Couldn’t read the Italian, but boy does that look like one big cheezefest! And since I have nothing else to contribute to this thread, I’ll just mention a bit of trivia: the unreleased FF picture featured a flashback with a little girl Susan Storm (and Johnny as well.) Young Susan was played by a then-adolescent Mercedes McNab, who went on to play Harmony Kendall on “Buffy” and “Angel”.
Mercedes’ imdb profile:
A local video store has a copy for rent under the “Cult Video” section that I keep meaning to pick up. I remember reading an article about the movie in Comics Scene when I was like, 7, and thinking it looked horrible even then (although the FF comics around then were even worse, as I recall).
You would expect her to fade out evenly, but nooooooooo!!
Corman uses what appears to be a double split screen. Sue is on her side of the screen and another split screen comes up from the bottom and “erases” her.
ILM, it ain’t.
As for how copies are available, well, it was obviously an inside job.
Same goes for the stunningly bad Star Wars Holiday Special. Rumor has it that every bootleg copy came from just one original.
One of the very early issues of Wired magazine contained an article on this film, which was written on the set of the movie, and I can remember seeing trailers for the film in theaters a year or so later, so it seems that there was some thought that the film was going to be released.
Having seen the film, it looks like a pilot for a Saturday morning kids show, and not a potential blockbuster film. As to why they’d spend the money on the film and not release it, you have to know a little something about Roger Corman. His movies cost almost nothing to produce (at least as far as Hollywood’s concerned, his films have about the same price tag as your average music video these days) and will bring in ten or twenty times that in ticket/video sales. Given that the average movie has to make double it’s production cost at the box office just to break even, it’s pretty obvious as to why they wouldn’t mind sitting on the film.
I dunno. Granted, it’s been years since I’ve seen it, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It was certainly better than Superman 4, the fourth Batman movie (and maybe the third) and it was closer to the source material than Daredevil.
Yeah, some of the effects were cheezy but the acting was generally more-or-less kinda competent, the costumes were good, the story was coherent and the actors seemed to be having fun.
Fenris
Tangentially connected, did anybody see the made-for-tv movie they made of Generation X? Boy, that was kind of not good. Pilot movie for a TV show that never caught on.
I did once see a TV movie about a group of mutant kids including a muscular girl and a guy with X-ray vision, along with Jubilee, M, Mondo, and a guy claiming to be called Skin, but with the powers of Mr. Fantastic. But Chamber, Husk, Synch, and Penance were nowhere to be found, and it was awful. So, no I saw no Generation X movie.