Fantastic Four (1994): Retro Review

Nope, the mediocre movie that 20th Century Fox made was not the first Fantastic Four movie ever made. Eleven years before that doomed franchise was introduced, there was another. The story of Roger Corman’s production is the stuff geek legends are made of. I won’t get into the entire story, but from various sources around the internet, the rights for this movie were purchased by German producer Bernd Eichinger (from Stan “The Man” Lee himself) for a fairly low price, as it was a time before massively budgeted blockbusters and the comic book adaptation craze that has recently taken over the entertainment industry.

There were several delays, which caused a panic in Eichinger. In order to retain his option, he created a low budget fantastic four film. When I say low budget, I mean low even for then. The movie was made for $1 million. It’s not paranormal activity low, but that’s extremely low for a large production. This movie was the result. Then after months of announcements, the movie’s release was canceled. Eichinger and Corman claim it was for certain reasons, while Stan Lee has stated that they never intended to release it. Whatever the reason, due to the movie’s quality, Avi Arad bought the rights to the movie and ordered every print in existence destroyed to protect the brand.

Now the only way to see this movie is to find a bootleg cassette, DVD or digital copy somewhere on the internet or at a convention of some kind. It’s not a particularly easy hunt and to be honest, it’s not very fruitful. No copy is of any “brag-able” quality and it is very true to budget.

They definitely tried though. One of the funny things I noticed while watching this for review was the fact that this movie really wasn’t that bad. The script is actually pretty decent, even though I’m not sure why they used a new character called “The Jeweler” instead of just bringing out the Mole Man from the comics. He seemed like pretty much the same character, but with homeless and freaks instead of moloids.

There are conflicts with the themselves, the Jeweler and of course, Dr. Doom. The story isn’t terrible and a lot actually happens in the 90 minute run time. If this movie had a bigger budget and much more support, it could’ve been pretty awesome. It may have actually been better than the 2005 movie (which Eichinger also produced, bee-tee-dubs) with some fine tuning. There are a lot of Marvel heroes who could work with a smaller budget, but the FF is not a place for cutbacks. They simply do too much too often that would involve special effects.

One of the interesting things they do here is show Reed as an adult while Sue is much younger when the movie has a ten year flash back. It explains his graying temples and why he always seems so much older, because he is. That’s something they’ve never really done before. I don’t even think they do it in the comics anywhere. I could be wrong though. I don’t follow too closely behind Marvel’s First Family these days. I do know that they are the home of tons of amazing stories, though. I know a lot of people who believe them to be corny or lame, but they might be the first set of heroes in comics history that has never bothered with secret identities.

Unfortunately, this movie is far too painful to watch for anyone to care about the decent script. There are a couple of decent performances as far as the acting, but it’s mostly just overacting or confused voices. This was a first attempt at something huge and it was pretty obvious. The messed up part is the fact that none of the cast or crew was told that the movie was being made to maintain an option with no plans for release. Those guys did the best they could for almost no money and certainly for no reason.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, or you’re extremely fanatical about the Fantastic Four, then go ahead and take a look. It’s really not worth the effort of tracking it down though and certainly not worth the time to watch. Just find a summary and read it, it’ll take a much smaller amount of time and I can pretty much guarantee your imagination will have better special effects than the actual movie. This one can definitely be left in the ashcan, where it was always destined to go as it was doomed (pun intended) from the start. It’s really not fantastic at all.

Jonathan Jones

Jonathan Thomas Jones is a speculative fiction author and founder of geekhavenreviews.com. He has been passionate about all things geek for his entire life. See more about him at jonathanthomasjones.com and follow him on twitter @jtgloryjones.