Cuerpos desvanecidos

As an Australian reviewer it is gratifying seeing reviewers from other countries express their appreciation for Philip Brophy's little 1993 gore-fest. Brophy is something of a Renaissance Man, wearing many hats from composer and musician to film critic, curator and academic (for those interested in Brophy's scholarly work you might want to check out his website: http://www.philipbrophy.com/index.html).

BODY MELT cleverly pokes fun at a variety of popular contemporary Australian television dramas (most notably NEIGHBOURS, the long-running prime-time Aussie soap opera well-known to British viewers and set in the neighbourly cul-de-sac of Ramsay Street) and 1970s Aussie police procedurals. Even most of his cast come from Australian television series, such as BLUE HEALERS regulars Lisa McCune and William McInnes and Brett Climo (who starred in A COUNTRY PRACTISE and THE FLYING DOCTORS) and Gerard Kennedy, the face of Crawford Productions 1970s cop show, DIVISION 4. Perhaps best of all is the casting of NEIGHBOURS veteran Ian Smith, who plays Harold Bishop in that long-running TV Soap. Casting Smith as eccentric Dr. Carrera, Brophy provides the actor with a rare opportunity to play against type and Smith inhabits the role with relish.

I was at the wonderful old Valhalla Cinema in Northcote (now the far less interesting Westgarth Cinema) back in 1993 on the night that Brophy premiered BODY MELT to an appreciative Melbourne audience who belly-laughed at the over-the-top comedy and lurid special effects. His depictions of bodies self-destructing and liquefying in various icky and imaginative ways recalled, for me, Brophy's 1988 experimental film, SALT SALIVA SPERM AND SWEAT, in which he explores corporeality and the idea of bodily fluids as a form of social exchange. At the screening, Brophy explained that he incorporated ideas he'd had for shorter films into BODY MELT as side-stories, admitting that while they do not contribute towards a cohesive narrative, they nevertheless fit within the broader thematic concerns of the film. Indeed, I would argue that these moments of suburban Gothic psychedelia and outback redneck cannibalism add to the outlandish comedy and disorienting effect of the film.

It's nice to see people from other countries getting into this film, which deserves a higher rating than 4.3, even if some of the humour is culturally parochial. Thanks to those who took the time to watch and appreciate this overlooked little gem.

If you like Peter Jackson's earlier works, "Bad Taste" and "Braindead," you'll love this film as it works in the same vein. It's a great parody of the dull life of suburbia whose citizens seem to have no reason to live but would be willing to do whatever they can to live as long and as healthy as possible. They become unwitting guinea pigs of experimental drugs designed to create superhumans. Warning: it has some really gross scenes, but this is secondary. This is one of those rare B-movie horror films that actually tries to convey a message and pokes fun at itself at the same time.

Here's an unassuming Australian-made horror-comedy, a hybrid of David Cronenberg's early 'biological mutation' movies and fellow antipodean Peter Jackson's comic gore fests.

Inhabitants of a tract-home development in suburban Melbourne are used in a controlled experiment by scientists at a trendy health resort (called Vimuville and built on a condemned toxic dump). Their revolutionary E-59 vitamin supplement is promised to create a "new you." Unfortunately the side effects are equally revolutionary -- recipients hallucinate, their bodies malfunction, glandular secretions get up and move around, and eventually they explode into colorful goo.

BODY MELT's episodic script plays down the ultra-gory possibilities of the situation, and takes occasionally funny stabs at suburbanites who will eat just about anything they get for free, and are otherwise oblivious to how they are exploited by government and industry.

In the film's most outrageous sequence, a pregnant Yuppie housewife dies when the fetus erupts from her womb, flies across the room, and slithers down the throat of its horrified father. But BODY MELT works best when it avoids spittle 'n grue and brushes with the nightmarish. For instance, there is a protracted but effective sequence of an infected businessman with a recurring hallucination, a female apparition who collects rib bones from men "just like him."

The humor is uneven but co-writer/director Philip Brophy exhibits a healthy distrust of white middle-class swank. There's a good "ear joke"; a police station awash in green vomit; liquid detergent guzzling; a chintzy Cronenberg-style TV commercial; a mutating ex-Vimuville scientist with moronic, Mongloid offspring, who keeps the antidote to E-59 a secret; and a pill-popping bodybuilder with an exploding penis! The cast, a contingent of Australian TV actors, is good, especially Suzi Dougherty as the rib-girl.

The residents of Pebbles Court, Homesville, have been chosen (unknowingly) to take part in the testing of a new Vitamin Supplement manufactured by a company known as Vimuville. Unfortunately, there are horrible side effects due to chemical imbalances in the body and the like, and most of the cast end up exploding, or imploding and various other things. The graphic FX are good; script nice and tight (and funny), and it's full of colour. So, not really a horror, but more along the lines of The Toxic Avenger(1985), Braindead(1992) and Street Trash (1991).

Even though this is not quite a satire, it's full of funny moments for all sickos and people with twisted sense of humour. Some australian reviewers inform us that some of the cast are well known in Australia from soap shows. That makes me really glad and the whole thing clearer! Really gross-out gore effects (i expected a bit more, though), really great photograph & depiction of an ausytralian suberb (even though i have never been there!) and a sequence of really entertaining scenes. This could be considered the definition of "high-time" for a bunch of friends drinking beer and laughing, but, to me, its this and much more.