Synopsis:

Whenever you see the names "Golan/Globus" associated with a film, you can bet your last that the film will be pretty awful. In the case of Superman IV, their curse still wrings true. In Supe 4, nuclear proliferation has reached an all time high and Superman has pledged to rid the world of all its nuclear missiles. Lex Luthor however has different plans for all that abandoned Nuclear power. Luthor's sole thrust has been to destroy Superman and he's made no secret of that. He's nothing if not extremely determined! Until now, he's been wholly unsuccessful. His newest plan is to create a super being that can …you guessed it, destroy Superman. So, crafting a protoplasmic mush from stolen Superman DNA, Luthor creates Nuclear Man. Why he's not named Solar Man is beyond me, as that's where his power comes from. Anyway, Nuclear Man is a 6ft+ blond big haired villain with pretty gnarly nails that he uses a'la a catfight with Superman. He has Luthor's voice only, several decibels lower and is about as half baked a villain as you can find. Anyway, Once again Superman must face off with a madman intent on world domination and the destruction of Superman, not necessarily in that order. This is the swan song for the series and it couldn't have gone out on any worse a note than this. Everything in this movie is bad. The effects used to give the impression that Superman is flying are so poorly rendered that you can see the blue/green screen/chroma key used to create the illusion. Additionally, in the space scenes involving the moon, you can see the wallof the soundstage at the back of the scene that's supposed to be the blackness of space. This is about as half-assed as you can get in putting together a film involving SFX on the scale needed to propel a film on the order of Superman. The usual care in ensuring that the visual integrity of the film is maintained was left out of the production process. Quite simply put, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a rotten movie, with a rotten story that never does anything but get worse.

Audio/Video:

As per the audio for II, III & IV, IV suffers from the lack of depth and surround presence that a DD2.0 platform is famous for. Again, with all the action onscreen, it would have been nice to have Superman swooshing and banking about my head as opposed to a generic front only effect. The dialogue was clean but it seemed soft and light throughout. The video was very clean but full of far too many glaring visual SFX mistakes to be appreciated. Other than some flecks of white in the print, it was a very clean and bright widescreen presentation.

Extras:

The only extras included for this presentation are the film's trailer and the usual bland cast and crew bios.

Overall:

I never saw Superman 4 theatrically and missed it (on purpose) whenever it was shown on TV or made its way into the house as a rental. Now that I have seen the film, I have to concur with every review on the movie I have read. It stinks. There's just no two ways about it. As part of the box set, you'll get it anyway, but if you're gonna collect only the good films in the series, stop at three. This film is a total Waste of time. Skip it