Strange Superhero Movies You May Not Know Exist

Between The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), horror auteur Wes Craven directed Swamp Thing, a film adaptation of DC Comics' horror series of the same name. In it, scientist Alec Holland (Ray Wise) is transformed into Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) after soldiers working for the evil Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) attack his laboratory in the Louisiana bayou. Despite the source material and Craven at the helm, the results were too corny to be appropriately horrific. The action scenes are poorly handled and the special effects, even for the early 1980s, aren't much to look at: Swamp Thing and the monster he fights during the climax resemble rejects from the Power Rangers. The movie's only saving grace is B-movie queen Adrienne Barbeau in the romantic lead — a casting choice no doubt appreciated by many 16-year-old guys in the audience circa 1982.

A decade before 20th Century Fox made its first Fantastic Four movie, legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman developed his own adaptation. Why haven't you seen it? Probably because the movie was never officially released, either in theaters or on video; in fact, it was only made to retain the Constantin studio's rights to the Fantastic Four before they expired. The budget was approximately $1 million, resulting in special effects straight out of a made-for-TV movie from the 1970s. (The Human Torch visuals during the film's climax are particularly poor.) The filmmakers must have completely run out of money before they completed dubbing, since it's difficult to understand anything Doctor Doom says. Despite all this, it's arguably the most watchable Fantastic Four movie to date, simply because it's unpretentious.

Based on the classic comic strip of the same name, 1996's The Phantom stars Billy Zane as Kit Walker, a wealthy playboy in 1930s New York City who secretly fights crime as the titular hero. (Are you noticing a pattern here? Rich playboys have too much time on their hands.) The mantle of the Phantom is passed from father to son, and Kit is the latest incarnation. The filmmakers' goal with this movie was seemingly to recreate the action serials of the early 20th century, and in that regard it succeeds, but the idea was fundamentally misguided. Sure, the Indiana Jones movies pulled it off, but director Steven Spielberg updated the material for modern audiences in several important respects, whereas The Phantom is just as cheesy as those original serials. Plus, let's just be honest, it's hard to take a hero seriously while he's running around in a goofy purple costume — and the stock plot, which hardly bears describing, involves a villain trying to find an ancient relic to unlock supernatural powers. If you're daring enough to watch The Phantom, look for an early performance from Catherine Zeta-Jones as the villain's female sidekick.

Do you have an urge to watch a cheesy action movie in which Dolph Lundgren murders dozens of Yakuza gang members? (Okay, other than Showdown in Little Tokyo?) Then the 1989 adaptation of Marvel Comics' The Punisher is your best bet. Lundgren plays Frank Castle, a grieving cop who takes revenge on organized crime for his family's death by driving his motorcycle from one action set piece to the next. The greatest fight in the film, however, may be Lundgren's struggle with the English language, followed closely by the internal conflicts that must have been suffered by his co-star, former Academy Award winner Louis Gossett Jr. If it wasn't called The Punisher, this would be virtually indistinguishable from dozens of other 1980s action movies. Just watch any Death Wish sequel instead and you'll get the idea.

The 1990 adaptation of Captain America was meant to be a major theatrical release, but instead it went straight to video. Why? Because it's horrible. The story tells the familiar tale of would-be soldier Steve Rogers taking a special serum, becoming superhero Captain America, and going on to fight his Nazi nemesis the Red Skull. Aside from the obviously low budget, the film's greatest flaw is the casting of Matt Salinger as a thoroughly uncharismatic Captain America. As his surname suggests, Salinger is the son of the late J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, and watching just a few minutes is enough to make you wonder whether his heritage was the only reason he got the role. Aside from throwing his shield and staring blankly at people, Salinger's Captain America holds a unique superpower: the ability to feign sickness to commandeer cars. What a hero!

Captain America and Captain America 2: Death Too Soon were made-for-television movies premiering on CBS in 1979, both starring B-movie action king Reb Brown as Captain America. Someone on the production clearly thought that motorcycles were the "in" thing in 1979, as Captain America wears a motorcycle helmet (with white wings!) in both movies and much of the action is motorcycle-centric. Cap's bike even has a hang glider! As with other TV adaptations of the era, the limitations of the budget are clearly evident, particularly in the case of Captain America's shield, which looks like it was made out flimsy clear plastic. The second movie is the best of the two, because Christopher Lee plays the villain — and even when he's in a subpar project, Saruman brings his A-game.

If you're not familiar with the superheroes of Valiant Comics, all you really need to know is that while many publishers attempt to find success by combining two awesome things into one new character, Valiant actually does it well. X-O Manowar, for instance, is essentially "what if Conan the Barbarian had a suit of Iron Man armor?" Bloodshot is "what if Arnold from Predator was also Arnold from Terminator?" And Ninjak? He's "what if Batman was James Bond," which rules exactly as much as it sounds like it would.

In 2018, Valiant decided to try another one of those crazy combinations: "what if these comic books were also a live action movie?" Originally released as a web series a few years earlier, Ninjak vs. the Valiant Universe did exactly what it says, pitting Colin King, the 11th ninja to freelance for MI-6 (he's "Ninja K," get it?) against a live-action version of his entire comic book universe. Unlike a lot of the obscure flicks on this list, this one's actually worth watching, if only because of its intriguing cast. Pro wrestler John Hennigan (better known to WWE fans as John Morrison) plays the Eternal Warrior, and Bloodshot — portrayed in his 2020 film outing by Vin Diesel — is played by former Power Ranger Jason David Frank.

There have actually been two movies based on The Spirit, Will Eisner's groundbreaking Golden Age comic strip that's known for redefining what you could do on the page. The first was a 1987 TV movie starring Sam J. Jones, whose previous comic strip adaptation, Flash Gordon, became a cult classic thanks largely to its lavish campiness and killer soundtrack by Queen. It was meant as the pilot of a TV series, but it failed to get the ratings that were needed to convince anyone that a full series would be a good idea.

The 2008 Spirit film, on the other hand, failed at literally everything. It was written directed by Frank Miller and starred Gabriel Macht in the title role opposite Samuel L. Jackson as his arch-nemesis, the Octopus. If Miller's name sounds familiar it's because he's the groundbreaking comics creator responsible for The Dark Knight Returns and writing Batman: Year One, two of the most highly regarded Batman comics of all time, which serve as proof that talent in one medium does not translate to talent in another. Miller approached The Spirit the same way that he and Robert Rodriguez had approached their movie adaptation of Miller's own over-the-top noir comic, Sin City, right down to the high-contrast visuals, ridiculous "hard-boiled" dialogue, and goofy comedy violence that's best embodied by the fight scene that includes the Spirit getting clocked with a toilet. The problem — well, one of them — was that the only thing Eisner's style and Miller's style had in common was that they were both technically comic books.

The end result was a film that is arguably the single worst comic book adaptation of all time — yes, even worse than whatever you're thinking of. It makes Corman's Fantastic Four look like Captain America: Civil War, and makes Batman & Robin look like Citizen Kane. It tanked at the box office, and while Hollywood's ways are very mysterious, it's probably not a coincidence that Macht hasn't done much movie work since.

No comics franchise embodies the '90s as much as the X-Men, the mutant heroes who dominated that decade with massive comic book sales and an endless supply of pop culture tie-ins. At its height, there were about 17 X-Related comics hitting the shelves every month, and the one that best captured the spirit of the era was probably Generation X. As its name implies, it was focused on a group of younger mutants, led by established fan favorite Jubilee, who formed the new class of disaffected teenagers at the Xavier School. Based on that description, it probably seems like the perfect franchise to adapt into a movie, even one that was meant as a TV pilot.

It probably would've been, too, if the Gen X movie had happened under literally any other circumstances, but pretty much everything was stacked against it. For one thing, its release coincided with the collapse of the comics industry — Marvel would file for bankruptcy by the end of the year — and while the Generation X comics were very good and had dedicated fans, it was a very different time to be launching a TV series than when the X-Men animated series started in 1992. Even if it had lured in the comics audience, there were choices made that seemed designed to alienate fans, like casting a white actress to play Jubilee, one of Marvel's most prominent Asian-American characters. Also, instead of using an established supervillain — which, as you may know, Marvel has quite a few of laying around — former Max Headroom actor Matt Frewer played a generic weirdo mad scientist trying to take over dreams.

Oh, also it was extremely bad. In addition to looking like it was filmed entirely in a laser tag arena with sets made of cardboard, the effects were terrible even by the standards of a TV movie on Fox in 1996, and the acting seemed like the filmmakers had maybe heard of the concept of a second take, but didn't really believe in it themselves. Here's hoping that Gen X's predecessor, New Mutants, has better luck when its movie adaptation comes out... assuming it ever does.

Not all superhero movies have their roots on the comic book page. Orgazmo, for instance, probably would've had a hard time getting printed by DC or Marvel in 1997, what with the fact that it's about a Mormon missionary who starts acting in adult films to pay for his wedding and then becomes a superhero when he gets a gun that gives people orgasms when he shoots them. That's a pretty far cry from batarangs and kryptonite, even if there are parts of it that would fit right in with Preacher.

The combination of "poking fun at Mormons," "comedy based almost entirely around obscenity" and "an offbeat premise that most people wouldn't come within a mile of" may be filling up a bingo card in your memory. If it is, you won't be surprised to learn that Orgazmo came from Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, and seemed to be less of a movie and more of a vehicle for jokes that they couldn't even get onto that show. While it's not good in itself — Roger Ebert gave it a half star and wrote that it left him "desperately longing for a reason to laugh" — it did make for a pretty interesting subject of This Movie Is Not Yet Rated, a documentary about MPAA censorship. Being an interesting part of a completely different movie, however, is not what most filmmakers hope for.

If The Incredible Hulk Returns had a title that was a little too accurate, its sequel had one that was an outright lie. Not only did Trial of the Incredible Hulk not feature the Hulk being put on trial, it didn't feature any trial at all. There is a single courtroom scene when Bruce Banner flips out and turns into his alter ego — and throws a chair at a jury box featuring Stan Lee in his first ever Marvel movie cameo — that happens in a dream sequence.

What it does have, in keeping with its legal themes, is a team-up with blind lawyer and part-time super-ninja vigilante Matt Murdock that was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a Daredevil series. While that never happened, there actually is some fun Daredevil stuff in here, including the casting of Gimli himself, John Rhys-Davies, as the Kingpin. And yes, like the 2015 Daredevil series, this one does feature a hallway fight. It's... not quite as brutal as the one on Netflix, though.

If you ever wonder how hot comics were in the early '90s, consider this: back then, live-action superhero movies were produced in order to promote comics, rather than the other way around. Well, one was, anyway: 1993's Firearm, released exclusively on a VHS tape that came with the #0 issue of the comic of the same name.

Okay, "movie" might be pushing it. This thing clocks in at just over half an hour if you count the two-minute promo for the rest of the Ultraverse comics that's also on the tape. While the movie is of the quality you expect from a low-budget VHS short film that came bagged with a comic about a character you've almost certainly never heard of, the comic itself wasn't bad, for its abbreviated run. Both the film and the comic were written by James Robinson, who would go on to write the comic Starman, which is fondly remembered as a true classic of its era, and the movie adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is... not.

Before they hit gold with the successful X-Men animated show in 1992, there was the first attempt at bringing Marvel's mutants to television: Pryde of the X-Men. At only half an hour, it's less of a movie than just yet another pilot episode for a TV show that never happened, but its straight-to-video release fooled plenty of '90s kids into thinking that there was some lost X-Men movie that we'd just never heard of.

We probably would've been better off not hearing about it at all. Despite being based on some of the best X-Men comics ever printed, Pryde crams a whole two hours worth of crappiness into a mere 30 minutes. While it's very interesting to see the X-Men animated in the same '80s Marvel animation style as G.I. Joe, the plot of Magneto trying to kill all the humans by crashing a comet into the Earth is a little too Cobra Commander. The weirdest part? Someone decided that Wolverine, a Canadian superhero who is famous for being Canadian, should be Australian instead.