The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
Directed by: William Sachs
Written by: William Sachs
Starring: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Michael Alldredge, Myron Healey
HCF REWIND NO. 252: THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN [US 1977]
OUT NOW ON DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD, from ARROW VIDEO
RUNNING TIME: 84 min
REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic
During a flight to Saturn, three astronauts are exposed to a blast of radiation which kills two of them and seriously injures the third, Steve West. He awakes in a hospital to find the flesh on his face and hands melting away. Hysterical, he attacks and kills a nurse, then escapes from the hospital in a panic. His friend Dr. Theodore “Ted” Nelson and his actual doctor discover that the nurse’s corpse is emitting feeble radiation, and realise Steve’s body has become radioactive. Ted believes Steve has gone insane, and concludes he must consume human flesh in order to slow the melting….
When I was young, I used to sneak downstairs when my parents had gone to bed to watch horror films on late night TV. One film that really made an impression was The Incredible Melting Man, which I think was shown as part of a season of [supposedly] really bad films, its gruesome makeup effects really grossing me out and the whole thing scaring me a fair bit. It didn’t really occur to me at 11 or 12 that it was a bad film. I have not bothered to try to obtain the film since though, something I cannot entirely explain but may have something to do with that, a, it’s mostly regarded as being a really awful movie, and b, quite often I end up disappointed when I revisit something I had great childhood memories of. Well anyway, Arrow Video have brought the film out on Blu-ray, so it was a perfect opportunity to see it again after all these years. My conclusion? Well, it isn’t too good, and is indeed rather bad in aspects, but all those distant memories of being terrified by a melting man rampaging through the countryside came flooding back in a certainly not unpleasant fashion, and there is a fair bit to enjoy if you’re a fan of ‘B’ science-fiction and horror.
In fact, the biggest problem with this film, its switching in tone between comedic to horrific, and connected with that the difficulty of whether some scenes are intended to be funny or not, was actually caused by studio meddling. Writer/director William Sachs [Galaxina, Hot Chili] intended the film, originally to be called The Ghoul From Outer Space, as a parody of 50’s horror/science-fiction films, and filled his screenplay with homages to them, but American International Pictures and producer Max Rosenberg wanted more of a ‘straight’ horror movie, and removed much of the EC comics-type humour from the script as well as ordering reshoots to supposedly clarify what was going on but which removed an element of mystery and still left some things unexplained, like how on earth a rocket can return to earth with two astronauts dead and the other seriously injured. Unfortunately some of the funny bits remained, jarring with the serious bits and creating a really awkward, uneven film. The budget was extremely low, much of it spent on hiring Rick Baker to do the makeup. He didn’t want to do the film and asked for an outrageous sum of money for his services, which was agreed to! He created four distinct stages of makeup design for the protagonist, but due to the two stages of editing and Alex Rebar being supposedly impatient and uncooperative with the extensive makeup sessions required for the effects, much of what Baker came up with went unused. The film was not a hit, but quickly became a cult movie, something which it undoubtedly still is.
There seems little doubt that The Incredible Melting Man would have been better in its original conception, though it’s hard to tell for sure. What we do have is a clumsy mess, fair and square, though it’s definitely not un-enjoyable in the way that many films of this type are. The opening scene of the astronauts in their rocket being hit by radiation is terribly achieved with grainy stock footage and terrible acting. In fact, it’s the type of scene where you wonder why they bothered considering they didn’t have the budget or know-how to realise it, and you’ll certainly wonder why they replay the scene again later as a flashback. You can’t say that the film doesn’t get going early on though, with little more than a couple of minutes before Steve awakes in his hospital bed, sees that he’s turning into a gloopy mess, and escapes, though without removing the life-support he was attached to in the previous shot. Little attempt has been made to disguise that this hospital is just a couple of rooms with some makeshift gear put in, and then you get an endless scene of a nurse running in slow-motion down a corridor towards the camera. It’s all quite bizarre, but, after such a lively opening, the film’s pace slows drastically as it becomes painfully obvious its basic premise has nowhere to go. Steve the Incredible Melting Man shuffles around the countryside, every now and again killing and eating somebody [though the kills and eating are mostly off-screen], while his friend Ted tries to find him, and that’s really it. We’re not given a proper explanation of why Steven is now a cannibalistic killer, and the film doesn’t seem to know how to want us to feel towards him. He looks hideous and kills people, but sometimes he comes across as a rather sad figure, lonely and forlorn, haunted by the sounds and memories of his ill-fated flight into space, and at one point a little girl even mistakes him for Frankenstein.
There’s a hell of a lot of footage of the title creature wondering about, in fact there’s a quite a bit of wasted footage throughout in a film that seems stretched out even for its brief running time. For much of the second half Steve just lurks outside Ted’s house. The climax tries to be emotional, and does benefit from a typically 70’s downbeat conclusion, but it’s ludicrous how Ted tries to protect his friend even though he’s killed a load of people. He even throws his gun away. Then again, hardly anyone behaves normally in this film, Ted being just the worst culprit. He makes a big deal out of not having any crackers to go with his soup despite a monster being on the loose. Yet the film does have some effective moments. Though it’s poor writing to have Steve terrorise a character we’ve just met for ten minutes, the sequence is quite tense anyway and contains a well-timed hand-through-the-window moment. Some of the intended comedy is genuinely funny, though in its final form the film mostly relegates it to vignettes involving folk about to be threatened or killed by Steve. There’s a odd trio of smoking kids whose acting is better than many of the adult performers in the film, and an even odder elderly couple waffling on about oranges and lemons. Then there’s the really, really long scene of a severed head floating for ages down a river until it reaches a waterfall to smash to a pulp on the rocks beneath. Whatever the poor quality of things like the writing and the acting, and the odd pacing, there are some memorable bits and pieces throughout, and even some good shots here and there, like one of Steve walking about in a yellow-drenched sunset, things which jar with dumb mistakes like light shining in through a kitchen when it’s supposed to be nighttime.
Of course it’s all basically a rehash of The Quatermass Experiment, or, if you really know your 50’s sci-fi, First Man In Space and The Hideous Sun Demon, and in fact if you take away the gore and laughs it really is a film from that era, though with a bit of that downbeat 70’s cynicism. What does make this one stand out, and the most notable aspect of it, is the astonishing makeup by Rick Baker. Curtailed or not, it really is convincingly gross, with that’ real’ aspect to it that can’t be replicated by CGI. Baker fashioned a slightly over sized skull-shaped helmet for Alex Rebar to wear. This was then painted flesh colour and then covered by a gooey concoction of syrup and paint. The drippy substance would have to be re-applied for every take of the Incredible Melting Man. At the end of each shoot Rebar would have so much of the sticky stuff on him that he would literally have to peel his costume off, so it’s small wonder that he got fed-up with it. The effect really is stunning, and it’s a superb example of something that seems to be sadly fading from filmmaking. CGI, even if some of the time it still looks like CGI, can do everything, so there is less and less demand for the creativity shown by Baker’s superb work here. It also really shows up The Incredible Melting Man to be a schizophrenic film: here I am raving about the effects yet I found so much to criticise in the paragraphs before!
The only performers that seem to be much good are Myron Healey, well known to kaiju fans like myself as the star of the American re-jig of Varan The Unbelievable, and Dorothy Love who displays some convincing hysterics when her character is in peril. Burr DeBenning, seemingly sporting lots of pale makeup, is truly shoddy as Ted, but then again he does have to contend with some especially poor dialogue and some scenes that surely, despite the film’s heavy re-editing, weren’t supposed to be as funny as they are. The score by Arlon Ober veers from being quite effective to being thoroughly incongruous. You can’t say it isn’t diverse, and I’m not sure I’d want it any other way. The Incredible Melting Man is not, really, a good movie, and as I write I wonder how good it really could have been in its original incarnation, but sometimes a bad film can be far more fun than an average but totally uninteresting one, and this one is certainly interesting and has its notable aspects. It probably goes without saying that I thoroughly recommend it to fans of old cult horror and sci-fi. It looks fabulous on Arrow Video’s Region B Blu-ray, which is a direct port, along with the special features, of Shout Factory’s Region A disc. They’ve really restored this film well, with vibrant colours and great detail which are astounding considering how cheap it was, and the extras put it into context and give some impression of what might have been. Despite its many, many flaws though, I rather like it the way it is and I’m not sure I’d want it any other way.
Rating: 
SPECIAL FEATURES
· High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements
· Original Mono audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
· Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
· Audio Commentary with William Sachs
· Super 8 digest version of the film
· Interview with Writer/Director William Sachs and Make-up Effects Artist Rick Baker
· Interview with Make-up Effects Artist Greg Cannom
· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin
· Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film.
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