However, not every good aspect of The Incredible Melting Man has sloughed of the movie’s bones and pools into a viscous puddle on the floor. The reason for this is the claims from writer/director William Sachs that the movie originally was supposed to be more of a parody of nihilistic horror flicks like Niggt Of The Living Dead, but the producers insisted on exorcising most of the more humourous aspects, leaving the finish product lacking any real personality whatsoever. The script doesn’t exactly help matters either, dotting the glistening monster action with an asinine subplot about Ted having to go to absurd lengths to keep Steve’s rampage secret (not helped by the fact that he confesses there’s a conspiracy to everyone he meets – he just won’t tell them what it is) and scenes that attempt to build character and fail miserably by having them take the form of Ted and his wife debating about who’s fault it was that the house is out of crackers.Īlso proving to be as malformed as its main character is the movie’s tone, which shifts from grim killings to goofy scenes of an elderly couple trying to steal lemons and then snaps back again to try and be a grim sci/fi thriller. It doesn’t help that the movie contains an unbroken chain of staggeringly unappealing characters who read their lines like they haven’t quite shaken off the effects of a shot of novocaine – “You’ve never seen anything, until you’ve seen the sun through the Rings of Saturn!” announces Steve with all the passion of someone who has the emotional range of a kitchen appliance. Murky cinematography, choke-worthy dialogue and flat direction are all to be expected from a low budget flick from the 70’s, but apparently we’re cursed to live in the timeline where a movie about a man who progressively melts while craving blood frequently feels duller than watching the lottery results even though you haven’t bought a ticket. Weirdly enough, the exact same thing occurred with Will Collins’ tie-in paperback of Jaws-with-claws wannabe, Grizzly, as William Girdler’s 1976, drive-in, gut cruncher also failed to live up to it’s own novelization that ran with the idea while blessedly free of budget constraint and shitty actors.Īnyway, I digress, and while The Incredible Melting Man is a worthy addition to the pantheon of so-bad-its-good titles that survives solely on their outlandish content, actually sitting through the damn thing can be something of a grainy chore. An amusing example of gruesome pulp horror, it nevertheless took the visceral premise and added characters with back story, a sense of urgency and some truly haunting murder scenes that I found (surprise, surprise) are predictably absent from the film once I finally watched it. Hired to clean up this mess is Steve’s friend and mission scientist, Ted Nelson, who is brow beaten by the tyrannical General Perry to locate and contain this melting murderer on his own in order to keep things absolutely classified (did the public think a manned trip to Saturn wouldn’t be dangerous, or something?) and so Ted spends his nights wandering around in the dark with a gieger counter looking for his former friend while his expecting wife pines at home.Īs the body count continues to rise (two of them being Ted’s own in-laws), the search is stepped it include two more people, the local Sheriff and the General himself (way to push out the boat there, guys), but the more Steve dissolves, the stronger he seems to be getting despite the fact that his muscles look like melted pizza.Īnd so the stage is set for an awkward showdown as the clock ticks down to the launch of another mission to Saturn and Ted vainly tries to get through to his former friend before his body breaks down entirely.Įssentially The Quatermass Xperiment for the Grindhouse generation, I mentioned earlier that I first became rather enamored of the concept behind The Incredible Melting Man after reading Phil Smith’s tie-in novel at a formative age. However, instead of some cool, marketable super power, West finds that he been cursed to gradually melt away and thus immediately becomes a marauding monster that can only slow his disintegration is to consume human flesh.Īfter escaping the area where he was being treated and gorging himself on a nurse and a fisherman in order to tide himself over, Steve loses himself into the surrounding woods as his addled brain plays tangled flashbacks of his fucked up mission. After a mission to Saturn causes the trio of astronauts to get cosmic tanning session thanks to a blast of solar radiation, the only surviving crew member, Colonel Steve West, discovers that, much like on of the Famtastic Four, exposure to funky space rays has left him with an inhuman condition.
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