5. The Laughably Bad Unreleased/Television Films
Admittedly, this is quite a vague installment, but since these all have similar properties which make them recommendable to Marvel fans, I've included them in on swooping generalisation due to their hilariously bad nature. What can I say, some movie's just need more attention so they can be laughed at. First up is 1978's attempt to portray Dr. Strange. Any property whose Wikipedia article boasts a low quality picture of what looks to be the VHS box art is not a very welcoming sign. However, to my immense surprise, Stan Lee was pretty fond of this. His opinion was as follows: "I was pleased with Dr. Strange" "Dr. Strange...was fine." Lee also insisted that it "would have done much better than it did in the ratings except that it aired opposite Roots", which is fair, but that does not detract from it's cheesy quality. If this aired alongside a poorly rated and obscure show from the late 70's (Hello, Larry, for example), it would probably never have made it to series still. It's not affable in any way, not is it contemptible, it's just bland. Surprisingly, some of the hospital scenes are reminiscent of Trapper John, M.D. (not that anyone under 40 would understand that). Apart from the subtle wit displayed throughout, it is merely a bland pilot film, but recommendable for die hard fans of people looking for a reason to eat more popcorn in front of their computers. Additionally, Full Moon Productions (they created Puppet Master and Demonic Toys, which are basically horror movies ranging from guilty pleasures to laughably bad) planned to create another Doctor Strange film, but due to legal mumbo-jumbo, they couldn't. Instead, they pretty much ran a search and replace on the script crossing out any familiar names. It's called Doctor Mordrid, and based on the trailer alone it looks like a hell of a lot of fun (cheesy, terrible fun that you don't want anybody to catch you having), and if you can find it cheap enough, you should probably check it out. The entire movie is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFCL0eCjnsA Could you really get anything worse than the 2005/2007 movies? Evidently, you could. This film was never actually intended for release, and was some kind of despicable way of maintaining the rights to Fantastic Four so they could do something with it later. Nearly 20 years later and we've had two bad movies and the wrong people hold the rights to them (i.e. they are not in the right hands to be considered part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Stan Lee was quoted as saying: "The movie was never supposed to be shown to anybody." That's a real dick move, if you'll pardon the language, especially since the cast and crew weren't even informed of this decision. A similar thing happened with the most recent Hellraiser (titled Hellraiser: Revelations). The movie was filmed in about three weeks for $300,000 and released direct-to-DVD after being screened in one theatre, one time (and that was only intended for the cast and crew, despite the fact that fans were also aloud to see that screening). It's things like this that really make you hate Hollywood. You should definitely check it out, if only out of spite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON57I0i3ryw Our final Laughably Bad Aborted Pilot is the only one that's not actually available on YouTube, and that special something is Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D (1998). That's right, something as half-decent as Blade was made at the same time as this. Not sold yet? Here's the kicker: David Hasselhoff stars. Things just got a lot more awesome, am I right? Who doesn't love The Hoff? Nobody, that's who. Hasselhoff plays the role now marked for eternity by Samuel L. Jackson's brilliant portrayal in five of the movies released so far, with another appearance due in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Taking a 15 year step back, we see Michael Knight don the eyepatch, sans KITT and sans slow motion running on the beach. One quick look at the trailer and you'd assume this was made right after Knight Rider, but that unfortunately is not so. There's just something about the 80's that warrants this kind of cheese, and as it was made about a decade after it should've been (when it might actually have been picked up for a season. Just a season), it seems out of place and just rather embarrassing by this point. If you're into cringe comedy, you'd almost think this was written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant themselves.