Certificate:
PG
Running
Time: 90 mins
Director:
Oley Sassone
Starring
Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, Michael Bailey-Smith
Genre:
Comic Book, Superhero, Sci-Fi
Country:
USA/GER
A German Production company hold the cinematic
rights to Marvel’s first family but are low on time and money and appear
certain to default on production. Who
can they call? What can they do? Can anyone save their chances of committing
to celluloid an FF movie? Enter Roger
Corman (The Big Doll House) who
guarantees he’ll deliver a production on time and for a lot less than the $40M[1]
they had originally intended.
The Corman led Fantastic Four film is
considerably loyal to the core text while also not being afraid to colour
outside the lines were the narrative either 1. requires it or 2.
allows it. There’s a double edged blade
here but we’ll look at that in more detail later and when discussing the 2005
instalment. The core components of the
FF are here in their entirety and more.
Not only do we get their origin story but also a pre-origin, origin
story that shows Reed Richards (Hyde-White) at College with Victor Von Doom
(Joseph Culp) and an early connection to a pre-teen Sue Storm that makes their
future relationship more than a little… icky[2]. The groundwork laid out here by Sassone is
actually rather nice. Though the largest change in our characters is to
come once they encounter some cosmic radiation it’s entertaining to see them
evolve into the daring and brilliant astronauts they will become. The pseudo-sibling rivalry that Hyde-White
and Culp create on screen is great. From
here, it’s logical how Von Doom could drop the ethnicity of Von, bestow a PhD
upon himself and become a very naughty boy.
There are issues though. The
B-story is somewhat problematic. It
involves a tacked on relationship between Ben (Bailey-Smith) and a blind girl
obsessed with Lionel Ritchie’s Hello video
and an evil little hobo-gypo leprechaun with sticky fingers who goes by the
name of The Jeweler.
The Jeweler is a difficult element. Firstly his River-dance across the secured
area to steal the large diamond responsible for stopping the FF’s ship from
overheating when passing through the Colossus radiation makes him their creator,
not to mention primary villain[3]. Secondly, as ill-fitting and odd as his
storyline is he actually has more to do on screen than Doom. Certainly more flamboyance in his performance
and it skews the piece drastically. Yet
there’s something magical about it. It
has the Roger Corman signature. It’s almost
as though he couldn’t help but take a straight-forward comic book adaptation
and skew it so it fits his ouevre. Like
it or not, believe it or not Corman has many of the required stables for
authorship. Cahier du cinema would
probably chase me with a pitch-folk for saying so but he is something of an
auteur. Albeit one that causes problems
both in his categorising and his movies.
Hyde-White makes for a good piece of casting as
Reed Richards. He’s able to play him at
both ends of the spectrum[4]
and finds the honesty in ever scene he has, regardless of how silly it may
be. Rebecca Staab (Sue Storm) is fine
but her role suffers from some serious underdevelopment (much like the early FF
comics[5])
which is a kind of source loyalty you really could do without. I like Jay Underwood (The Boy Who Could Fly) as Johnny but he’s not exactly the “hot-head”
that we’ve come to know and the Corman budget seriously limits the
effectiveness of his Human Torch on screen with the exception of one sequence
towards the end. Bailey-Smith is
incredibly awkward as Ben but Carl Ciarfalio as The Thing is actually
brilliant. His suit looks good. I mean, he does look like he’s in traction
any time he tries to walk but the screen presence of the Big Bad Boulder is
spot-on, his mannerisms and pitch-perfect and there’s a complexity to him that’s
wonderful.
Yes, the love story is badly handled. Really, really poorly stuck on to the side of
the movie and in many ways unnecessary but in having it on screen it allows for
some consideration to be given to Ben’s “condition”. Reed, Johnny, and Sue all have control of
their powers. They can save the day and
they have a normal life. Ben, however,
is a monster. Doomed to be kept at a
distance by most people because of his appearance. His selflessness is true. His sacrifice –complete and Nevius and Rock’s
screenplay highlights that beautifully and with a level of subtly that isn’t
all that common in a Roger Corman Joint.
Joseph Culp (Baadasssss!, Mad Men) is incredible as Doctor
Doom. Absolutely incredible! He’s a really wonderful piece of
casting. The kind of actor who has real
rise and fall in his performance that allows for complex reading of character
and motive. It’s such a shame that his
Doom is… well… lame. Blame the budget
again but his supercharged suit does nothing.
Each encounter with the FF he delivers an awesome monologue then skulks
off scene leaving inept (and bad shot) henchmen to blunder up dealing with Reed
and co.
There are problems with The Fantastic Four but the fact that it was made for a little over
a million dollars is truly staggering.
Marvel would pay out more than the production budget to have the movie
taken off the market, unjustly in our opinion as in 1994 what else did they
have out there? How is it this movie is
shunned as an unwanted bastard yet Elektra
lives comfortably in the family home?
The film is far from fantastic but it’s got real heart. You can tell that everyone involved was fully
committed to rendering the most entertaining and faithful film they could. You can watch it [here] and judge for yourself.
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