John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-12
LAME ON!
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StanleyPain  - 2015-08-12
You know when I first saw this years ago I went into expecting this massive trainwreck that could just be riffed apart and, you know.....
This movie really isn't THAT bad. It has terrible effects and a lot of questionable decisions and rough acting patches, but it's a totally competent superhero film with just the right tone for Fantastic Four (something the big budget films can never seem to get right) and its pulpy origins. People keep attaching Corman's name to it and while Corman is a pretty shit filmmaker (yeah yeah, I know the retconning of his career as being brilliant or something is now the norm), he didn't direct it which is plainly obvious and the film is actually pretty well directed when you really look at it realistically considering the rushed production and low budget) and was pretty much just the book-keeper and money manager.
I actually think this film is kind of charming....it's the sort of movie you might have seen in the 80s had they made a F4 movie back then (again putting aside the obviously bare-bones effects and shit). It's really hard to hate on this movie, especially considering the giant cluster fucks of comic movies we've seen since the 90s that try to take comics and make them gritty, high-gravitas drama or something (i.e. the new F4). I feel really bad for the people who made this only to have it be scrapped and turned into this punchline for a joke when it's pretty obvious everyone's heart was in the right place making it. It's a comic book movie, plain and simple.
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B. Weed - 2015-08-12 I think some of the films Corman directed were actually pretty good (if still on the cheap-and-cheerful side).
The films he's PRODUCED, though...!
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John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-12 Corman's not a BRILLIANT director. He's a gutsy, resourceful independent who's made some good films, and some shitty films, and maybe one or two classics. He's alsso had an enormous influence. The first time I heard of Corman was an article my father showed me in the seventies. It may have been in the New York Time Magazine. It began with an anecdote that involved someone backstage at the academy awards (maybe it was Peter Fonda?) looking around at the assorted winners and nominees, and declaring "This looks like a meeting of the Roger Corman Alumni Association."
I couldn't resist making a pun before, but a decent superhero movie is hard to make, and what I've seen of this ain't bad. I suppose it was the cheap effects that doomed this picture. By 1996, this sort of thing wasn't done, and more's the pity. Audiences should be willing to accept some bad special effects from time to time.
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StanleyPain - 2015-08-12 Well, the point I was making is that Corman is known for making shit movies, thus his name on the credits in this has led to a legion of people dogpiling on it because LOLZ I CAN MAEK FUNNI YOU TUBE RVIEW OF THIS MOVIE BY SCREAMING AT IT and when you actually sit and watch this is obvious this is not some Corman quickie-fart type of movie (if you want to see a million dollar disaster made right around the same time, check out Corman's final directorial work, Frankenstein Unbound). This movie works on almost every level a comic book movie should work, most importantly how it integrates both the origins of the heroes with the larger story (instead of making them two separate things). It's also obvious the movie is not 100% finished (most obvious thing, Dr. Doom's dialog was not looped) and the things that people think are HILARIOUS about this movie are really simple things that are simply the result of the film not being polished.
I'm not saying this is some unsung masterpiece, but it is totally inoffensive and competent on a level that it never gets credit for because people just like shitting on it for easy laughs. I will contend, however, that if you shot this exact script (with a few minor changes here and there) with a 200 million budget and a solid filmmaker, you would get a film 10 times better than the other F4 movie and definitely better than the new F4.
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BHWW - 2015-08-12
The director was a former music video director named Sassoon, supposedly the son of that Sassoon. The company that had the option on a Fantastic Four film had a million budget in mind but that money didn't come through, and they needed to make something to keep the option so they met with Corman and they came up with a .4 million budget and a month to shoot. Interviews with the filmmakers were published, the actors made public appearances, those involved with the production were told the film would be a pilot for a potential TV series.
What actually happened depends on who you talk to - according to people like Stan Lee, the movie was made simply to hang on to the option.
Other more conspiratorial and salacious rumors suggest the production company purposely made a "bad" film that the Marvel people would be afraid would kill the chances of a big budget FF movie if it made it into release, make a bad association with the public, etc. and thus they were paid off to have the original film delivered to them, to be sealed in a vault and the negative destroyed. Supposedly, that's all rumor.
The "hack frauds" at Red Letter Media have brought this movie up, recently in the Fantastic Four review (submitted by me) and in a Best of the Worst installment - sure the effects are laughable and it's cheap looking but these people, who were obviously told they were making a movie that would have some sort of release, actually put some effort into it.
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Nikon - 2015-08-12
Thanks for this. I'm looking forward to setting aside some time to see it.
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BiggerJ - 2015-08-13
I posted the previous version and I approve of this submission.
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betamaxed - 2015-08-13
Stars for the thing's sweatpants at 55:44
I've seen various bootlegs of this one for decades now and the reason why it's more enjoyable than any of the more recent big budget attempts at making a Fantastic 4 movie: it's not afraid to be the Fantastic 4.
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RockBolt - 2015-08-13
He's a hand actor
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