Watch The Trailer For ‘Doomed,’ The Documentary About Roger Corman’s Ill-Fated 1994 Fantastic Four Movie [Video]

If you've been to a comic book convention sometime in the past two decades, odds are pretty good that you've seen a grainy bootleg copy of Roger Corman's 1994 Fantastic Four movie up for sale. It's a staple of cons, largely because that's the only place you can get it -- the movie was never actually released in any format (aside from the odd YouTube upload), and remains that way to this day, even when Marvel movies are raking in the cash, which begs the question of why?

Convention wisdom is that they canned it because it's not very good, but let's be honest here: If you've ever seen that 1992 Captain America movie, you already know that's never stopped anybody before. Now, there's finally something that's set to answer the question: Doomed, a full-length documentary examining Corman's Fantastic Four and why it never actually made it to the screens.

Even before you get to the actual story, there's a lot of weirdness about the Fantastic Four movie. First is the choice of director, Roger Corman, best known for B-movies ranging in quality from the amazing Death Race 2000 to the, uh, slightly less well-regarded The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. Rather than producing blockbusters, he was known for bringing in films on time, under budget, and super fast -- in 1994, the year Fantastic Four was slated to come out, he was a producer on eighteen films. Eighteen. In one year.

Also, there's one of my favorite pieces of trivia, which is that the Dr. Doom mask from the film was actually the mask worn by Peter Wyngarde as Klytus in Flash Gordon, just painted silver instead of gold.

Weird, to be sure, but also fascinating -- and Doomed hints at a story where that weirdness only scratches the surface. Find out more about the documentary at DoomedTheMovie.com.