10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About The Thing

7. Roger Corman's Failed Film

Roger Corman's failed Fantastic Four film is the stuff of legend, with its design for the Thing taking a special level of notoriety for its horrific inflections.

While Kirby's original design for Ben Grimm was always meant to harken back to classic horror movie monsters, the Thing from Corman's project is a whole different beast altogether. Portrayed by Michael Bailey Smith prior to his transformation, stuntman Carl Ciarfalio played Grimm after his cosmic transformation, donning a rubber suit that couldn't hold a candle to the puppetry of the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, which released concurrently at the time.

No one emerged for the better from the project, with the film having been made in a last ditch attempt to retain the onscreen rights for the characters and not for commercial release, making it one of the more infamous episodes in the development of the comic book genre on film. Avi Arad even purchased the rights to the project and ordered all prints be destroyed, fearing that its release would've damaged the Marvel brand at the time.

You can still watch the whole thing though, if you're in the mood for a B-movie Four flick. Just don't expect a proper release any time soon.