The Incredible Melting Man

When I was a kid way back in 1977 there was an article about this movie in a kids magazine called Dynamite. It looked so incredibly gross that it just had to be fantastic, right? Well, go forward to the present year, 2003. I'm channel surfing and lo and behold, I find that The Incredible Melting Man is coming on Flix!! Sure it's goofy, but I got kinda excited about it since I STILL remembered seeing pictures of this hideous guy with his face melting off in that magazine. OK. I really wasn't expecting much, but I must say, despite the terrible plot, acting, etc., the special effects weren't half bad. Definitely not a movie you could enjoy while eating a plate of lasagna or something like that. But, even the gross factor is overshadowed by the dumbness of it all. To quote a character in the movie, "The more he melts, the stronger he gets!" WHAT?? No explanation is EVER given as to why this guy has ended up this way or how it is making him stronger. And it has to have one of the most depressing endings I've ever seen in a Z-grade movie!! I'll almost bet I would have loved this movie had I seen it as a kid in the late 70's though. I guess that whole idea of what I thought it would be as a kid was ruined by actually seeing it. Oh well...

The acting in this film is rotten, the music similarly crass, and the plot so full of holes it's surprising they were able to string a movie together from it. But...

It's very funny.

Watch this with some mates and you can all have a laugh as the sheer stupidity of it all unfolds in front of you. Why does that nurse run through a glass door? Why does Steve lurk around his friends house, fertilising the garden? Pre-pubescent kids taking a puff? And what's with the head in the waterfall?

I'm sure the intention was to make a genuinely scary film, but it's more like an Ed Wood effort. The only thing they managed to do well was the effects.

After a mishap in space, an astronaut returns to Earth where he starts turning into a murderous melting monster.

I must admit that while watching this B monster movie my opinion of it did change a few times. At first, after the first 15 minutes or so, I thought that this was going to be one cheesy mess of a movie. However I found myself enjoying this campy flick the further I got into it. I mainly have the great makeup effects of a young Rick Baker to thank for it too! Baker's talents are evident even in this early movie with it's bloody good makeup work. The oozing melting man effects are impressive for a low-budget production. There's also a great death-by-power line scene.

Still, this movie isn't flawless now. The performances of the cast are pretty weak and the movie has its share of silly scenes - like an overacting nurse running through a window to escape the title character or a scene where an elderly couple decide to steal some lemons and end-up paying big time!

The Incredible Melting Man is a mixed-bag of B horror fun. Nothing to be taken seriously, for sure, but B horror fans may just dig it.

** 1/2 out of ****

Well. Apparently in this film there is a "man" who is "melting" and this is "incredible". Whatever. For my money there is only one reason to see this film, and it has nothing to do with snot-faced fellows who eat people's flesh.

At one moment in the film the incredibly thin and pasty protagonist Dr. Ted Nelson mentions his mother-in-law, and suddenly this film swings into high. We're shown a wonderful sequence of two incredibly lumpy elderly folks driving. These oddly shaped, lawn gnome-esque folks decided to steal lemons, but they get scared and run (well, totter) back to their automobile only to be eaten by the titular character.

God, these two actors are wonderful! Dorothy Love and Edwin Max deserve the accolades of their peers for this brief glimpse into the magical and bewitching talents of actors in their prime, who were given a script that seemed to have been written by a spastic monkey.

The Incredible Melting Man is written and directed by William Sachs. It stars Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning and Myron Healey. Music is by Arlon Ober and cinematography by Willy Curtis. Astronaut Steve West's body begins to melt after he was exposed to radiation during a space flight to Saturn.

Escaping from the hospital, West trawls the land in search of human victims to eat in the desperate hope of staving off the melting of his body.

It's as bad as you most likely have heard it is, and Rick Baker's makeup work is as good as you have heard it is! Intended as a horror parody but switched to being a "supposed" horror with some cuts and swipes requested by the studio, it's pretty evident upon viewing the film that was clearly the case. Tale doesn't add up to much more than the melting man of the title walking from one scene to another dripping in goo whilst meeting up with a host of bad actors. He's pursued by a pal who wants to help him, while it all builds to some fireworks at a power plant where the "big" battle unfolds.

You can't really do much with the story, after just 8 minutes of film he starts melting and once his bodily parts start falling off you just know he is beyond help. The tragic creature vibe is strong enough to hold interest, if you can stop yourself from laughing at everything else that surrounds him (it) during its Quatermass Experiment journey. The power plant scenes are nicely photographed, the final demise of the creature is bleakly sad and Baker really comes through with the only bit of quality in the piece. It's messy in more ways than one! But fun to be had if in a very forgiving mood. 4/10