off occurrences made by Roger Corman's outfit, but of one of the biggest movie companies making concerted use of this deeply screwed-up aspect of the tax system to memoryhole the work of probably two orders of magnitude more people. That's a lot of ire out floating around.
posted by JHarris at 5:23 PM on March 27

were outright deleted.

Who knows if that is entirely true, personally I doubt it. It wouldn't shock me if those films, at some point, get "leaked". The thing with the 1994 Fantastic Four was that it was never meant to be released, it was just to extend the ownership of the film rights until the producer could secure a better deal. The money spent on it likely was declared a tax write off (though I don't recall it explicitly saying it had been). So it is similar in that way but you're correct in that there are nuanced differences with the recent written off projects. For me though they all fall within what I call Hollywood Accounting. It doesn't always make sense from a creative or consumer point of view but it does to the bottom line of corporations who own the product.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:42 PM on March 28