The Elephant Man

After getting picked-on at high school for being so skinny and forgetful, mild-mannered Michael J Merrick flees from the bullies straight into a crash between a radioactive tanker and a travelling zoo.

(there's a brief clip of a CNN broadcast about the disaster, from an enthusiastic reporter played by Stan Lee)

Afterwards Mike discovers that, through a miracle of science, his DNA has now been irrevocably altered, endowing him with the proportionate strength, speed and agility of an elephant. He is... the unstoppable Elephant Man™.

Donning a heavy grey outfit, he becomes a masked nighttime vigilante, pounding villains with his huge feet, and/or stabbing them with his spontaneously unsheathing adamantium tusks. His total recall comes in handy too. He even has a super-strong trunk (obvious CGI even for 1980) with which he can thrash holes in walls, or pick-up runaway crooks. (and girls)

However, all is not well in the big apple. It turns out that his 'accident' was in fact orchestrated. Poor Mike is just the unwitting guinea pig in an evil corporation's experiment prior to infecting 10,000 illegal immigrant families with the serum, culling them, and then taking-over the worldwide supply of ivory.

The final act finds Mike battling three different super-enhanced elephant-men, one of whom can control the weather, one of whom can slow-down time, and the last of whom can make his worst nightmares real, specifically, that he is in a room filled with small mice.

Overcoming everything, Mike destroys all the supplies of the serum (they're all kept together in the one room), but tragically at the cost of his own life. Mortally wounded by the dying villain's poaching-gun, he too breathes his last, surrounded by flabby elephant-meat.

Then his distraught ex-girlfriend, remembering an old legend, kisses him, and he comes back to life again. Yeah, that'll do. He just does.

That's followed by the opening credits, which are immediately followed by the closing credits.

Then Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and a mute CGI Hulk suddenly drop in on Mike's school during a free period to talk to him about this idea they've had for 'The Avengers Initiative'.

Mike looks cynical, in a post-modern sort of way.

(with thanks to Herschel)