This crowdfunded documentary on the making of a movie that still has never been released a quarter of a century after it was completed is clearly a passion project. And not just for the makers --- the cast of the film clearly loved what they had made, in spite of its flaws, and care about it to this day. The story turns out to be less sordid than I expected, having known about the film from before its expected release, and followed all the rumors and discussions about it at the time and for several years later. (I am a recovered comic book geek, and a film nut, so at the time, the idea of even a halfway decent superhero movie was exciting.) The essence of it is what you probably have heard: a company called Constantin Film had acquired the rights to make a film of *The Fantastic Four*, but part of the agreement was that the film had to be in production by a certain date, or the rights would revert to Marvel Comics. With the deadline looming, Constantin approached producer Roger Corman, and his New Horizons/Concorde studio, asking if they could make the film on a very small budget (there is some disagreement over just how much it was, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million) and within a very tight timeframe. (This documentary reveals that Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films was also approached, and turned it down.) Corman had his people work on the idea over a weekend to see if it was possible, and they decided they could do it. Within a few weeks, at least three script drafts had been written, casting calls had gone out to agents, and the production got going very shortly after that. What I mean by "less sordid" is that, as everybody involved makes clear, *nobody* in the production had any clue that the purpose of the film was purely contractual, and that includes Corman and everybody at New Horizons. The originator of the project at Constantin knew, and possibly one or two others in that company, but everybody else was committed to getting the film not only made, but also released. They didn't just go into production, they completed production, they did full post-production, including scrapping the first round of special effects and having them redone, and including having a full, real orchestral score written and recorded (the recording was paid for partly out of the composers' own pockets, because they believed in the movie and were willing to go the extra mile to make it sound good). Cast members went to comic book conventions on their own dime to promote the film prior to release. Then cease and desist letters from Marvel's and Constantin's lawyers went out, a week or two before the planned premiere of the film, and the negatives were seized to prevent the movie from ever seeing the light of day. What followed is only glossed over by the documentary, largely because nobody associated with the less honest parties agreed to be interviewed, including Stan Lee (who, to be clear, was probably *not* involved in any of the dishonesty). Basically, Marvel did everything it could to pretend the movie had never been made, then to deny that it had been meant as a movie, until pirated copies turned up at conventions and it could no longer be denied. The part I had really been worried about was Roger Corman. He's a hero of mine, even though not every action he has ever taken is defensible. Nevertheless, for a guy whose entire career was spent in the low budget independent world, he has remarkably few blemishes on his record, and has always struck me as a decent man. So to find that exactly nobody in the cast, crew, or his own publicity department blames him in the slightest, and they universally believe that he had no idea of the ulterior motives of the other production company, was a relief. The fact that nobody blames him for taking the payout rather than releasing the movie (which, in absolute fairness, he couldn't have done even if he hadn't taken the payout) is also nice. More surprisingly, the director of *The Fantastic Four* even goes easy on the man from Constantin, Bernd Eichinger (who passed away a few years before this documentary was filmed). Eichinger apparently called him, invited him to his home, and told him the absolute truth about what had happened and why; and he even got the director another directing gig a year or two later as a result of the whole fiasco. While not exactly laudable, you've got to respect that he took responsibility so directly, and did at least *something* to atone for deceiving so many people in such an underhanded way. All in all, the documentary was good --- informative, fun, well-shot, and while it chronicles a car wreck you know is going to happen, at least nobody's life or career was destroyed by it, even if several careers that might have been bigger were kept small scale. Unfortunate, but hardly the most depressing thing ever. [Sidenote: Joseph Culp, who played Doctor Doom in the FF movie and is *clearly* proud of his work doing so, struck me as someone who would be ideal casting for The Doctor, if anyone were foolish enough to do an American *Doctor Who*. His presence, even just doing an interview, is striking, his face is fascinating without being conventionally handsome, he has a (pardon the expression) fantastic voice, and he should be a much bigger star than he is.] *** [Trailer](https://invidio.us/watch?v=VSgyLDrGgow). *** *This review by D. Jason Fleming is released under a [CC BY 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, some rights reserved.*