{"id":4137,"date":"2024-09-21T14:09:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T14:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4137"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:51:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:51:03","slug":"the-incredible-melting-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/21\/the-incredible-melting-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The Incredible Melting Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Incredible Melting Man <\/strong>(1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Horror-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, bloody images, gruesome special effects, nudity, some language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Sachs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: William Sachs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Arlon Ober\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Willy Curtis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 9, 1977 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Lisle Wilson, Rainbeaux Smith, Julie Drazen, Stuart Edmond Rodgers, Chris Witney, Edwin Max, Dorothy Love, Janus Blythe, Jonathan Demme, DeForest Covan, Sam Gelfman, Bonnie Inch, Mickey Lolich, Westbrook Claridge.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> is considered one of the worst movies ever made. It was featured in an episode of MST3K, an honor reserved only for the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of bad movies. It\u2019s bad alright, but I\u2019m not going to blame it on the director William Sachs (Galaxina). It\u2019s not his fault, not entirely. What happened was this. He originally intended The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> as a parody of horror movies, but the studio felt it wouldn\u2019t go over with the moviegoing public. During post-production, the studio edited out the comedic scenes, re-shot scenes and added newly-shot horror scenes, all without Sachs\u2019 participation. The result is a dull, uneven movie that succeeds as neither comedy nor horror.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Three astronauts are exposed to a blast of radiation during a space flight to Saturn. The sole survivor Steve West (Rebar, Number One with a Bullet) wakes up in a hospital with his face covered in bandages. He\u2019s horrified to discover he\u2019s melting. His physician Dr. Loring (Wilson, Sisters) says he\u2019s never seen anything like it. He calls in his colleague Dr. Ted Nelson (DeBenning, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5), a friend of West\u2019s, for consult. A panicked West escapes from the hospital and goes on a murderous rampage starting with a nurse. They bring in Air Force General Michael Perry (Healey, Claws) to aid them in the search for the increasingly insane West who grows stronger the more his body decomposes. And does it ever decompose! Flesh oozes and falls from his body in big gloopy gobs of goo. Not only that, West eats the flesh of his victims to slow down the melting process. It\u2019s a mess of the grossest kind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Naturally, the military wants to keep a lid on the situation in order to protect their own agenda. So what else is new? Nelson can\u2019t even tell his pregnant wife Judy (Sweeny, Bittersweet Love) who you immediately know will be terrorized by the monster at some point. He also can\u2019t tell the local sheriff (Alldredge, The Entity) demanding an explanation for all the mutilated bodies they\u2019re finding in his neck of the woods. The victims include a fisherman (producer Gelfman) whose head is seen floating down the river, over a waterfall and hitting the rocks below with a splat. A model (Smith, The Swinging Cheerleaders) posing topless stumbles across the rest of him. In a nod to Frankenstein, the monster chases a little girl (Drazen) playing in the woods. He also takes out Judy\u2019s mother (Love, Caged Heat), her gentleman friend (Max of the 1978 boxing kangaroo movie Matilda) and the male half (director Demme) of a young married couple before it\u2019s all over.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only good thing The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> has going for it is Rick Baker\u2019s (An American Werewolf in London) terrific makeup effects. His work here inspired the infamous toxic waste scene in the original RoboCop. Unfortunately, much of Baker\u2019s work fell victim to studio tampering. He originally created four distinct stages of decomp so that West\u2019s body would appear to melt gradually. The producers\u2019 re-editing caused West to look the same throughout the movie. That\u2019s just wrong. Baker worked hard on the effects; his artistry deserves to be seen. Oh well, what was left in is great.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The rest of The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> is pure low-budget B-movie schlock. It\u2019s cheap, shoddy, lame-brained and lethargic. It features bad acting, dopey dialogue, stock characters and a tired plot. It\u2019s predictable as all get out. It\u2019s a bad movie. It\u2019s not quite Robot Monster-bad or Manos: The Hands of Fate-bad, but it\u2019s close. Nonetheless, I had fun watching it. It\u2019s fun precisely because it\u2019s so God-awful. Some of the dialogue is absolutely priceless. Going by some of the things he says, Nelson has to be the dumbest scientist in the world. He says, upon gazing at the mutilated body of a victim, \u201cDon\u2019t quote me, but this wasn\u2019t any animal.\u201d A true master of the obvious he is. Later, while searching the woods with his trusty Geiger, he exclaims \u201cOh God, it\u2019s his ear.\u201d when he comes across a gelatinous substance on a bush. The best though is when he attempts to de-escalate a tense situation with armed security guards by shouting, \u201cLISTEN TO ME! I\u2019M DR. TED NELSON!\u201d Big help, Einstein!<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition, I appreciate how it homages the cheap monster horrors of the 50s and 60s, the kind that delighted audiences of youngsters at Saturday afternoon matinees. Of course, those movies weren\u2019t all that gory or scary. I\u2019m sure none of them showed a janitor casually depositing human remains in a trash can. I can only imagine the effect The Incredible Melting Man <\/strong>would have on those kids. Probably the same effect as Night of the Living Dead when some theaters showed it as a kiddie matinee picture unaware of its grisly content.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> played for a week in theaters and went largely forgotten after that. I badly wanted to see it, but there\u2019s no way the parentals would have allowed 9YO Movie Kid to feast his eyes on that forbidden R-rated fruit. At that age, I would have thought it was a great movie. At my current age, I think it\u2019s dumb but fun. It\u2019s the kind of movie that begs to be mocked. It absolutely calls for sarcastic remarks to be shouted at the screen. I\u2019d even describe it as an unintentional comedy. Still, I\u2019d love to get a look at Sachs\u2019 original cut if it still exists. Today\u2019s audiences would get it, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To close, The Incredible Melting Man<\/strong> is a bad movie, but it\u2019s not unwatchable. It has more heart and soul than many of today\u2019s heartless and soulless megabudget blockbusters. For that, I give it a lot of credit.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Horror-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, bloody images, gruesome special effects, nudity, some language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Sachs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: William Sachs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Arlon Ober\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Willy Curtis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 9, 1977 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Lisle Wilson, Rainbeaux Smith, Julie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/The-Incredible-Melting-Man-.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5448,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137\/revisions\/5448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}