I'm not ashamed to admit that I was a little afraid going into this one. This Fantastic Four movie is supposed to be terrible even for a Roger Corman production, which is much like saying that a film is amazingly homoerotic even for Tom Cruise. I'm told it was so bad that Marvel bought the rights back and refused to release it.

Think about that for a second. This is the same Marvel that put its stamp of approval on Reb Brown's awful Captain America movies, as well as the cinematic disaster that bored people everywhere call Elektra. How much worse does a movie have to be before it fails the Marvel acid test? Is team Agony Booth going to end up clawing their eyes out over this one?

There's only one way to find out.

So the credit sequence opens in outer space, with a bunch of wormhole shit and murky planets. I think some of this is supposed to be our solar system—one planet definitely looks like Jupiter—but everything is so heavily blue-filtered you can only think that they messed it up. Also, I don't think any of our planets glow in such a near-radioactive manner. Hey, look, Alex Hyde-White is in this. He was an extra in both of those Captain America movies, you know. Maybe these things are contagious.

Come to think of it, I've always wondered why so many movies make you sit through these interminable opening credits. Why bother? If your movie's awesome, the people who actually care will make the effort to sit through the end credits and find out who made it. If your movie's terrible, on the other hand, it's best if your name hasn't been on every viewer's mind from frame one.

The movie proper opens in a college physics classroom, with a professor (played by George Gaynes—Punky Brewster's dad) lecturing to his class about the speed of light. I'm already a little dismayed. Most sources say this movie was made in 1993, but from the look of this room and these people, I would've guessed at least twenty years earlier than that. I don't mind genuinely old movies, but seeing recent movies that unintentionally look old kinda bothers me.

Anyway, one student named Reed (the aforementioned Hyde-White) helpfully displays that he knows the speed of light in kilometers. This gets him teased by his friend Ben (Michael Bailey Smith), a letter jacket-wearing jock in the next seat. Okay, my bad, maybe this is actually a high school. Where else do you catch shit for actually knowing things? My girl has only been in college for a couple years, and it still surprises her when people don't think she's a dork for doing something well.

Meanwhile, Professor Henry is definitely trying to come across as the eccentric, probably-mad type. He kinda talks like a less interesting version of Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies:

"Radioactive comet-like energy source". You almost can't make this stuff up, people.

As much as I'd love to dissect this whole speech, it would be useless now. See, the word radioactive has just been mentioned, and everyone knows that when that happens in a comic book story, you can bet your ass that all logic has gone out the window. In real life, radiation sickens and kills people, but in old comic books, it's a magical, wonderful force that grants super powers or reverses time or makes things grow to giant size or causes spiders to be considered insects or whatever. It's only natural to assume that not only can radioactive forces make a celestial object travel faster than light, but they'll somehow allow us to, as well!

As Reed passes a diagram of some kind of device back and forth with his friend Victor (Joseph Culp), the professor concludes with, "So bring your telescopes, bring your imaginations, and above all... have fun." Imaginations? Yeah, Phil Plait would be the first to tell you that the best part of astronomy is the stuff you just pull out of your ass. Amusingly, even the class seems confused about what point the professor was building up to: he actually has to half-sheepishly say, "That's it... class dismissed," before they file out.

As they're getting up, Victor chastises Reed: "You can't keep adjusting the primary angles at that prism quadrant!" As opposed to the non-primary angles, I guess. Reed, of course, is hardly discouraged: "Of course I can! I have to, your calculations fail to consider... not here. Outside."

We can be sure Victor's gonna be the bad guy now. When we're talking about scientists planning to perform a reckless experiment, I think it's always the skeptical, humorless guy who ends up turning into a villain. Meanwhile, I wish I could go outside, for once our heroes step out onto the campus, we'll see that Victor's calculations have also failed to consider the annoying effect of technobabble:

Oh, wow. The traditional, veiled homoerotica of comic superheroism is already starting, and they're not even in their costumes yet. Even more astoundingly, Victor makes a hand motion that's almost pawing Reed playfully, before reassuring him that they have time.

While we're still reeling from this, the camera pans to two guys playing chess nearby. Half-assedly ominous music plays, so we can be sure they're up to no good, especially as one of them looks like a cross between Jesus and the bearded eastern European terrorist dude from xXx, while the other guy has a beret. Even in this little bit, though, the movie manages to get something wrong: European Terrorist Jesus jumps one of his chess pieces around the board several times in one turn. Maybe the radiation is already affecting the rules for games.

Now we cut to a quaint and peaceful home with a helpful sign out front reading "Mrs. Storm's Boarding House – Students Welcome". Apparently, this is where Reed and Ben live, and where we'll doubtless meet more of the future Fantastic Four. Two of them, blonde Susan and little Johnny, are still kids, and already preparing to see Colossus. To my callous amusement, Susan gets knocked down when Reed barges in the front door, and he doesn't seem at all concerned at first.

Even worse, she still questions him longingly when it seems like he won't go see Colossus with them. Admittedly, she looks like she's at least hit puberty by this point, but it's still creepy. After insisting that he has to go back "to the lab", he finally seems concerned for her and kisses her on the cheek. I've never actually read a Fantastic Four comic, but I'm really hoping that these two are siblings. Because otherwise Victor's going to be jealous.

Oh, sweet merciful crap, no, I'm wrong! After Reed reassures Johnny and runs up the stairs, Susan looks up after him and mutters in that infatuated schoolgirl way, "He's dreamy..." Ick, ick, ick. No girl ever talked about her brother like that, except maybe in the most incestuous and destruction-worthy romance novels. Luckily, Johnny laughs and shouts, "You're gross!" before running off. I hate it when the people making the most sense in a movie are little kids, but I'm still thankful for it here.

Cut from Susan looking up the stairs dreamily, to the obligatory dark lab. Reed and Victor (who are thankfully still clothed) walk in, and after Reed takes a moment to admire their large Whatever Device, the two go back to babbling about their calculations. Oh, no, Victor doesn't want to use the revised figures, and instead wants to start the experiment without doing a simulation. Reed is understandably crushed by this, but Victor tells him there's no time now, because "Colossus is here!" (Now I'm hoping that he means the comet-like energy source, rather than something else an aroused man in a cheesy movie might refer to as "Colossus".)

Anyway, if Colossus is about to "slow to the speed of the Earth's rotation", wouldn't they have, like, hours before it's gone?

Victor reassures Reed by giving him the regulation "the moment is now, this is everything we've ever worked to create, we're harnessing the energy of tomorrow, blah blah blah" speech while clasping his hands in solidarity. You can decide for yourself whether it's the speech or the thrill of holding Victor's hand that causes the normally responsible Reed to forget the flawed calculations.

We cut outside (probably because Reed and Victor would appreciate a little privacy right now) to people viewing Colossus. No, we don't actually get a good look at it ourselves, but that's probably just as well; from the lights shining down on everybody's faces, Colossus is not unlike a weak strobe light. Even though it's supposed to be visible to the human eye (and bright enough to glare like a strobe light), someone still raises a telescope to look at it.

Meanwhile, right on schedule, the experiment has gone horribly, predictably wrong. The Colossus-harnessing machine is going haywire with flashing lights and "ALERT" signs, while Reed and Victor are screaming things like "The prisms are overheating!" and "NOOOO! That's IMPOSSIBLE!" Interestingly, Ben is out there with the Colossus viewers, but when he sees the Colossus-lightning being drawn into the house (wait, the lab is in the boarding house?), he comes running. Yeah, hurry, dude, it's not too late to get super powers!

Given that it's Victor who keeps working at his keyboard while screaming, "I will not fail, I will not fail!" (whereas Reed is more heroically just standing there and screaming, "Victor, get out of here!"), I'm absolutely shocked when Victor is the only one who gets hit by electricity. He's forced almost gently across the room by a thin CGI lightning stream, and it even freezes him in a standing position [!] while it's going.

Reed, of course, is too traumatized by the tortured screams of the probable love of his life to act, but luckily Ben makes his almost-timely appearance now, rushes forth, and knocks Victor out of the electricity stream. Hilariously, this is the exact moment that it all stops. I don't just mean the electricity, but the entire damn experiment process. The electricity stream stops, the lights and noise all vanish, the machine shuts off, and I think Colossus even leaves. So Ben could have tripped on a rock or something on his way there, and it wouldn't have made a difference either way.

They take Victor to a hospital, but it's too late (despite how Victor's smoldering body looked surprisingly intact). Ben only needs a bit of bandaging, but European Terrorist Jesus comes up in a doctor's coat [!] and says with a vaguely Eastern European accent, "The burns are too severe." He's evidently referring to Victor, whose covered body is being wheeled past on a gurney. As sad piano music plays, Reed asks where they're taking Victor, and unfortunately ETJ replies, "To the morgue," instead of a more appropriate answer, which would be something like "To the highest bidder, of course... Nah, I'm kidding, he's going to the morgue. Shit, kid, you need to go outside more".

As the music swells, Ben embraces the weeping Reed manfully, but it may be way too early for the latter to think about another man yet. Meanwhile, in the basement, ETJ and his aide are standing over Victor, whose eyes are flickering open in a tight closeup. "We must save him, if we're not already too late."

So, uh, what the hell? Is European Terrorist Jesus just some guy who waits around for experiments like this to go wrong, so he can recruit their victims or something?

I guess I'll have to wait to find out. My segment's up, and it's time for Dave to take over. Good luck to him and the rest of Team Agony Booth!