YMMV / The Fantastic Four

• Accidental Innuendo: As pointed out by the recap on The Agony Booth, Sue's reaction to the radiation seems uncomfortably... sexual.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Fantastic Four never even fight the Jeweler or his men: Doctor Doom either kills them or scares them off.
  • Even Doom himself counts, as Reed Richards dominates him physically and defeats him by punching him over the side of the roof, barely holding any offensive strategy at all.
• Audience-Alienating Era: This film started it for the Fantastic Four in film.
• Awesome Music: The surprisingly epic opening theme is probably the best thing about the movie.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Thing suddenly reverting back to human form before he can save Alicia from Doctor Doom. There's no explanation given and it never comes up again afterwards.
• Complete Monster: Doctor Doom, real name Victor Von Doom, was once a friend of Reed Richards who was nearly killed and crippled by an experiment gone wrong. In vengeance, Doom spent the next ten years plotting the death of Reed and anyone associated with him. When the titular team gains their powers, Doom captures them and plots to drain them. In order to steal a diamond to power a laser beam, Doom massacres the Jeweler's gang and takes Alicia Masters as a hostage. Giving the Four an ultimatum of either surrendering to him or have New York City be destroyed by the laser, Doom starts a painful process to drain their powers, and plans to execute Alicia just to torment Ben Grimm. When they escape, Doom fires the laser at New York and confronts Reed once last time. Defeated, Doom lets himself fall just to deny Reed the satisfaction of saving him.
• Director Displacement: Oley Sassone directed the film, not Roger Corman (who produced the film given he's a No Budget specialist).
• First Installment Wins: Despite a lot of its flaws many fans still consider it the best attempt at a Fantastic Four movie. Make of that what you will.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: As noted on the Trivia page, this film was an Ashcan Copy made just for retaining the film rights...just like what happened 21 years later, albeit with a much bigger budget.
• Memetic Mutation
  • "No no no no … NOOO!"
  • After the horrendous reception of the 2015 film, in addition to the also ill-regarded 2005 film and its sequel, it became a bit trendy to say this was actually the best Fantastic Four movie.
    • This film's version of Doctor Doom in particular is regarded as superior, if only because he looks more like the character than the later film versions and seems to have more of his loveable Large Ham persona.
• Mis-blamed: A lot has been heaped on the cheap visual effects in the final film. What most people don't realize is that the person initially hired to do it talked a big game but wasted the allocated budget on sub-par results. The end result is as bad as it is because his replacement had no time or money to do deliver anything better.
• Narm Charm:
  • Mrs. Storm's way of giving a Title Drop, while awkward, is also very sweet.
    Mrs. Storm: Look at you, the Fantastic Four!
  • For that matter, the whole film is considered an example by many viewers, especially after the release of the 2015 film. Because for all its flaws, it still has a lot of heart and charm to it.
• So Bad, It's Good: Horrendously corny on an Ed Wood level, but the terrible effects and cheesiness make it entertaining.
• Special Effect Failure: Most of the special effects come in the form of stock footage, cheap optical effects, really terrible early CGI, and in the case of one of Reed's stretching scenes, it clearly involves two gloves on the ends of sticks.
• Stock Footage Failure: At one point movie uses stock footage of nuclear tests from the 1950s to represent Doom's laser destroying stuff! It's even tinted red for some reason.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Eric and David Wurst's score is essentially slight alterations of many popular John Williams pieces.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • While director Oley Sassone was a journeyman music video director by trade, he made a point about reading the Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks series before he went to bed, compensated with having No Budget by focusing on character development and actually compared the movie to On the Waterfront.
  • As the documentary Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four attests, the whole cast and crew gave their all on this film despite having the deck stacked against them with a shoestring budget and a tight deadline.
  • Even Chris Gore of Film Threat gave it his all to provide proper behind-the-scenes coverage of the production and drum up public interest in the film.
• Vindicated by History: It was originally considered by fans to be a mere B-Movie with a healthy dosage of Narm. But now with how bad subsequent movie adaptations of the comics got, large numbers of fans have begun to view this Fantastic Four in a comparatively more positive light, especially considering that it seems like the makers of this one cared more than the makers of the 2015 movie. It is also considered, in many ways, to be the most faithful Fantastic Four film yet (the argument being it captured the comics' spirit best but was hobbled by having almost No Budget).
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Thing's costume is actually pretty good considering the budget of the film (the fact that the company that did creatures for Babylon 5 made it too, helps).
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The film manages to do a surprising amount with the limited resources made available. One area they did fall short, however, was with the Fantastic Four's uniforms. They were so crude that the "4" insignia were misshapen and visibly lifting off the blue leotards. Rebecca Staab's suit was particularly bad because hers had a scoop neck which meant the insignia was down on her belly and partially obscured by her belt.

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