God, I love the You-tubes.
When I was in college, I had a bit of a reputation for finding odd, obscure movies on VHS tape. For those of you who aren't of a certain age, VHS cassettes were big, bulky plastic things that held movies that were never properly rewound so you always had to wait to see the part of the movie you wanted, sometimes as long as two weeks, then you hoped the tape inside the cassette wasn't creased or torn anywhere which would render the whole thing useless. Some of the more well-off folks with much more wealthy lifestyles had something that were much better than VHS players: VHS rewinders. You put a cassette in it, turned it on, and waited while it rewound the tape in much less time -- days, rather than weeks -- then would automatically spit the cassette out, usually with the tape torn somewhere.
I digress. Back in the day, my collection of not-torn tapes consisted of some true rarities: The Star Wars Holiday Special, the director's cut of Easy Rider, Johnny Carson's 15th Anniversary Show, IWA King of the Death Match*, an outtake from Mary Poppins in which Julie Andrews drops the F-bomb.
But, for some reason, I could never get a hold of the worst superhero movie ever made. No, not Batman v Superman. I'm talking about the original Fantastic Four, produced by Roger Corman.
Not long ago, on a hunch, I did a search for obscure Marvel cartoons from the 1960s. Suddenly, there it was, staring at me like an orange cat turd on a sunny North Carolina beach. I knew I had discovered one of my personal Holy Grails, or at least a very well-designed Plastic Cup. I also discovered that all the work I had to do for the rest of the night was completely shot.
I had to see this for myself. And folks, because I had to see it, I get to review it for you, so you don't have to. That's how much I love each and every one of you.**
Nothing sells a movie better than having your stars too far to be seen.
The film begins with a professor excitedly talking about a comet that passes by only every 8 million years or so, but it's coming tonight, so "get your telescopes." Which is funny because, when the comet passes, it's so bright that people looking up at it are actually wincing.
We then meet Reed Richards, a college student rooming with the Storm family, including pre-teen Susan, who watches Reed and says, "He's so dreamy." So, that's not creepy at all.
Reed and his friend, Victor Von Doom (a very unfortunate surname), decide to build a device to harness the comet's power, or something. It goes wrong, and the machine explodes, causing Victor to scream for approximately three hours before finally dying.
Or does he?
He's rescued later by some group of people with no real explanation. This becomes a running issue with this movie, as you'll see.
Fast-forward ten years. The comet is passing by again, so Reed wants to fly into it. He recruits his college buddy Ben Grimm to fly it, because he's a pilot. He then drives to the Storms' and recruits Sue and her brother Johnny, because reasons.
Reed sees Sue. They haven't seen each other in 10 years, yet they stare at each other as if they have been in love all that time. More creepy.
They launch their rocket into space, which is covered by all the local newspapers and TV stations. They fly into the path of the comet, using such technical terms as "Enter release sequence" and "Activate the gravitational field," proving once and for all that the scriptwriters did absolutely zero research into space flights.
Anyway, the comet belches at them, or something, and they get bathed in "cosmic rays" which causes them to "crash to the ground" and suffer no "injuries." Except the world thinks they're dead. And everyone watching wishes they were.
Later that night, or the next night, or a decade later, they're found by military vehicles. By now, all of them have shown their powers, including Ben, who turned into a guy wearing an orange rock suit. Check out the video at Fantastic Four (1994) - The Thing - YouTube (for maximum effect, jump to 0:54 in the video.)
They are taken to a facility, which is actually the home of Victor, who now sits on a throne, wearing a metal suit with a spiffy green cape, and calls himself "Dr. Doom", dropping the Von in the process. I'm sure Dr. Doom explains all these things, but you really can't understand him because the mask muffles his voice hilariously.
The mad scientist in the corner adds just the right villainy touch. Wouldn't you say?
Suddenly, the foursome lives together in the Baxter Building in Manhattan, because time constrains. Ben, now known just as "Thing", leaves the group because no one understands him. Look, it's true that no one understands him. That's because his mouth doesn't move properly when he speaks. This isn't just bad lip reading. The Thing IS bad lip reading.
Anyway, he goes to "the underground," where he encounters some villain called The Jeweler. Here's where the comic book geek in me comes out: The Jeweler was originally The Mole Man, who was the FF's villain in their first comic book appearance. But, Corman couldn't secure the rights to the character, so rather than write the character out, they just changed his name to The Jeweler and left all his mole-like characteristics intact.
Thing escapes somehow and decides to return to the rest of the group because he forgot his wallet. The reunion is suddenly interrupted when Dr. Doom appears on Reed's widescreen TV and talks to them. (I wish I were kidding about this. Even my eight-year-old son is rolling his eyes at this point.) Dr. Doom threatens to destroy New York with a giant laser (that conjures up a bunch of stock videos of nuclear bomb tests we've all seen at least once a week on MTV's Headbangers Ball) unless they give him their powers, because that's how superheroing works.
Instead, the FF goes to the castle and kicks Dr. Doom's butt. But first, Sue tells the group they can't leave until they get into their brand-new costumes she made, because why not since everything else makes no sense.
As they defeat Doom, he fires the laser anyway because one final plot twist. So Johnny, as the Human Torch, flies ahead of the laser to absorb it. Let's think about this: lasers travel at the speed of light, and the Human Torch can just fly up and catch up to it? So, he can go faster than the speed of light?
So, that's it. Marvel regained ownership of the characters when Disney bought Fox, and apparently they're planning to introduce the Fantastic Four to the MCU. All I have to say is, if they don't have a giant laser, I'm not buying a ticket.
Follow me on Twitter @WildLegend and send me other things you want to see in the upcoming FF movie.
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*--Main event: Mick "Cactus Jack" Foley vs. Terry Funk in a no-rope, barbed wire, bed of nails, C4 explosives match. Nope, not kidding.
**--Not like that.
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