EVERYONE'S GONE TO THE MOVIES [449]

I have only written about one Roger Corman film, the 1994 unreleased adaptation of “The Fantastic Four” comic book he was recruited to produce, so another producer could retain the rights to make a bigger-budget release later. I also made mention of a film Corman produced to cash in on the success of “Smokey and the Bandit”, and while I did not mention him by name, I have also talked about “Little Shop of Horrors”, Frank Oz’s 1986 film version of the musical itself based on Corman’s original film, released in 1960.

While I talked about the newer “Little Shop of Horrors” because of its restored ending, Corman’s original, aside from featuring an early role for Jack Nicholson, was famously made for approximately $30,000 in only two days and one nights using sets left over from his previous film, “A Bucket of Blood”, before they were torn down. Low budgets, making films back-to-back, reusing sets, inserting stock footage reusing footage from previous films and following trends are all hallmarks of Corman productions, alongside the long list of graduates from “The Corman Film School” that went on to their own accomplished careers, like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Joe Dante.

What struck me later was that recounting facts about the making of Corman’s films seem to be more interesting than the films themselves, as if the feat of creating and completing a film in seemingly reduced circumstances, when compared to the lavish production lines of the main Hollywood studios, is more remarkable than any artistry found in the films themselves.

I think this is because Corman, while known as a director mainly in the 1950s and 60s, including the influential series of films based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe, is mostly credited as a producer, looking at the bottom line as a matter of necessity, actively finding ways of extending his budgets. Selling the rights to the name of his 1954 crime drama “The Fast and the Furious” to Universal Pictures, in exchange to access to their stock footage library, is an ingenious move, but it is mainly a business decision.

But Roger Corman was known as the “king of the Bs”, and while the B-movie is more understood these days as a lower-budget film, rather than the second half of a double bill, their being able to be cheaper for cinemas and distributors for buy also placed less expectations and inhibitions upon them : the experimentations their production, the creative use of stock footage, and the ability to gather their talent pool from new people entering the industry ready to prove themselves by any means available, ultimately highlight the restriction placed on higher-budgeted films by the expectations placed upon them. Whether that makes a Corman-produced genre-based film a “cult” film, or “shlock”, is quite beyond the point – if it finds an audience, it will find a profit even faster.

TWO PLUS TWO IS FOUR [240]

The money may be in place, but no-one is ready. The will is there, but the star pulled out. If it doesn’t happen now, the chance may be gone. “Development Hell” is synonymous with the hoops a film has to jump through to be made, let alone released. It doesn’t surprise me that Warner Bros. has been trying to make a live-action “Akira” film since 2002, or that Terry Gilliam essentially handed over two decades of his life to make “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” directing other films until he could start again. The saga of Richard Williams animating “The Thief & Cobbler” for thirty years before financiers seized control is its own tragic tale.

The “Fantastic Four” series of films is a prime example of Development Hell, mainly because Bernd Eichinger, the German film producer of “The Neverending Story,” and later “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” as well as the “Resident Evil” films, obtained the film rights to the Marvel Comics characters in 1983, but it would not reach the screen until 2005. A sequel, “Rise of the Silver Surfer,” would be released in 2007, before it was decided to reboot the franchise, which itself was not seen until 2015. A second reboot is now in development after Disney bought 20^th Century Fox, which was in control of the rights by then.  

Of course, this summary is not that simple. Bernd Eichinger originally had to start making a “Fantastic Four” film before 1992 ended to avoid losing the rights. With no stipulation on what the budget had to be, Eichinger partnered with the producer Roger Corman to produce an adaptation, filming for between twenty-one and twenty-five days, for just one million dollars. While Corman’s reputation is for low-budget productions, they were also completed at high speed, and his ownership of a studio in Venice, California (converted from a lumber yard) made this easier still.

As an adaptation of the comic book, the “Fantastic Four” film that was completed is perfect. Everything, and everyone, looks correct, the characterisation is spot on, and the plot is suitably melodramatic: it is the origin story, with Doctor Doom, Alicia Masters, and the Jeweler, a new villain that stole a diamond vital for Reed Richard’s ship, causing the accident that became the first Marvel mutations. The special effects are cheap and cheesy, but get the job done, and would have been perfectly fine if this had been a television pilot instead of a feature film. The production only spends as long on scenes and emotions as long as it needs, needing only ninety minutes to tell a story that could not afford the space to breathe.

Oley Sassone, a music video director and fan of “The Fantastic Four” since childhood, recreated the book faithfully. Crucially, David and Eric Wurst, composers of the film’s music, paid $6,000 of their own money for an orchestra to perform its few musical passages lending a respectability to the production that was never intended.

It is not clear whether “The Fantastic Four” was ever going to be released, or if that was a decision made after it was completed. Stan Lee had appeared on set to inspect filming, and called the actor Alex Hyde-White, paid $3,500 a week to play Reed Richards, the person he envisaged playing the character. However, the planned premiere was cancelled, and the cast were given cease-and-desist orders to stop talking about it. Roger Corman had a contract to release the film, and had to be bought out of it. The film was reportedly sold by Bernd Eichinger to Marvel executive Avi Arad, who had prints of it destroyed like it was “Nosferatu.”

In an example of the Streisand Effect, “The Fantastic Four” is readily available on bootleg DVDs, as well as online. Those that made the film seemingly won’t ever get royalties for a proper release, but they made a film that was intriguing enough to seek out, something that has not since been said of the films that actually did get released.