Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four

It was the seedy dark side

of Hollywood.

The part of Hollywood that you just go,

"Why does it have to be like that?"

Ya know?

- Everybody that worked on this film,

we all rolled the dice

thinking the game was fair, but it was rigged.

We gambled with our heart and our soul

and our artistic ability

to make a really good movie

the best we could with what we had.

We were making a movie for

probably around $1,000,000

of the Fantastic Four

and you just, you can't do that.

You just can't.

But we did.

- The heart of this film and the intentions

behind this film

from the people who made the movie,

not the business interests,

the people who made the movie,

their intentions were pure.

They wanted to make a great Fantastic Four movie.

- This was gonna be a breakout movie

for a lot of us.

We make a film like this

about a huge franchise like the Fantastic Four,

then you're lookin' at an opportunity here to go,

"Hey man, ya know what?

"Look guys, we got a shot."

I didn't know then, ya know,

all of the machinery that had been at work.

And that something so absurd like that,

that all this effort and time and all these,

all the work that went into making that film

and that it was never gonna see the light of day.

Strange.

Pointless.

Meaningless.

- I would hear, "You know, this film was never really

"intended to be a film."

And that infuriated me.

And I said, "Oh yeah?

"You watch."

I am Joseph Culp.

My name is Carl Ciarfalio.

- Hey there, my name is Jay Underwood.

I'm Kat Green.

I'm Rebecca Staab.

- My name's Michael Bailey Smith.

- I'm Alex Hyde-White, I played Reed Richards.

And I played Doctor Doom.

I played the Thing.

- And I played Johnny Storm, the human torch.

I played Ben Grimm.

I played Elisha Masters.

And I play Susan Storm.

Hi, I'm Oley Sassone,

I was the Director of the 1994

Roger Corman film, The Fantastic Four.

Hi, I'm Mark Sikes and I was

the casting assistant.

My name is Glenn Garland.

I was the editor.

My name is John Vulich

and with Everett Burrell, I was co-owner

of Optic Nerve Studios that was responsible

for the makeup effects for Roger Corman's

Fantastic Four.

I'm Jonathan Fernandez

and I was the Vice President of marketing

at Concorde New Horizons.

- I'm Chris Gore and I was the onset

journalist for most of the filming

on the Fantastic Four.

I'm Sean Howe.

I'm the author of Marvel comics, the Untold story.

I'm Lloyd Kaufman,

President of Troma Entertainment.

- I'm Roger Corman and I, together with

Bernd Eichinger, were the Executive Producers

of the original Fantastic Four.

The saga of the Fantastic Four

started in 1992.

Bernd Eichinger, a German producer

who was a friend of mine,

came to me, I think in September or October,

I think it was September of that year

and he said he had a problem

and maybe I could help him.

- I think it was somewhere in the early 90's,

maybe '92, I'm not sure,

but Bernd Eichinger did approach me

and was interested in having Troma Entertainment

make the Fantastic Four

on a low budget.

- He had the option for the Fantastic Four.

So, he asked me, "Can you and your guys

"at the studio make this picture

"for $1,000,000

"and start before the end of the year?"

And I remember, I just remember,

it was on a Friday and I said,

"Let me give it to the guys at the studio.

"They can work on it over the weekend.

"Let's meet Monday morning

"and I'll tell you if we can do it."

- Troma Entertainment was well known

and still is well known for making low budget movies.

The Toxic Avengers, internationally famous.

Class of Nuke 'Em High has had sequels

and Sergeant Kabukiman, NYPD is well known.

So, he thought perhaps,

Troma could produce the Fantastic Four

and Bernd and I had several conversations.

- The guys worked on it and they said,

"Yes, it's not going to be a $30,000,000 picture,

but we can make it look pretty good.

I said, "It doesn't make any difference.

"I just have to start shooting."

I was uncomfortable.

I'm buddies with Stan Lee

and ya know, we have our own characters

and they just didn't seem to be very much in it

for us to make a crappy, low budget movie

of something that was kind of a religious thing.

It really wasn't terribly exciting.

Been more interesting or if I could've

made a shitload of money.

But there was nothing there for me

other than to alienate our fans

and possibly alienate Stan Lee.

- I knew there was a rush on the set

to start the movie

for reasons that were, I didn't know.

I just thought, well, isn't that always the case

in any Hollywood film?

You gotta be done.

You gotta meet your budget and your schedule.

The reasons for that, of course,

came out much later.

- When I was first handed the script,

I assumed it wasn't going to be ours.

Steve Rabner, who was an in-house producer

and attorney for Roger walked up to me in the hall

with a smile on his face and handed me

this script without saying a word.

He knew I had come from a comic book background

having worked in a comic book shop for years

and I collected comic books.

So, he knew the reaction he was going to get.

And I held the script in my hand

and it said the Fantastic Four

and I simply thought Universal or Warner Brothers

was producing and I was like,

"Who's doing this?"

And he said, "We are."

- There was a lot of excitement at the studio

about this movie.

Neue Constantin was gonna be putting in

like 750,000.

Roger was gonna put in 750,000.

So, we thought, okay that's more than normal.

- We were told this was gonna play in theaters.

So, that was really exciting because

when I came along, Roger Corman was mainly in

the direct to home video business.

So, this was a film that was gonna play

in movie theaters.

No one, no one, no one at Roger

thought that this film was not gonna be

playing across the country.

It was blown away.

A little concerned.

Obviously, I knew the comic book

and I knew Roger very well

by this point.

I'd been, I'd grown up on his films.

And, here was a huge property.

Ya know, the Batman movie had come out,

but we were still more or less in the throws

of Captain America and The Punisher

and these not very successful superhero movies

of the 80's.

- What the fuck do you call 125 murders

in five years, huh?

Work in progress.

And here's the Fantastic Four

on a Roger Corman budget.

- The time, I think our expectation

for Marvel characters in movies was pretty low.

I think the best thing, by then, was ya know,

maybe The Incredible Hulk Show.

So, that was the best Marvel, ya know,

character brought to real life.

Ya know, so our expectations were low.

The Captain America movie.

I mean, this was, for Marvel movies,