¶ Intro / Opening
Its oil.
I'm back midnight viewers to midnight viewing. My god, here it is. It's a superhero event. It's the Fantastic Four. No, not that one. We're talking about the very first iteration, the first cinematic, live action iteration of the Fantastic Four. It's our first unreleased film here on midnight viewing, making it difficult to find, or at least it was for many years when we were all trying here to talk with me about. This is my co host here at midnight viewing. This is HBHB. How you doing.
What's going on? Man, I'm doing great. It's Clobren time. Follow on. Let's get into this. I'm very excited. As always I say that every week, but I'm really excited. This was one that I wanted to do for a long time.
Let's talk Fantastic Four first and foremost, off the top, who's your favorite member of the four?
Probably Ben Grimm. Probably The thing.
Now is that for the Hybraic parallels, I.
Knew you were gonna come up with the fact that he's a member of the Tribe's it's probably part of it. But he's such he is the best hearted one of the whole bunch. He's truly the monster with the heart of gold. He's the gentle giant, and he will go to any length to protect his family, to do what's right. He's just he looks fucking cool. I love Ben Grim. Who's your favorite if we're.
Talking the Misbegotten Mess that was those two films from the early two thousands. From those movies, my favorite is Johnny Storm because it's Chris Evans I love naturally.
Yeah, I mean that is the right answer, by the way.
But realistically, overall, with the Fantastic War through the ages, it's become clear to me that Sue Storm is not much of a character, or at least was never really presented cinematically that way, and neither was Johnny Storm. Johnny Storm is really obnoxious to me as a character, and worse than both of them is Read Richards, who I find to be a straight up villain the Marvel universe. So I'm gonna go with obviously the thing as well.
He is much cooler, having a rock guy who's funny and who's sweet and who falls in love and wants to be rid of this gift quote unquote. He's the only one who really gets fucked by the Transformation.
Yeah, can I put it in an honorable mention though, Herbie, if we're talking, the thing is my favorite of the entire like Fantastic Four, kind of continue him. But if I'm really being honest or at least an honorable mention, my favorite depiction of a member of Fantastic Four, I
¶ Comics and Media
think you know where maybe you know where I'm going with this it is it's got to be Bill Murray as the Human Torch in the nineteen seventy five Fantastic Four radio drama.
Anyone here has seen a flaming teenager.
I knew you were going to remember it. It's it all serious. I mean, it's bizarre number one that Bill Murray, our Bill Murray. The Bill Murray is doing is voicing this sort of braddy superhero. But I will say, like anyone who's listened to those that radio show, it's actually probably the most slavishly adherent to the original comic. So there is that. It's got that going for it, but it is very It's a distinctly odd experience to hear one of the greatest voices in comedy playing the brash
Johnny Storm. So I had to mention that at least we can move on now, but I wanted to mention that.
We're only moving on, but we're actually moving backward. What's your history with Fantastic for Were you a reader of the comic?
I was. I can't say that it was my favorite, but I certainly collected it and read it during my prime comic book collecting phase, which is probably pre high school around that time, so I was a pretty big reader of it. It can't I also can't say that I was a devoted reader of the original sixties run because some of those I found a little bit. They're very dated. Let's say now. I recognize the importance and I love the fact that they're this iconic superhero team.
But I read it quite a bit, and I was a big fan of the what ifs that featured the Fantastic Four.
Yeah, I myself never read Fantastic Four. I could never get into them. I didn't. I understood the family dynamic of it, and I knew they were Marvel's familial heart as it were. But I only became interested in Fantastic Four when it involved their greatest villain, Galactus, more specifically Galactus's herald noorin Rad, the Silver Surfer, who is one of my top ten Marvel characters. I love how existential and just what a horrific situation that character finds himself in.
I never really dug too much into the comics, although I very, very happily watched all of the cartoons from the sixties and seventies and whatever we were getting in the eighties, any iteration of the Fantastic Four animated I was down for.
I also, if we're talking about the comic or extensions of the comic, I do want to make one recommendation to you and the audience at large. It's a book that came out in two thousand and three called Unstable Molecules. Are you familiar with it? Father Malone? No?
Hippit me to it.
It's written by a guy named James Stern, and it posits that the Fantastic Four were actually real normal people that inspired the Marvel bullpen of the late fifties to create the Fantastic Four comic. In the book, it's funny that you talk about how Read Richards is your least favorite member, because in this book he is the worst. He's this stuffy, self absorbed Columbia professor who is dating Sue, but pays her no mind and is very self absorbed.
Like I said, I mean, Richard's in every iteration of the Fantastic Four, but this.
Is like a real world version of read Richards no powers. These are just real people that, like I said, inspired this. Johnny is a bitter aloof teenager who never got over the death of his parents, and he is inspired to run away eventually spoiler alert by a Beatnick Ben is a friendly, go lucky boxing trainer, but he has issues
with rage and sexual addiction. In this, God Stop It and It's great, and Sue is torn between trying to raise her younger brother and failing at it, and also living under the strictures of that time period and the things that it forced young women to adhere to. It's sad, it's funny, it's uncomfortable, it's exceedingly creative, and it won the Eisner Award for Best Limited Series two thousand and four. It's You're not gonna get any there's no superpowers, there's
no super villains, there's none of that. It's just a super creative look at what if this was the inspiration for the Fantastic Four.
It's great, sounds like a drag man.
It's I'm maybe under selling the the humor and the sort of the the coolness of the concept. It's really I'm not gonna deny that it's sad and poignant, but it's great. It's what a create. It has a little bit of that Watchman thing where at the end there's a bibliography that goes through what happened to them, interviews with the real people. It's very cool. If you like the Watchman, you'll like this.
Father Malone, well, I do like the Watchman. Who doesn't like Watchmen? Of course? And what about after Watchmen? Do you like after Watchmen?
I is that an aftermash joke that you're making because
¶ The Fantastic Four
it was a before Watchman? Was there an after Watchman too?
Oh? No, I'm thinking of before Watchman. That's how little mind I paid to it.
Before Watchman was just okay, I can't speak to you.
What do you know what? It's not just okay? Let me tell you something. Maybe the comedy Edward Blake friends with the Kennedys. What fuck are you talking about? That's not what happened.
He's the guy in the Grassy Knoll for fuck's sake.
Yeah, man, Look the grassy noll thing. I don't think is next necessarily in the comic, but was portrayed in the film like it's a I think it's hinted at maybe in the comic. But yeah, of course he was. He probably did that for fun. I don't think he was even under orders anyway.
I don't remember much about before Watchman, but let's see.
You know what around this time period when America is we were also hopeful and then I hope died thanks to the comedian. Right around that time, Marvel's The First
Family was born. They wouldn't get any sort of actual live action adaptation for many years, but they almost sooner than the one we eventually got in the early twenty first century, Right around nineteen ninety one ninety two, there became an opportunity where a film comingy look, everyone at some point or another option to Marvel property and then found out that it was unfilmable for them, or making a superhero movie is not as easy as they think.
And up until now, the only actual feature film released under the Marvel imprint was Howard the Duck by nineteen ninety three.
What about the Captain America movie that.
Was never released? Was it the Albert is the Albertqune movie with Matt Salinger and fucking oh my god, Scott Pollen as the Italian Red Skull. I know what's it going on, Captain. Hey, I don't know.
I did see a poster for it in the theater. That doesn't mean that it was released, But because I saw the Fantastic Four poster too.
I don't believe it was released, sir, because I saw the same poster, and you know me, I was stoked for a Captain America movie. Sure did not happen, and then O man man when it did not. When I finally saw it, which was came out on video pretty pretty quickly, as soon as the straight to video became a thing. What never came to video was the promised Fantastic Four movie, the one that showed up on Film Threat magazine, which was a national publication. It was a periodical of note.
It's a very polite way of categorizing it.
Although I will say I was an avid reader of Film Threat. I don't know if you were.
If I was, I love Film Threat.
They certainly covered a lot of what was actual independent, underground cinema at the time. These were hard to find. Features in most cases Fantastic four.
I was.
I gave pause when I saw this on the cover. I was like, what are they doing?
Man?
Also around nineteen ninety three, then this ended up being made at Corman Studios. I lived three blocks from Corman Studios. Had no idea what was going on behind those doors, and else I would have busted my way in and worked on this movie. HB. How did we get here?
In terms?
Constantine Films has the rights to Fantastic Four? Right, Sorry, their copyright is going to run out. It's as tale as old as time.
Yeah, so they needed to see It's a little murky. I thought you had to at least have a movie in production before that copyright ran out in order to have it renew itself. That's a little bit murky. And we'll get into the ins and outs of how it
¶ Production Challenges and Behind the Scenes
pertains to finas the Fantastic Four. But he it's my understanding that the guy was a barn what's his last name? Barrent Constantine man, sorry, Baron Constantine. He went to Lloyd Kaufman at Trauma to try and get a quickie film made, and he turned him down because he figured it was too big of a budget. For trauma to handle. He
then went to Roger Corman, and Roger Korman approved. I believe it was the biggest budget up to that point for any Corman film, which was a million dollars to fast track this movie and get it into production, and everything happened very quickly. But there was there was no indication at least to the creatives dealing with this, the actors, the director, the editors, any of these people that this
was anything but a genuine theatrical release. Everybody was stoked, like we were that, Wow, this is a fantastic four movie's actually going to be made, and we want to make this the best thing that we can make it.
Yeah. Plenty of stories of people walking around the halls of Korman studios with that script in their hand, going who's making this? We are? And yeah, So Corman agrees to provide a million and a half to against constantin Films, one million dollars. So Constant is actually putting up the million dollars. Korman is putting up a million and a half in production costs, which means he's using his studios and his equipment and his staff and everything, and who
knows what he's paying them whatever. So basically, this movie is being made for one million dollars, even though we're told it's double that budget. I'm getting I'm guessing yeah.
But everybody, the actors are all excited. These are some actual actors of note, Jay Underwood, who was in The Boy Who Could Fly and a few other things. These aren't just Lightning.
The Day my kid went punk.
That's right, I forgot he was in.
That covered here on the cable box theater Midnight, a division of Midnight it was.
By the way, it should be noted that a lot of what we're describing here comes out of a movie, a companion piece to Fantastic Four, if you will, called Doomed, the Untold story of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four. That it goes into exhaustive detail about everything that we're describing here, and it's highly recommended.
For years, that's all you could see of the movie. The documentary had footage of the film in it, and the film remained unreleased, so if that you had to see Doomed.
But every like the actors involved were excited because everybody, the director, they saw this as this could be really good for their career. They realized they were doing this under the constraints of a Roger Corman production, and that's that's obvious when you see the movie. But it's also pretty clear when you watch The Fantastic four Father Malone, that this was made with a lot of love for the source material, that no one folding this in. They're doing the best they can.
Yep, they're doing the best they can. See here's the thing terribly. Look as a young man when I heard that they were doing fantastic for it and it was Corman and they were doing for a million dollars, I was like, this is going to be the greatest train wreck of all time. I cannot wait to see what a fucking nightmare this is, right, and that, of course film Threat at the time their coverage was we're doing our best here, folks, But I would not hear that. Then,
Oh no, I don't care doing your best. Get out of the way. Let somebody else make the fantastic for it. Don't hold onto this copyright if you're willing. My thought then now too is if the only thing you can get going with the movie is this, maybe you shouldn't have the rights to the film anyway.
This is true, and it also bears repeating that this was obviously a very different time for Marvel movies. Nowadays, a Marvel movie like Fantastic Four First Steps, that's a big budget, highly anticipated movie. This was a time when Marvel couldn't really they couldn't get movies made under their own banner. They didn't have the resources or the infrastructure any of that, or there wasn't much public interest. Comic book movies weren't really a thing.
But you're right then we did have Captain America and we had The Punisher now, which is more disappointing by the time that they're making this film.
I never saw The Punisher, so I can't speak to the Punisher. I can't speak to Captain America. And it was pretty damn disappointing. It wasn't as bad as that TV show from the seventies with Red Brown is that his name? The football player who played He's.
Just wearing a fucking motorcycle helmet for his regular helmet.
It's insanity, right, But Scott Pollard was pretty good as the Italian Red Skull, though.
I have to say, yeah, that's because Scott Polland's awesome, But it makes no sense he could still be German Red Skull in Italy? What are they doing? He could be visiting anyway.
But you're right. The expectations I think for the average moviegoer fan of the Fantastic Four were probably pretty low when they heard that Roger Korman was making this picture. But despite that, there's excitement anyway, because again, there weren't many comic book movies, let alone one featuring your favorite superhero team, so there had I don't remember at the time being super excited for it, but there had to be some excitement of we're getting something like this could
be this could be pretty cool. I'm gonna be cautiously optimistic.
Yeah, I say this a lot, but I always feel like sometimes science fiction fans and comic book fans, all the genre fans up until recently, because now obviously nerd culture has exploded in all directions, but we were starved at a certain point, like any scrap that could fall off the table that had a cape on it that we were pretty stoked about it. It always reminds me of you look at racks and racts of romance novels. It's like people reading them know they're shit, but they'll
just do for now. And that's what we were getting, like we were, oh, this little bit. We'd even take Howard the dock. That's the insent, just.
A little like a starving person you give a crust of bread, they're going to leap upon that crust of food with like hunger is the best sauce. That's the saying, right, So anything is better than nothing in this case, Oh, we believed HB.
I actually aligned to you because that documentary didn't come out until twenty fifteen.
I was going to I was gonna mention that I didn't want you. You're on a roll, so I didn't want to get in your way.
I had seen fantastic, I've seen. I saw Fantastic for ninety seven, the Rocher Carbin one, like the bootlegs were pretty quick, they were.
I remember being at a few conventions, even I think the Weekend of Horror that you and I went to in high school. I remember seeing those like clamshell boxes at some exhibitors and going like, oh, this fantastic might have been the first time I even was really aware of the Fantastic four Corman movie. But little did I know that really was it. It was never going to be released either, as a bonus feature for the two
thousand Movies or anything. And as far as I know, it's still there's no plan to ever release it, is there?
Oh?
Is it not on Blu ray?
I don't think.
I think it's on a steel book. Didn't I see, like Adam Scott in the Criterion closet taking it down? Oh, fantastic for Roger kum. Interestingly, this is not actually directed by Roger Korman even we called them, even than we call it a Roger car film.
It's got a special limited edition cover by Mondo, like a special edition could be, but.
No, I draft TSK cover.
I can still see it that that cheap o case with the like digitally printed cover poorly, like the color is all faded and bad looking. And you just knew that somebody dubbed this off of their own VCR. And that was the other thing. This we're talking video cassettes. This wasn't like you're getting a DVD or even like a CD ROM. This was a video cassette.
Boot from the pages of the world's greatest comic book.
Adventure for heroes on a daring mission in space, but something went wrong, genetically transformed, they become the most powerful superheroes of all time, but the forces of evil about to destroy their cosmic power.
Find them, and.
To survive, they must utilize all their strength to put an end to their arch nemesis. Dude claubretime The Fantastic Four.
Okay, here we go, Fantastic four. This was made to be released on May the thirty first, nineteen ninety four. It was never released. It is ninety minutes. It was written by Craig Nevius and then rewritten by guy named Kevin Rock, directed by oly Sassone or Sassoan Oly Sassoni who Knows. Starring Alex Hyde, White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Stob, Michael Bailey, Smith, Carl Scharfalio, Ian Trigger, Kat Green, George gains for two seconds, and he's very very very good.
He's got he's like fifth or sixth billing, and he's only in it for literally those two minutes.
He just gets a blowjob from a prostitute and a podium and he's on his way. Also starring and starring Joseph Kulp as Victor von Doom, Doctor Doom. Okay, ninety minutes that I mentioned, it's ninety minutes, that's all right, here's the thing. I agree with yours and Film Threats and the Doomed documentaries appraisal that this is a very
earnest film made by serious people. They are not winking at the product, which was always comic book fans greatest fear that we were getting Adam West Batman sixty six again. By now Batman had come out, and Batman was a serious dude because now it's Michael Keaton, which sounds funny that he was anyway. So Batman is a serious dude now.
So we're expecting at least our filmmakers to take the product seriously, to take our characters and the world they're in seriously, and this one definitely does that.
It does. It's not the greatest story. There are clearly concessions to things like budget and what have you, but it's not the train wreck that everybody feared it would be. I will say this. We've talked about those incredible Hulk TV movies that came after the fact, the one with Thor and the one with Daredevil and so forth. I will say I think this is at least on a par with the one with Thor, if not better than
that one. That one. I think is. It's too much of a departure from who thor is, and it's just not made with all that much care and creativity. But this you can tell. Like you said, it's very earnest and the story, while not the greatest story, is very
¶ Plot Breakdown and Analysis
comic book like. It's fairly true to the source material.
If this were I say this a lot about origin story movies for comic book characters. If this were a pilot for a television series, I would say this is a great fucking pilot. Everyone should seek it out and watch it. Look what they did, the fact that this is a theatrically minded feature that is ultimately a fucking dodge so they can maintain the rights to the characters. It's Sully's my take on the film. It doesn't the
let me put it this way. The sort of naked greed on display balances out the earnestness of the cast and crew. So now I have to just judge the movie as.
Is, of course, and I would say, I think if you asked the or if you talk to the actors, they would ask you to judge this movie on its marria. It's as opposed to all the baggage that it comes freighted with so on those on that basis alone, Father Malone, did you were you entertained? Did you enjoy it?
I was entertained, definitely, and I did have a good time watching it. Was I scratching my head a lot. Was I wondering what the fuck is going on? Several times?
Me too? Yeah?
Did I immediately go? Wait? Is that supposed to be the mole Man? Yes? All of these things? H me, yes, what's the story here?
So it's the Origin story. It starts with the Origin and other fantastic four that I think most people probably know at this point. There are some alterations and some streamlining happening in this one. Starts out Victor von Dune and read our classmates, just like in the comic book.
But this is mental by the way that we're starting with them as young people. I get what they're doing, but it's fucking crazy that this is a ten near jump. Anyway, please continue. These guys are these are guys who Here's George Gaines by the way, from fucking the Commandant Lassarde from police Academy is giving them this nonsense, fucking generic lecture out of college.
Yeah, he's so, what's happening? Is there's a comet called Colossus that's going to come very close to Earth. I think it's meant to be a stand in for like Haley's Comet, and.
Which was all the rage in the nineteen eighties.
It was not so much in the nineties. But we'll we'll slip past that Doom and read Richard's are they've built some sort of machine, some device that will siphon energy from this was a little bit vague. I think that they're looking to make a device that can harness energy from this comet. Because it's going so close to the Earth, it's going to be some sort of clean energy. There's a malfunction because Reid wanted to go over the figures the second time and Victor did not, which is
close to the book. There's an explosion. Doom is presumed dead, but it's he's actually not dead. He has confederates from his home country of Latveria that, for reasons that are a little bit murky.
They save him, a little bit murky.
They take him back to his home country. And then we flashed forward ten more years and I'm sure I'm glossing over some things.
Oh no, I mean, basically before the craziness Ben, and we meet Ben and his relationship with Read Richard's and they're like, Read is like he's in the most hilarious sort of here's signage to indicate where we are. The Storm family like boarding house where it's Storms, Sue Storm's mom and young Sue Storm and young Johnny Storm are like playing video games in the because they're kids.
So that was irving, by the way, so it's not.
All creepy that little girl is obsessed with older man Read and to the point of, by the way, okay, as earnest as everyone was, let's call this fucking movie when it's bullshit, because it's the fucking most bullshit line. Everything he's dreaming. She actually says that. She actually presses her hands against her cheek and watches him walk up the stairs and says, Read, he's so dreaming.
The only thing missing her little hearts that are shooting out from her head as she's doing this. But that, but like I said that, that part of it was creepy to me because it's vic Reid and Ben are just those are the actors. They don't change like when they age.
It's just them they do because they've spray painted Alex Hyde White's with the white Yeah, yeah, giving him the gull wing hair the ash special.
But it's and it may be true to the book because I know that Sue was meant to be much younger than Reid.
But it's one of cares just started with all of them graduated.
They didn't need to they could have. They didn't need to have this ten year jump because it didn't really add much and it only made me uncomfortable because there is Sue Storm at eleven or twelve years old mooning over Reid Richards and you know that they're going to be romantically involved eventually. So that's a very odd thing to have to grapple with. But anyway, they.
See that Transformers movie with with Mark Wahlberg, where like a major plot point is that his daughter is involved with an older man, and like at one point, the older man character recites like the Statutes of Limitations for like minors, and have you seen this movie? It's insanity, man.
I don't think I've seen any of those Transformer.
Movies, So I just want to tell you about it. Like takes out like a farm. It's clearly at that time Michael Bay was being accused of untour.
Sure, but it's this is a little some of the storytelling, and this is a little suspect. But nevertheless, they we flash forward. Now Read killed Bay.
He's so dreamy, so Read.
Is it's ten years later. Read has built his rocket ship. Apparently the comet is this colossus comet is still orbiting the Earth. Somehow it's ten years later. Maybe it's made its return trip. That was left uncertain in my mind. Anyway, Now he's going to take this ship up and do an experiment, a similar kind of thing he Inveigel's Ben to pilot.
It's Ben as a pilot, so that makes sense. And then for his astrophysicist and or co pilot and or other technicians, the Storm kids.
Of course, Johnny Storm in the book he was young too, but I think in that case it was more like he was like a prodigy. He was a good mechanically, so he was going to be an asset to the crew, whereas in this case, not that Underwood plays him badly, but he's just a he's just a teenager, and it's it's unclear why what qualifies him to go on this spaceflight.
He's a hyperactive dummy here in the movie, he.
Got he very wide eyed, a hyper so they go up, Oh no, but okay, I'm leaving something out here, so they here's where it gets a little weird, Father Malone, so he gets weird everybody, so they Reid realizes that they need some a force field to protect them from the cosmic rays, if you will, so he arranges to have this giant diamond be part of the ship's makeup.
It will protect them from the harmful radiation. But there's this character who's supposed to be the Moleman, but they couldn't get the rights to the Moleman, so in this movie he's called the Jeweler. The Jeweler has an obsession with Alicia Masters, who is the blind Sculptress from the book to in order.
To tell people who there is, there's a blind sculptress, and in this movie, she's been hired by the city to memorialize the Fantastic Four after they're killed.
But that's after this that's okay, So at this point she is just a sculpturest okay, and he and the Jeweler is obsessed with her. So in order to give her a gift, he steals this diamond and replaces it with a fake At the same time, Father Malone, doctor Doom is looking to sabotage their flight because now he's officially Doctor Doom with the costume and the metal mask and everything.
Lots of fetish shots, like lots of like shots of the eyelets and the mouth, just the hooded figure and lots of the fingers. This okay, we'll get to him soon.
Yeah, so he he figures into this. He also wanted to say, like I said, sabotage this mission, but he observes the Jeweler stealing the diamond, so he says, my work is done. I don't know, have to is perfect.
I loved this part of the script. By the way, this was so comic bookie, like out of left field. We should also say that the Jeweler character is like it's a prosthetic makeup on the character. It's made to look like. Okay, now we're in the comic book world once this guy shows up, and this really is when it turns into a comic book because that's when doctor Duom arrives as well, and now we're getting shouts of
him in the classic mass. The costume for Doctor Doom, it should be noted, is fucking awesome in this movie.
That's probably my favorite thing out of the whole movie, which admittedly is maybe a low bar to get over, but this is the most comic, accurate version of Doctor Doom that we've gotten. Even to this day, I would lay claim to this. It's cheap, it's not perfect, but they got the mask details really good. It's I'm not over selling it. It's great. But they go up, the crew goes up in this rocket. The cosmic rays overwhelmed them.
They crash, They they have lost I am flying in a rocket in outer spacemember, remember astronaut Jones. No, I want to share it right now.
You might have to produce it into this.
I'm definitely, I'm definitely going to You're gonna, you're gonna. You're going to laugh when you hear it. It's fantom.
I'm laughing already. So they crash and they've lost telemetry, so no one knows where they are, and they're trying to survive. But they're already the powers are already manifesting themselves, although in a limited capacity budgetary, but for budgetary reasons.
Like, okay, first of all, the capsule of the spaceship, everyone is in tinfoil like heat suits. Yeah, and they needn't be. It's really silly. It's typical Corman thing. They keep saying this was such a great budget, and obviously it was. This was their biggest budget at the time, But if you just looked like a couple of years beforehand, they did Battle Beyond the Stars, and that movie looks great, and there's tons and tons of space stuff in it.
All that shit looks great. Here this stuff. Obviously they're only doing one scene with the outer space, and so they're not going to pay that much attention to it. They're not going to spend that much money on it. But I think about Corman Studio. I remember walking past Korman Studio like every day, just looking at spaceships lying around in the parking lot. So it's not like they
didn't have more material. I did not like the cosmic sequence, other than when they were getting their powers and they were using the step printing process where they're just using stock footage of lens flares and shit to approximate like they've been irradiated. I loved that.
But to your point about how bad some of this looks, I think it's maybe less a budget thing and more of According to Doomed the documentary, not only did they have to make this film cheaply, but they had to make it very quickly. They were always I think they only I think the it was like I want to say, it was like a four or five week shoot, which is insane for something of this that of this supposed scale, And that didn't leave a lot of time for post
production work. And I think there were some issues. I think that the money ran out.
Oh yeah, let's just say, even though we saw a finished film, this is still not a finished film. Honestly. There are whole sequences where I'm like, there would be music here, there should be music here. They didn't even get that far.
Right on the One of the biggest examples of that is and they talk about it, and Joseph Kulp talks about this. So he is acting as doctor doom And I noticed this as I'm watching it. I said, Poya's voice is really muffled. Did they not do any ad R on him, because it's as if he's delivering his lines with the Yes, he's absolutely not only is he delivering his lines with the mask on, but they never had him in to loop his dialogue to make it
more intelligible. So that's just one example of the corner cutting that took place on this picture.
And you know, all obviously he would know that while he's acting the fucking part, so he's he's not going
¶ The Thing
full tilt all the time, and like, even if he fucks something up, he'd be like, I'm just gonna adr that anyway.
So yeah, I'll fix it. I'll fix it in post. It's not a big deal. But there was no post for the actors. But I guess we'll get back to that anyway. They get picked up this crashed crew, they get actually before that we're talking about the special effects, so lack thereof Johnny never gets to really flame on
until the very end of the movie. So while in the book he flames on almost immediately and they're arguing and he flies around and this all he does is he sneezes and the sneeze causes a flame to shoot out, and that's it. That's all really, And aside from his hand lighting on fire a few times, you don't really get much of Johnny doing the human torch thing.
Not a whole lot of experimentation from the four Once they get their powers.
You know. So they're picked up by people they believe to be the army, but it's in fact confederates of Doctor Doom, and he takes them to what they believe in the military installation, but it's actually his castle or whatever, and he's trying to harness their abilities, like he's taking blood from them, he's burning all these experiments. They finally figure out that this isn't the military. I don't know what we're going to get out of here. They By
this point, Ben Grimm has officially become the thing. Actually before we even get to.
That, let's get to that. Yeah, I want to.
Talk a little bit about the thing, like what was your take on the costuming and the effect work around Ben Grimm Father alone. I'm really curious what your take is.
I remember seeing the magazine cover and thinking, oh man, we're in for a fucking ride here. This is going to be fucking dreadful. And but from the very first time I saw the movie, the best thing about the movie is the thing. It's not only almost comic accurate looks wise, but it moves great when it's being shot judiciously. The articulation of the mouth is really good. When we first meet him, and he's asking questions like why did this happen to me? Read what are you doing? All
of that was great. I mean, they only had one suit, so they don't really when it's Clabern time. It's more like quick editing time. But I loved the suit. And I even like the guy who played Ben before he becomes the thing, because it's just a stuntman afterwards. It's like a swamp thing situation.
Yeah, so it's two actors. One guy plays Ben Grimm in human form, and I agree he's very good in this. And I also agree with you that when it's shot properly, the articulation of the thing's face and his mouth and he's talking, there were moments where I was legitimately impressed because it almost holds up even thirty years later. You can see him articulating the words that the actor is speaking.
Sometimes it falls apart because it's not shot well. And the fact that the Ben grim that the thing that I know from the comics. He's big, right, He's supposed to be able to go toe to toe with the Hulk creatures like that. In this case, all you're getting is kind of a big stunt man with this suit. He looks a little puny, punier than he should, I think, And there's something about the suit itself that reads less like rock and more like it just looks very latexy that when he moves.
Around, if it comes off at anything, it comes off like a lizard skin. You're right, it never comes off like stone. And they could have just maybe thrown in some sound effects or had some grit falling off him to maybe sell that just a little bit, because you're right, they never really even mentioned that he's a rock man.
Yeah, but it's and the fighting is a little bit goofy, but I do I do think that's clearly a lot of time and effort went into the servos that worked the character's face and mouth, so that part was really good. There's not really much to be said about Sue Storm. That's really just your typical matted shots of her, like half visible, half not visible. I think there's one shot of her shooting like an energy weapon or like a shield out of her hand, but that's about as far
as it goes with her. And the less said about read Richard's stretching ability, the better probably.
Oh h okay, so read Richards anytime he stretches. It's either a practical effect which looks terrible, or it's a straight up hand animated like stretch where his clothing is also stretching inexplicably with like his leg stretches out and
¶ Music and Editing
tripped somebody. It's I would rather have had no powers than the powers that we end up seeing and Sue Storm the way that's presented that drives me crazy. I don't care if you just have somebody disappear on screen and it's the same effect that they've been doing since the fucking Invisible Man in the nineteen thirties, that's fine
by me. But if the person disappears and two characters are standing on opposite sides of that person and they open fire, that person hasn't disappeared, they're just no longer visible. She would still be shot and killed. And that sort of thing happens over and over again, where she disappears a second before somebody lunges where she was standing, just there like a millisecond ago, and suddenly she's not there, as if she has gone off to some other realm. That's not how it works.
She's just invisible to the naked eye. She hasn't de materialized, and that I did think of that myself after the youmpteenth time, where there's a guy on either side of her with a rifle and they both opened fire, and the joke, not the joke, but the idea is because she's disappeared, they effectively kill each other. But that wouldn't happen. That that did make me a little bit crazy too.
Moments like that HP just make me want to turn up the radio or to take these broken wings and learn to fly again, learn to live so free. Oli Sassone the filmmaker here. He was a music video guy all through the nineteen eighties. He did the autograph song turn Up the Radio video, He did mister Mister's Broken Wings video. He did a Juice Newton. He did the It's in the way that you move, It's in the way that you use it from Eric Clapton.
He did that video, oh from the Color of Money.
Absolutely. He did a Gloria as Stefan. He did a Jerry he did when Jerry Lee Lewis finally made his Great Balls of Fire video in conjunction with the movie That Was his Life in nineteen nineteen eighty nine, this guy directed it. He directed a John Lee Hooker video. So my question is, why is this poorly edited? Why is this one of the most poorly edited films I've
ever seen? There's no musicality. In fact, while I was watching it, I kept thinking during the action scenes, man, they should have gotten a music video editor, or they should have gotten a music video director.
I'm going to chalk that up again to the conditions in which this was made. That they didn't have a lot of time, they didn't have a lot of resources. I think at a certain point they essentially stole the reels and they worked post production on their own dime. So under those types of conditions, it's a wonder that the thing got quote unquote finished at all. You and
I both agree it's not truly finished. But he, I got to say in that documentary, he was probably the most endearing of all of the people that had to deal with this situation because he is like he's He comes off as a real ham and eggs director. Somebody who works for hire probably gets it, takes pride in
getting his work done on time and under budget. I get the sense a lot that this whole situation, when it once it finally came to light, the reasons for making this movie that he was probably completely blindsided by it and probably offended as a filmmaker. That's his he says often in this movie. You're a filmmaker. You don't abandon your film when it's taken away from you. You do the best you can to finish what you can
and turn in something anything. I think that's probably why this isn't up to those higher standards.
I will say that whoever the cinematographer was, he did a good job because this is bare bones Roger Kruman bullshit, and more often than not, it's lit to his best, to the best of the cinematographer's ability. This never looks like a sitcom. This looks like it is attempting to be a feature film from people who are constantly being thwarted by their boss and their work being sent straight to video.
You're right, it does. The sheene of the movie. The look of the movie is actually pretty good. It's I would put it on a par with have you ever seen the pilot for the Spirit TV Show with Sam Jones and Nana Visitor? Have you ever seen that?
No, you should?
That might be something you want to look into for another episode. It it feels a little bit like that. It actually it has a sheene to it. It looks professionally shot and lit. Where this obviously where Fantastic four falls apart is mostly in the editing, like you said, and the special effects. However, one thing I'm sure you're might be leading up to this, one thing that I was actually pleasantly surprised by is the fact that this movie actually had a real score. I wasn't expecting that.
I thought this was going to be source music, like library music to the nth degree. But they actually got two guys to come in and compose a score and have a forty piece orchestra perform it and record it.
I thought that has count for something, definitely counts for something. There's not enough of it, Like I said, there's whole portions of the movie where I'm like, where's the music here? Man and Bravo and Bravo that it's not what At the time, everyone was just doing Batman. They were all any superhero related thing that was coming down, either on television or in the movies. You were getting some variation of Danny Elfin's either horns or drums, horns or drums.
Even Danny Elfman was sounding exactly like Danny Elfman when it came to his horns and his drums. Try to listen to the differences between Dick Tracy and dark Man and fucking Batman and The Flash and all of the other Danny. Those are all Danny Elfman scars from around the same period. What was he doing? Turn one of those down. You don't need to do Dick Tracy. Can you think? Can you remember that the Dick Tracy theme at all right now?
Not even a little bit. Because he became a prisoner of his own success in terms of the creativity, everything started sounding the same only from that time period. I think it's around the time period. That's why a movie like Midnight Run was such a surprise, because that was a Danny Elfman soundtrack. But that sounds nothing like any of the other things. It's guitar forward. It's cool, it's different. You and I were fiends for Batman when it came out.
We both jumped on that soundtrack. I listened to it constantly. I got sick of it. I didn't need to hear it coming out of The Flash or The Simpsons or any of those things that you just described. It drove me nuts because it all sounded the same.
I'll say that Midnight Run soundtrack that he did felt the most appropriate. At the time. I was a big going, go boying go fan. I'm sure you were too. So once he started producing scores for movies, it was, first of all, it was elating because the first one was Pee Wee's Big Adventure. It was so boingoe but at
the same time so cinematic that it made sense. But when Midnight Run came out, it was like, Yeah, that's fucking Danny Aufman because it was guitar and it was rocky more than anything, and I thought, Wow, he's just gonna keep this variation going. Like all of these differences are like his score for his early score for Summer School, which is like a zydeco score. All that stuff is great, man. I thought he's just going to be running the gamut here.
But all he was doing was biding his time taking these jobs until he could start doing his Danny Elfman thing, which was a child's choir and drums and down.
That's beetlejuice.
That's all of them.
Yeah, that's all of them. And I'm hearing I can almost hear people listening to this fool and saying, what about John Williams. This stuff sounds the same, it doesn't. I reject that because he may be using his tools are the same the orchestra. But you can't tell me that soundtrack for Indiana for rad As the lust Arc is the same as the soundtrack for Superman, which is the same as a soundtrack for Jaws. I reject that outright. So anyway, you who have that notion in your head,
get it out right now. So I have not seen the New Superman yet, but it's my understanding for the malone that didn't they interpolate his John Williams's theme of Superman in that movie.
When Superman first comes into action. Yes, there are shades
¶ Dr. Doom
of the Williams score, which is smart because you're never going to do anything better.
Ever, it's ever, that's the thing there have been since let's say, since I don't know did he do this. What was the last Superman movie he did the soundtrack for? Was it two or three?
I think it was just Superman Williams so Superman and then just Superman, and then somebody came in and did variations on the work he had done for the Because it was supposed to be one and two, so I'm sure some of his score was used in two, but he didn't compose anything new past one.
So let's say, putting aside the Christopher, the original Superman movies and all the sequels, we're talking about Man of Steel, the Justice League movies, the all how many Superman movies have there been since there's Superman Returns. Let's say four or five Superman movies until the most recent effort. None of them had any kind of memorable soundtrack. There's a reason for that. His theme is fucking iconic. That's why you have to interpolate his theme in the newest one,
because that's what people want. No one will ever live up to that.
I will say, there's only one score that can compete. Yeah, it's the song save Me by Remy Zero from the television series Small Belle. Come on, Baby, Somebody save Me. You were a big fan of that Small I'm still a fan of that show Small. I'm still a fan of that show up until I'm gonna say season seven,
maybe season eight. Here's why I know that it goes wrong there for me because in its initial run, I watched the series religiously and I got to about series seven or season seven, and then I just trailed off. It just went away. Sometimes that happens with television series, right, life gets involved. That's a long chunk of time to invest in a television series. So then I made a
concerted effort. I'm going to rewatch this series from the beginning and because it had by then ended, and I'm going to get to the ending, knowing full well that we were going to get at least briefly Tom Welling with the s on his chest after ten years, Right, I'm ready for it. I go to about season seven and then I just trailed off because I just lost interests.
Basically what happens on that show is as soon as Lex Luthor is off the show, it is a meandering and trying to figure out what it is and can never find its way back ever.
So Rosenbaum is your Lex Luthor.
Then he definitely is my Lex Luthor. Yeah, although Nicholas Holt we got to get back to back to what we're talking about here, But I will say Nicholas Holt is very scary, and that's the first time Lex Luthor has been that for me. Cool.
I hope to see it soon. Anyway, back to the Fantastic Four.
I don't even know where we were, Let's talk about Doctor Doom. So let's just talk you got something to do there about No, I'm good, right on. Then let's talk Doctor Doom fully because we've mentioned the costumes. Fantastic Robert culps on Joseph Kulp, Robert Culp. For those of you who don't know, it's not going to help you. If you don't know, you either watched I Spy or you.
Did Greatest American Hero. He was his sidekick.
Yeah, you've either seen Santa's Sleigh or you haven't.
He's he's a very distinctive he. This wasn't like a total movie star, like a Tom Cruise type, but he did his fair share of TV a lot of He probably was on the A Team at some point shows of that caliber.
You know what My favorite, my favorite Robert Culp performances Colombo. No, get out of here. I don't watch Colombo. That's your thing.
Oh man, he's great in Colombo, But go ahead.
Mayor Tyler in Turk one eighty two, that's a good call. When he sees the when he sees the train pulling in and he noticed and he sees that it's been graffitoed and that his photo op has now been ruined once again, and he goes, ah shit like that. That line reading lives in my brain.
But it's not him and this movie. It's his son in the Fantastic Four. And we've talked all about Robert Culp. It's Joseph Culp.
Yes, Joseph Culp a is doctor Victor von Doom, doctor Doom, the Masked Wonder. He does a lot of hand acting, obviously Robert Culp's son, Joseph Cupp. Obviously Joseph Culp. Once he got those gauntlets on and felt those individual little armor bits over his fingers clicking and clacking, he decided knuckles. He decided, I know how to play this part entirely with my hands.
It was that got distracting. But he talks in that documentary about one of his inspirations was Mussolini. I guess the director said, watch these Mussolini clips and see how he's always putting his hands, crossing his arms, doing things with his hands. And then he did what they did, like a half and half shot at a shot of Mussolini and a shot of doctor Doom and you can
see the influence. That's what he's going for. However, there are moments where it's almost it gets into voguing territory, where he's doing it a little too much, and it's a very tight Sometimes it's a very tight shot of his face with his hands very close to his face. It's a little distracting, but vocally he I thought he did a pretty good job despite the mask and having to really project and maybe this not being the fine
his perceived final vocal take. I thought he did a pretty good job of embodying doctor.
Doom, Mussolini and Monroe Vogue.
Did you think he? I thought he did pretty good. What did you think fought him alone?
When the hands started fluttering on screen, I thought, Okay, here's an actor who feels constrained by that mask and knowing no one seeing anything he's going to be doing. So he's doing his best to make his impression, to make this his in some way. And then the clickity clackiness of the gauntlets themselves made me think, oh, he's just having fun with these gauntlets. All of his choices just made me keep thinking about his acting choices. Okay,
those needed to be fucking rained. In not his fault. I'm not blaming him. I'm blaming only the director of the Turn Up the Radio music video for not fucking raining that shit in just through editing. What the fuck man? The clickity clacking? What's happening then? Although I do think, yes, had that been edited correctly and we have been given the performance and they'd given him the time to adr all of his dialogue, I think it's a very credible performance.
I think it's a really good performance of Doctor Doho. It's certainly better than anything Julian McMahon did in those two big budget, gross fucking movies. And what see better than that fucking what twenty fourteen fantastic with the four as the a What does that even mean? Fantastia co or Fantapha?
Was Josh Trask Josh Trank Trank? I see Trask Trenk. I agree. I was actually curious how you would stack him up next to Julian McMahon, because I never look rest in Peace.
I hated him.
I never thought he was I thought he's a great actor in Nip Tuck. He's fantastic. He is not good as doctor Doom.
I'm sorry, he's just playing this kind of laconic version of Doctor Doom, and I'm like, that, ain't Doctor Doom. Doctor Vuom is the fucking head of Laveria. He was his magic. He's fucking bombastic and crazy.
He looked good though, like his face if you especially like if you look at the Secret War limited series
¶ Final Thoughts and Comparisons
that is Julian McMahon. If he had been giving the right material in the right direction, he could have been a really good Doctor Doom.
Plus I hate all of this, like we have to every comic book script does this. We have to re write someone's origin in some way for no good reason, like in that case, like he's suddenly magnetic now and he slowly turns into Doctor Doom like the mask forms itself over the course of the movie. Great, that's really clever. Do you feel good about yourself that you added that to the fucking lore and you like this.
Got says to be a cloud instead of this skyscraper tall, fucking scary alien creature coming to eat your planet.
That go be crazy so much amorphous cloud in the sky and blue lightning and oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, So that's a positive Doctor Doom. In the Fantastic four ninety four movie is a positive in my book.
If they had made this movie, here's what should have happened to HP. They should have said they look at the suit for Doctor Doom and look at the suit for the Thing, and go, we need to rewrite. Right now,
this is now the fantastic one. This is going to be the story of the Thing and Doctor Doom during that experiment, getting lost on some other plant and then duking it out for tour, and let's spend all the money and buy another suit and buy another one for him and make this happen, and right now that would be a cult classic. We go to see on Friday nights, The Thing versus Doom.
I'm there for it. I'm there.
Those are the best parts of the movie. Look, other performances are good across the board. The performance is pretty good. I think Alex Hyde White gets to that sniveling, fucking I want to punch you in the face. Read Richard's characteristic that I think is essential to that character. Is that a compliment? Probably not.
He's fine. I think he's fine. I'm not going to overpraise or underpraise him. I think he's fine. It's nothing special, but he doesn't embarrass himself. It's not like he's not a bad actor. I can tell that he's a good actor. He may just not this may not have been the right part for him. And Sue Storm I couldn't really get a handle on because she's not really.
She's completely underwritten. This movie does not pass the Bechdel test.
Not at all.
Not at all.
But then again, some of those are early Fantastic Four comic books. She probably probably failed the test as well. She's not well written in the early days either. It's just a different time. But by nineteen ninety four they should have known better and written her.
Hey, let's write our female lead like a real character you would actually want to spend some time with instead of just another flighty idiot. He's so dreaming. I don't know where we go from HAIRHP, What at the thoughts do you have on this?
I guess ultimately the question is this a success? Should this have ever been released? Or is this something that maybe was better left as a legend in a vault somewhere. I guess that's where That's the only place we can go from here. Do you think it's as good or bad as the legend suggests?
I think had they just dumped it onto video cassette in nineteen ninety four or ninety five, then it would just be a curiosity, the same way the Nick Fury movie is a curiosity which you can go watch. David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury. It's out there, Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Go check it out. It's readily available. Written by David Goyer, Mister, he wrote a bunch of He wrote all those again Chris Nolan movies, so he must be a good writer. Yeah, check out his work on
the David Hasselhoff Nick Fury movie. Anyway. Yeah, I think had this movie come out then we wouldn't be talking about it right now other than in relation to this new one coming out, and I don't think we would be speaking as favorably about it.
I agree. I think being suppressed, for lack of a better word, is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to this movie. Not speaking of the fact that the actors didn't get any sort of a boost from the picture, I'm not sure they would have if this had been dumped onto video. But something that is you can only find in bootlegs and handed from geeked geek over the years. It gives it cachet that it
wouldn't have had otherwise. But if I'm judging this purely on the film's merit, I don't think we would We certainly wouldn't be talking about this movie now if this had just come out and gone, because it would have just been like it was a goofy attempt at doing the Fantastic Four. There's no other there's nothing more to add to the story. But this makes it a curiosity.
Here's what I will say about this. And because apparently this is just a property where it's going to continue to happen to Thank god it's back at Marvel, because the Josh Trank movie is the exact same story. That's them holding onto the fucking copyright because it was going to revert back to Marvel. And given that comparison, watch this. Do not watch the Josh Trank movie. This is one thousand times better than that. This one has the spirit
of the movie. As we've said, you and feel that everyone is pulling in one direction, and that direction is let's make a good movie here and are really only our budget is tripping us up here. Look, part of that budget should have been spent on a professional screenwriter beyond Chris Nevius, who I know. He's written some movies that people like I don't, and I think his script is good here, but it needed to punch up from somebody who maybe knew the comics better, or New Action
better something I don't know. There was something missing here. The limitations are there, and the limitations are in the direction. Also the budget, there are a lot of limitations. Nevertheless, if you put all of those limitations together, what you get here is a thousand times better than a big budget twentieth century Fox movie with a CG lead as the thing and perhaps the most ununified Fantastic Four of all time, featuring the stupidest version of Victor vondhom I
have ever fucking seen. And I actually like that actor. I'm not holding it out on it. I'm not taking anything out on him, but that version of Doctor doom Is makes Julian McMahon look great.
Yeah, it's as you said earlier, like I in watching this movie, I was I don't think I was ever bored. I might have been confused, but I was pretty consistently entertained. And that's that's pretty cool. It was ninety minutes pretty well spent.
It's fleet to foot man ninety minutes that that trank movie is more than two outs. Anyway, I'm gonna stop baging on it. Where can people find this? Do you think is it on the YouTube?
Maybe it is on the YouTube. You can also get I'm sure you can get copies on eBay if you want to go that route. Conventions. I bet you this is still being sold at conventions, maybe Comic Con.
Oh man, not probably in the disc form now. He probably just put this in your computer. Here's a thumb drive. Here's a thumb drive. It's fantastic. Far on it. Man, you got the I got what you need here in this thum drive.
It's probably remastered now and remastered in quotes. Of course, you can't remaster something that you can't get the source material back for.
Ooh, do you think there's a fan edit of this where somebody has gone in and made the effects better?
No, but now you're making me want to try to seek that out, because you can do.
I'll tell you what it is on home computer, folks. If we find anything worth your time, it'll be in the show notes section. I'll put a link just to the fucking YouTube thing. So you can see what we're talking about in general, but if somebody's done something super cool, we'll also put it there until next time HP, which will be very soon. Oh my god, we're gonna be working together too often. Now, where can people find you if you're not hanging out here at midnight Viewing? All right?
So I co host The Night Mister Walter is a taxi podcast with my esteemed co host right here father alone. I am also an occasional guest in the Culture Cast with Chris Dashu. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast. And I have a bandcampsite HP Music Place dot bandcamp dot com.
Immediately and check out HPE's music. He does all of the music for everything I'm involved with. You're hearing it at the beginning and the end of this show. All the different variations of midnight viewing actually, because each one has its own specific theme, all for mister HP. So go check him out. And as for me, you know what's happening here. It's midnight viewing. We're on twice a week. It's killing me slowly. I'll be dead soon. Just keep
tuning in until that happens. And oh, what's this is? Friday. Monday will be another Fantastic Four that will be Father Malone's weekly roundup. That will be the latest Fantastic Four movie. That'll be Monday the latest, And then next Friday, Oh my god, Next Friday HP will be the start of a new fest unless they've come up with a better title. Nobody's come up with it yet. But next week's Next Friday begins Predator Fest. Ah shit, Starting with the original
Arnold Schwarzenegger. We're gonna get to the chopper. We're gonna talk about the fucking tie business. We're gonna drill it. We're gonna find ourselves buried in LA's deepest an Alabama. Tick you and me, baby, Continue next Friday, everybody. Until then, I'm gonna leave you with a bit of dialogue from the Fantastic Four movie.
Read help me. We were friends once, remember.
Hang on, Victor.
You see you have not the courage to strike the final blow. Do you, just as ten years ago you failed in a moment of triumph, you betrayed me. The losses was to be ours together, and now it stands between us. You still have a chance to read go on, save me. Do not think for a moment I shall have a rest until I have it is rightfully mine.
Here's to the future, my friend, exist.
Sis Sis sist y