Roger Corman’s famously low-budget superhero picture that, some say, was never really meant to see the light of day. The director, stars and creatives all insist their efforts were genuine, but Marvel considered it a brand-tarnishing disaster, rushed out the door to renew a timed licensing agreement. They bought and destroyed the negatives, canceled promotional engagements and denied its existence for years. Fortunately, a bootleg VHS copy eventually leaked to the comic convention scene and this miraculous golden turd is now readily available for anyone who knows where to look.

And man, is its reputation well-earned. _Fantastic Four_ is an astoundingly incompetent adaptation, jammed with laughable special effects, listless performances, cruddy camerawork, groan-worthy dialogue and dated hero/villain dynamics (even by 1994 standards). Its sets are cheap and dreary, trapping the colorful heroes in a series of clinical corridors and dim cellars. Their use of super powers is extremely limited, no doubt owing to a tight budget that mostly went to a half-animatronic rubber suit for the Thing. Who, for the record, looks like a reject from the live-action _Ninja Turtles_ movies, his robotic lips sneering in a creepy, out-of-sync, private dance. Sometimes they almost match his dialogue. Thing and Doom are both dying for overdubs, their actors’ voices muffled by so many layers of fake metal and prosthetics. In fact, there’s a lot of ambient sound in general. Doom’s clickety-clack fingers are a prime offender there, accented by Joseph Culp’s penchant for hilarious physical over-acting to compensate for his lack of expression behind the mask. Culp’s technique is like a blend of jazz hands, interpretive dance and American Sign Language; a constant, reliable trigger for unintentional laughs.

In a light ninety minutes, we rush through Doom and the Fantastics’ well-tread origin stories, meet a few uninspired supporting characters (including “The Jeweler,” a movie-only concoction who’s little more than a Dollar Store _Batman Returns_ Penguin), escape captivity and point shiny green death lasers at New York City. None of it really matters. You’re either here to bask in the flames of big-time comics’ Hindenburg moment or you’re watching the wrong movie. _Fantastic Four_’s only rewards are of the perverse variety, but ironic audiences will find plenty of those to enjoy. A GREAT ambush selection for movie night with friends, with a parting shot none will soon forget.