The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Mystery Men is a 1999 comedy film directed by TV commercial director Kinka Usher. It starred William H. Macy, Ben Stiller, and Hank Azaria as a trio of lesser superheroes with fairly unimpressive superpowers who need to save the day. The film's two great strengths were considered to be the art direction and the dialogue, much of which was improvised by the cast. Despite its list of stars, Mystery Men was widely considered to be a flop with a final box office gross of just $29,762,011 within the USA and $3,699,000 outside the USA.

It has since been developing something of a cult following. The soundtrack prominently featured the Smash Mouth song "All Star" and clips from the film form the basis of the song's video.

The movie was loosely based on the independent comic book series Flaming Carrot Comics by Bob Burden, who also gets Writers Guild of America writing credits, though some characters were greatly changed from the original material. The Flaming Carrot was a member of the team and with the exception of Captain Amazing and Invisible Boy, all the heroes from the film appeared at least once as members (though there were many others as well-- the comics team had a high casualty rate). Casanova Frankenstein also once battled The Flaming Carrot.