Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

It’s not all that bad. When I was a kid my book, no doubt, was the Fantastic Four. I think I liked the fact that they were a family and that Reed Richards was like the smartest imaginary person in the universe, considering he knows how to use the Ultimate Nullifier and all, plus they had the best villains. Galactus? The Skrulls? Franklyn? Come on now. Eventually I turned twelve and stopped reading comic books but the FF has always maintained a special place in my heart. Then I got wind of Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four flick coming to fruition back in the mid 90’s. True enough in the 1990’s the words ‘Marvel’ and ‘Movies’ went together like ‘Dookey’ and ‘Ice Cream’… Nick Fury or Captain America anybody… but it is the FF and I love the FF. Alas, it wasn’t to be. A movie allegedly so bad it was shelved for perpetuity. Actually the real story is more complicated but you’ll have to investigate all of that on your own if you care to know the Rest of the Story. Eventually we got a couple of big time, big studio backed FF movies that were marginal at best, but we always wanted to see the movie that was not. Well lo and behold, we have seen director Oley Sasson’s long forgotten, rarely viewed version of the World’s Greatest Heroes and… well… it’s not that bad really. I mean it’s not that good either and if someone put a gun to your head and forced you to choose I would probably be forced to recommend Tim Story’s 2005 version but this one has its charms, plus it stays much truer to the comic book than the new movie. Probably to its detriment.

Our movie begins with young Reed (Alex Hyde-White) and young Victor von Doom (Joseph Culp) preparing an experiment to harness the power of some comet. Victor is gung-ho, Reed wants to check the calculations, something goes wrong and Victor dies. So sad, so not true.

Ten years later Reed has finally discovered a way to harness the power of this comet but he needs to take off into space to do this. No problem because his best friend Ben Grimm (Michael Bailey Smith) is a crack pilot and he has a girlfriend named Sue (Rebecca Stabb) who has a baby brother named Johnny (Jay Underwood). Here’s where I can’t really fault the newer movie for making Sue Storm a physicist and

making Johnny a pilot because taking your hot girlfriend whose main talent is putting on makeup, and her bratty brother who has even less skills than that on a potentially life threatening space mission is just crazy stupid. But there they go on this space mission, and of course things go haywire due to some shenanigans put forth by a dude called The Jeweler (Ian Trigger) who was doing these shenanigans just before a not really Victor von Doom did this bad thing, and our heroes crash to the earth. But they’re different now. Reed has acquired the ability to stretch his various body parts. Actually only his right arm and occasionally his left leg. Budget my friend, budget. Johnny can burst in flames. Or rather his finger lights up every once in a while. Sue you just can’t see, simplest special effect ever, and Ben Grimm is a Rock Monster… a Thing.

As our heroes get accustomed to their new powers there’s a whole lotta stuff going on. This Jeweler has kidnapped the love of Ben Grimm’s life, blind sculptor Alicia Masters (Kat Green), and Victor von Doom, now the metal clad Doctor Doom, has vowed to destroy New York City with his death ray because he’s an asshole. And he hates Reed Richards. Will the newly christened Fantastic Four stop these bad people? They are not called ‘The World’s Greatest Heroes’ for nothing my friend.

As we pointed out earlier we do admire the fact this movie stays much closer to The Fantastic Four as presented in the books, though they did substitute that comet for cosmic rays and I guess the Mole Man is copyrighted somewhere because that’s basically what the lame Jeweler was, complete with his underground lair. The acting wasn’t too bad be honest though Alex Hyde-White’s rendition of Reed Richards was a little underwhelming and Jay Underwood’s Johnny Storm was downright annoying, but Joseph Culp as Doctor Doom and Michael Bailey Smith as Ben Grimm, and their costuming, was pretty damn good all things considered. Rebecca Stabb didn’t have to do much as Sue Storm except be good looking, which she pulled off, and while we here at the FCU love Jessica Alba and would probably abandon my family for Jessica Alba, it was probably a wise move by the producers of this movie to get a legitimate white woman to play Sue Storm as opposed to trying to transform Jessica Alba into a white woman to play Sue Storm. Who knew around 2005 there was a shortage of blonde white women in Southern California who desired to be actresses?

Of course the downfall of this movie is the special effects. I assume making people catch on fire and take flight is expensive which is why The Human Torch saved his tour de force cartooning effect for the grand finale. Most of Mr. Fantastic’s stretch effects were just plum goofy, particularly when he was waving goodbye to us after his glorious nuptials to The Invisible Woman, but the effects team did a great job making The Invisible Woman not be there and as we pointed out the costuming for The Thing was solid.

‘The Fantastic Four’, 1994 Style, isn’t a good movie but man does it have its charms. Whereas Albert Pyun’s Captain America isn’t a good movie and has no charm. Required viewing for fans of The World’s Greatest Heroes around the world.