Premise - Ten years ago Prof. Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) and Victor Von Doom (Joseph Culp) tried to harness the cosmic rays produced by the space phenomenon known as 'Colossus'. The experiment fails however and Doom is burned beyond help. Flash forward to the present day and Colossus is back, this time Richards is going into space to try and harness the rays, the experiment again goes wrong and his crew goes under a strange metamorphosis. Richards becomes Mr. Fantastic, able to stretch his limbs at will. Johnny Storm (Jay Underwood) becomes The Human Torch, able to command fire at his will. Sue Storm becomes The Invisible Girl, able to disappear and project forcefields and Ben Grimm becomes The Thing, super strong, but horribly disfigured. Together they are the Fantastic Four. Made in 1994 by Roger Corman, this version of The Fantastic Four was never meant to be seen and was never released. It was made as a cheap ($1.5m) way for 20th Century Fox to keep the rights to the comic book, which would have expired if they hadn't made a movie by a certain time. Re-buying the rights would have cost far more than rushing out a bargain basement Corman production of the comic, unfortunately nobody told the cast and crew................ It's perhaps just as well that this film will never see the light of day for most people because it is most certainly the worst comic book adaption that I have ever seen. And yes, that does include the risible versions of 'Captain America' and 'Nick Fury: Agent Of Shield' (Which stars David Hasselhoff no less!). I guess you could blame the micro budget, but better, nay much better films have been made with similar and smaller budgets ('The Evil Dead' comes to mind immedialty). Not to say the film doesn't have ambition, the heart is there in the project. They obviously wanted to make a good version of The Fantastic Four, but failed miserably at nearly every hurdle. For a start the acting is off a universally low standard. I've seen movie of the week claptrap with higher standards of acting. This is soap opera stuff of the lowest standard. All the major players ham it up and over act wildly. Perhaps none more than Joseph Culp whom inhabits the iron mask of arch bad guy, Dr Doom. It's cringeworthy stuff, but when you combine it with the dreadful dialogue things go from bad to worse. The film is filled with sappy exchanges that have no place in a film of this type. The script tries to get the actors to emote, but it just comes off as contrived and clunky. If the acting is soap opera level then the script is sub soap opera level. I lost count of the amount of times characters told each other that they loved them. The sets are incredibly cardboard, at no point do they look like anything other than a couple of bits of hardboard nailed together. The various consoles and control panels appear to have been knocked up from ancient audio visual set ups (I'm sure I spotted a beta-max in there). Director Oley Sassone shows no flair or invention, it's all by the numbers stuff. I was unsurprised to read that the only work he's done since are various genre TV shows like Xena and Mortal Kombat. The effects are mostly terrible. Sure, 1994 was early days for computer generated effects, but I was knocking up better things on my Amiga back then. Johnny's flame effects look painted on and a LOT of stock footage is used for explosions and space scenes. Not all the effects are terrible however. Ben 'The Thing' Grimm's make up job is quite well done. It's a reasonable approximation of the character and the suit moves nicely and the lips match the dialogue quite well. Dr. Doom's costume is good also, just how it should be. In-fact that is about the only thing the film has going for it. It stays incredibly faithful to the source material. The Four's origin story is right out of the comic book and all the required characters are present and correct, including Alicia Masters, Benn's blind girlfriend. The characters act as they should uttering famous lines like, 'Flame On', 'It's Clobberin' Time' and such. There is a character called 'The Jeweller' who shares many traits with the comic's villain 'The Mole', not sure why they didn't just use The Mole. Even given the faithfulness to the comic book The Fantastic Four is just a terrible movie that is only of interest to the curious or to die hard fans of the comic book. Just don't go out of your way to see it.

2/10 for The Fantastic Four. Poster Quote - Give it a clobber.............