Must See Movie...

Admirable film.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I first learnt of this film's existence by walking past a cinema at the tender age of 4 and seeing a poster for the double bill of this and a TV movie that was shown theatrically in the UK called The Savage Bees (to be reviewed tomorrow night). Even the poster for this genius double bill of terror messed me up psychologically as I was obsessed with the idea of the villains of both films coming to get me when I was least expecting it.I finally saw The Incredible Melting Man years later on TV- and loved it. It harks back to the horror films made for drive-ins in the 1950s. The plot involves three astronauts going on an expedition to Saturn ("You've never seen anything til you've seen the Sun through the rings of Saturn"). But something goes wrong and the only surviving astronaut, Steve West comes back to Earth to find that his body is slowly melting. We find out that to slow this down Steve who is now insane, must consume human flesh to decelerate the decomposing process.This film is ripe for people to call it 'so bad its good' as if its absolutely terrible. It isn't- and not by a long chalk.Yes, sometimes the acting is a little, er, natural shall we say (the actress who plays the mother who stops off to steal lemons reminded me of Edith Massey from John Waters' films. Yes, her acting is that raw!).But there's also some of the best special effects I've ever seen which were crafted by a young Rick Baker. Yes, the Rick Baker who won seven Oscars (take that cinema elitists). The melting effects are very aesthetically pleasing and the scenes in which El Melto sheds an eyeball and leaves his oozing ear on a bush have to be seen to be believed. Watching a severed head splat on a rock after going down a waterfall in slow motion is also a beautiful sight for horror fans.There's also a cameo by a young Jonathan Demme as the boyfriend of a teenage girl played by none other than Janus Blythe who played Ruby in The Hills Have Eyes. Her performance is brilliant. I love any character that goes mad at the horror of what has just occurred. She does a great job with her character alternately crying and laughing manically.But there's also a greater depth to this film. There are many scenes of West walking up and down hillsides with the sun setting behind him and with the sounds from the expedition in his head. These scenes show Steve to be completely alone and nomadic. West is a melting freak but not through choice and is so grotesque that he's utterly ostracised and feels completely separated from the rest of the human race. These sequences reminded me of the melancholic piano music at the end of each episode of The Incredible Hulk or the underlying sadness to the TV programme The Littlest Hobo. The audience feels pity for West and his condition rather than his character being a two-dimensional grotesque baddie with no other sides to his persona.There's also a heartbreaking scene wherein Steve reaches a barrel of water on his wanderings and sees his reflection that makes him cry out and place his head in his heads.This film also possesses a scene which is the hallmark of a really messed up movie- someone runs through glass. A nurse runs through a plate glass door after seeing Steve's face when he removes his bandages for the first time. If this 'running/throwing yourself through glass' scene is in a film you know its special and that you're watching high art. The scene appears twice in Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), twice in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) and once in Halloween 2 (1981)- all great, messed up pieces of cinema.Any film that features the lead character melt in a great big pool of ooze at the end and is then seen being swept up and placed into a trash can by a janitor is A-OK with me.The next time someone tells you that The Incredible Melting Man is one of the worst movies ever made tell them to get lost. They wouldn't know great entertainment if they fell over it.

When people talk about MST3K they talk about how bad the movies featured on the show are, but actually most of these movies are very decent some of them even good, yes, some of them are pretty bad too, The Incredible Melting Man its a decent one, a fun cheese monster movie, its a remake of the First Man Into Space, it was originally supposed to be a parody or a throw back to comics or sci-fi, but it ended up as a mess, but a very enjoyable mess, the effects are very well done as they were made by Rick Baker, its pretty gory at times, the movie doesn't mess around it gives you what you want right from the beginning there's a monster killing people, its very entertaining, I would recommend it to those who are interested.

There's nothing like seeing the sun from the rings of Saturn! That basically sums up the theme of this deliciously bad and funny science fiction/horror film that has to be seen to be believed. Basically a rip-off of the atom age science fiction movies of the 1950's and 60's, this is too funny to pass up, yet too gory for some audiences to watch without turning their face away. It is one of those "Come back from outer space and see what you turn into!" themed space films, and boy, what happens to the astronaut here isn't a fate you'd wish on your worst enemy, probably because you know he'd be trying to chow down on your face for dinner. Lots of dripping goo will give the "eew" factor to audiences not expecting it, but there are also plenty of seemingly intentional laughs here in spite of the carnage.Burr DeBenning is the handsome scientist, Dr. Nelson, whose old friend Steve has become a walking Frankenstein's monster, to quote one little girl who encounters him like the little girl did Karloff and Peter Boyle, and at least at the hands of Karloff didn't live to regret it. A fisherman encounters more than a bear and "heads up" (or off), the shot of the poor man's face floating down a river of no return onto an obvious man-made waterfall and plopping down as if it was an Alaskan salmon. That was the first of many laughs for me, and I settled back in preparation for a treat of horror comedy that both grossed me out and tickled my funny bone, although a few sequences were extremely disturbing.The funniest sequence comes with the car ride of Dr. Nelson's seemingly old crone of a mother-in-law (a hysterical Dorothy Love), kissing her boyfriend as he drives, then nagging him to stop to pick oranges, which actually turn out to be lemons. The tension increases as the monster oozes his way through the lemon grove, stalks Dr. Nelson's house, encounters a turkey leg eating general, and eventually ends up in some sort of power plant like James Cagney fighting to get to "the top of the world". Another hysterical sequence has a young couple coming home to find oozing blood on their open door, and the poor girl actually pushing a refrigerator in front of the door and chopping off a hand while going slowly insane over what she's encountered. For a local sheriff, his encounter with the gooey creature turns out to be totally electrifying!Containing some of the most ridiculous attempts at serious conversations I've seen in a film, one whole segment deals with Dr. Nelson's pregnant wife and him arguing over her forgetting to pick up crackers. It goes on and on, seemingly pointless, yet the same pointless attempt at serious conversation with mother-in-law Love just continues to get so hysterical, I longed for it to continue. She wants to stop to call to let her daughter know she's late, even though they are just a few minutes from there. Then, she wants to stop and get them chocolates or flowers, denying that she wants the chocolates for herself yet agreeing that flowers die too quickly. Hence the sudden decision to pick citrus fruit when you're already late, a segment that reminded me of Billie Burke's insistence on eating cake in somebody else's house while searching for her missing husband in "Topper Returns". This is fast and funny, yet there is a serious message attached to the plot line that keeps repeating through the monster's memory of being an astronaut and encountering rays from the sun as seen from many millions of miles away. What are we going to outer space for when we don't know what sort of horrors we might bring back, and while it isn't mentioned, destroying our own atmosphere at the same time? So when a bad movie still makes you think about the impact that human beings are having on the world that we're supposed to be content with and try to continue to nurture, there is some purpose to it. The ending is very downbeat and ironic, with a janitor finding the mess of the night before, and simply sweeping it all up and tossing it away as the shot of another spacecraft prepares to take off.

Possibly one of the most iconic horror thrillers around that everyone forgets about. Its probably the epitome of schlock horror with the added bonus of having some quite dazzling practical effects courtesy of the legend Rick Baker. Get a load of that title! As with many sci-fi movies of the 70's and 80's, this film was heavily influenced by older sci-fi thrillers of the 50's that pretty much had the same plot. A dude comes back from outer space with some kind of illness or infection that slowly kills him.Sure enough, in this movie a dude (Steve West) comes back from the far reaches of space (travelling to Saturn), after getting hit in the face with a blast of radiation. Although, I'm not too sure how they managed to get back to Earth when two of the crew were fried alive and the other was left half alive. Anyway with his other two crew mates dead, he is the only survivor back on Earth. But to everyone's horror the surviving astronauts flesh is slowly melting away, his whole body is slowly falling apart, and no one knows why. Role credits...oh wait!Yes there is more, the movie continues for another hour and a half or so of simply watching this guy melt slowly. Its strange really because the movie starts off really well, the small sequence of the three astronauts in their little craft approaching Saturn's rings is quite decent. It looks really authentic with a solid little set, good costumes and good lighting, you could be fooled into thinking you're watching a serious sci-fi. Its the moment we get back to Earth the movie transforms into an extremely hammy tacky slasher thriller. For starters why would this astronaut leave the hospital and run off?? why would he even get out of bed in the first place? You're in a hospital, there is obviously something seriously wrong with you, you'd want the best help you can get, you'd want top people on the case, you'd want answers etc...Getting out of bed and running off after seeing your rotting hands and face is easily the wrong choice in my opinion.From here on things get a tad silly, first off he starts to kill people in horrendous ways, yeah that's not cool bro. OK he's gone a bit loopy from the shock of seeing himself rotting away, but would that really cause you to start killing people in a fashion that would make Jason Voorhees proud? Its at some point during the stalking carnage that we find out he needs to eat human flesh to keep his strength up...yeaaah kinda leeching of the 1968 zombie craze set in motion by Romero methinks. This means we basically get one death scene after another, all set up in cheesy ways which are so blatantly obvious they offer no scares at all these days. Its also at this point that you basically don't really care about the character of West anymore, seeing as he's slaughtering folk for no real reason other than he looks like a monster. Each victim is the predictable stereotypical type, an old couple, a single bloke who looks a bit geeky, a young married couple, some faceless cops and some military dudes, oh and there's a little girl...but she of course escapes unharmed. Amazingly there are no teens having sex that get killed off, quite surprising really considering.Despite all that its really all about the makeup and gore effects for the melting that we're interested in. Needless to say you can't go wrong with Rick Baker at the helm and he doesn't disappoint here. Admittedly the melting effects don't actually change all that much for the majority of the middle of the film, its only right at the very end we see the real money sequence. Up to that point we get lots of little gory moments with his ear coming off, his arm being cut off, various chunks of flesh and blood splodges, lots of gooey POV views from the melting mans perspective and some violent kills. For the most part he looks like a large runny cheese n tomato pizza that is dripping away but it is highly effective. But as I said the finale where we actually see the titular character melt away into a slushy, sticky, puddle of goo is by far the highlight. The vision of West's remaining eye slowly sliding down his face as his skull collapses in on itself is really terrific and haunting. Its a near perfect example of hands-on, practical effects that still holds up today, Baker the master craftsman.Its a mixed bag really. The concept is not original, the start is good, the entire middle of the film is (now) a clichéd monster slasher flick, but the effects are fantastic and you do kinda feel for West, at times. Although the morality aspect of the movie is well n truly lost beneath a sea of grisly gunk. Unfortunately overall the cheap slasher-esque motif sticks in your mind and brings the movie down, not even the so called black comedy segments, which are sporadic, make any real difference. I have read it was suppose to be a more light-hearted movie at first but they changed their minds, alas you can tell with some scenes feeling out of place. The old couple that get killed are clearly an old comedy sequence left in. In the end I can't deny that the movie is thin on plot, thin on motives for the characters and of course focuses more on horror and gore. Its a movie about a man...who slowly melts away, and that's it, nothing more, nothing less...but hell I liked it!6.5/10