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1977 - USA Directed By: William Sachs. Starring: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Lisle Wilson, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Julie Drazen, Edwin Max, Dorothy Love, Janus Blythe and Jonathan Demme.
Current Availability
Available on a budget priced UK R2 DVD from Vipco. Unfortunately being Vipco it is a typically shit fullscreen VHS quality affair although at just £5.99 it qualifies as just about passable. The German DVD release is of a significantly better quality and is at least presented in Widescreen. A US R1 release was scheduled back in 2003 from Synapse but unfortunately they lost the rights to MGM so don't expect to see a R1 release anytime soon...
Recommended
Not really, a tedious, badly acted SFX showcase riddled with lazy, laughable plot flaws. Some trash movie fans might enjoy it though and Rick Baker's make-up effects are admittedly excellent.
Review
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble! It’s The Incredible Melting Man! The hubbling and bubbling in this case is being done by flesh of astronaut Steve West who upon returning to Earth finds himself the unfortunate victim of pretty much the nastiest skin condition known to man. The toiling however, is to be done by any viewer who comes to sit through this mildly infamous, awkward attempt to marry off the hokiness of a fifties B-movie to the sudden thirst for graphic gore effects that was beginning to characterize the horror genre during the latter half of the seventies. An altogether middling festival of gloopy SFX and dopey plotting, The Incredible Melting Man is usually recalled as one of the first notable credits for famed special effects guru Rick Baker, who would ascend to the pinnacle of his profession four years later via his ground breaking transformation effects on John Landis’s classic An American Werewolf In London.
The Incredible Melting Man stars Alex Rebar as Colonel Steve West an astronaut who along with two others, mans a rocket on a groundbreaking space mission to the planet Saturn. Whilst the spacecraft is passing through the rings of Saturn disaster strikes in the form of an inexplicable accident. West’s two fellow astronauts are killed instantaneously, but West himself somehow survives and makes it back to Earth.
Awakening in a secure hospital West is horrified to discover that he has been overcome by an unknown disease, which causes his flesh to gradually liquefy and slide off of his bones. Looking at his reflection in a mirror he is driven over the edge by the horrendous sight of his dripping visage. West snaps and breaks out of the hospital, killing a hapless nurse in the process.
Taking refuge on the woodland outskirts of a small town, West soon discovers that there is one method – albeit a decidedly horrible one – that can temporarily delay the onset of his disintegration, namely the consumption of human flesh and blood. Desperate to waylay his inevitable death long enough to prevent a repeat expedition to Saturn , West goes on the rampage slaughtering and devouring anyone he encounters. Meanwhile West’s concerned buddy Dr Ted Nelson (DeBenning) leads a desperate manhunt for West in a bid to capture and reinstitutionalize him. For Nelson the mission to recapture West becomes a personal one when West sets his cannibalistic sights on Nelson’s heavily pregnant wife Judy (Sweeny).
Laughably contrived are the two words that immediately spring to mind if one is required to sum up The Incredible Melting Man in a nutshell. Nothing to do with science fiction (although the plot perhaps makes a slight tip of the hat to The Quatermass Xperiment), the “space mission gone wrong” angle serves as precious little more than a flimsy pretext to unleash a fantastically grotesque bogeyman on a gory rampage. Of course it’s all complete and utter baloney, but initially at least The Incredible Melting Man appears to be shaping up into a surprisingly entertaining serving of blood and ectoplasm encrusted hokum. .
The opening twenty minutes at least, are brisk and throw up ample quantities of both unintentional hilarity and gleeful bloodshed. After murdering a hospital nurse (who amusingly runs literally straight through a glass door in a futile escape bid), West stumbles across a fisherman who he gorily decapitates. The viewer later sees the severed bonce swept over the edge of a waterfall, splitting open like a watermelon on the rocks at the bottom. Next in what appears to be a blackly comic morality sketch, two boys and a girl (who look all of about ten years old) share an illicit cigarette then embark on an impromptu game of hide and seek . The fun soon comes to a swift end when West comes crashing through the undergrowth frightening the living shit out of the little girl. If that doesn’t teach her to “just say no” then nothing ever will!
Sadly from this point onwards The Incredible Melting Man veers sharply downhill, failing singularly to maintain the energy of its first act and as a result swiftly outstays its welcome. A sense of repetition soon sets in and the means y which William Sach’s script funnels one victim after another into West’s gelatinous clutches become increasingly desperate, improbable and ridiculous. Firstly he stumbles across a model and photographer who just happen to be conducting a photo shoot on a barren field in the middle of nowhere. If this were not contrived enough, Judy’s elderly parents also end up on the menu when they stop their car to, wait for it… scrump lemons for a homemade meringue pie. If you listen at this point you might hear the gentle flapping of wings, this is the sound of whatever minimal credibility the film might have had flying out of the window.
In addition the narrative is downright dopily plotted and although one does have to give a little leeway for the fact that this is only intended as pure schlock you cannot help but ponder upon some of the gaping holes left in the narrative. Eventually we learn that West is set upon preventing another mission to Saturn, but given that all involved are fully aware of the disastrous results of the first mission (two men dead and a melting cannibal out on a cross country murder spree) why would they possibly wish to repeat it? My only possible hypothesis is that Sach’s was rather astutely leaving the door open for a sequel. Had this film been a success at the box office (incidentally it wasn’t) would we have been subjected to the ordeal of The Incredibly Meltier Man? The mind boggles! Elsewhere Dr Ted Nelson seems to have majored in idiocity, seen as he requires a Giger counter in order to search for a man who leaves a trail of whopping great gloopy footprints and random body parts (leftovers) almost everywhere he walks.
As for the cast? Well, they might as well for all intents and purposes be substituted for cardboard cut out, considering that they are flreshed out in such paltry levels of detail. Despite his top billing Alex Rebar is given nothing more taxing to do than lurch around and drip a lot. The performance of Rebar’s co-star Burr DeBenning as Nelson has also been the source of much derision, but going against the grain somewhat I actually thought DeBenning did a decent job. Although limited by the bad writing Nelson’s concern for the safety of his pregnant wife and his underlying sympathy for West’s plight lend the film a humanistic quality that it otherwise lacks. Elsewhere horror buffs should keep their eyes peeled for genre movie babes Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith and Janus Blythe, both regulars in horror and exploitation movies of this era. Perhaps more notable however, is the bit part appearance of Jonathan Demme who in later years would enjoy greater success behind the camera as the director of blockbusters such as The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993).
Of course the real stars of the show here are Rick Baker’s excellent make up effects and it would be pretty foolhardy to pretend otherwise. The blood and gore runs in modestly satisfying amounts and the make-up job Baker performs on Rebar is truly top notch, turning him into an appropriately revolting creation with his physical disintegration advancing as the film progresses. The sticky finale in which West finally perishes , melting into a putrefying gloop of gore and gristle is especially queasy and easily ranks amongst Bakers most memorable creations.
For what it’s worth The Incredible Melting Man is actually inoffensive enough for what it is, namely a tacky exercise in gruesome SFX. Nonetheless it is hardly a film to rave about to close friends and family taking into account its myriad faults and sticking points; a total lack of narrative cohesion, weak performances, endless, repetitive and pathetically contrived scenes of nothing characters getting munched on and a lagging pace which makes the film feel endless at under an hour and a half. Approached with zero expectations whatsoever or alternatively viewed through beer goggles (perhaps the preferable option) The Incredible Melting Man is not without a certain intellectually devoid charm, but otherwise – although it commands affection amongst some trash movie aficionado’s – The Incredible Melting Man for all the colourful sludge and gore on display is a risible slice of second rate hokum, dumb almost to the point of outright contempt.
Also Try… Slime City / The Projected Man / An American Werewolf In London / The Green Slime / First Man Into Space.
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