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July 27, 2013

Movie Review: The Incredible Melting Man (Blu-ray, 1977)

When I first experienced The Incredible Melting Man on Mystery Science Theater 3000 more than fifteen years ago, I thought to myself  "as bad as this is, this is far from the mind-numbing crap that's usually on this show". I could actually get through this B-flick without the best riffers in the world (Joel, Mike, Tom Servo, Crow and the gang) throwing in their clever barbs every few seconds. Scream Factory has taken the liberty to put William Sachs’ The Incredible Melting Man out in an ooey-gooey special edition Blu-ray that is sure please fans of this messy little masterpiece.

The plot is actually quite simple: Alex Rebar plays Astronaut “Steve West”, a man on a mission to take space exploration that much further than anyone before him. He does, but at a price, because now he is sitting in a hospital bed, gradually melting away thanks to a solar flare while gazing like a lecher at Saturn. After killing a rotund nurse, he emerges from the hospital, on the loose and suddenly an aggressive murderous creature. Fast on the syrupy heels of our cannibalistic melting creature is Dr.Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) who’s out to capture West before he gets too powerful during this sloppy metamorphosis.

Fast on the syrupy heels of our cannibalistic melting creature is Dr.Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) who’s out to capture West before he gets too powerful during this sloppy metamorphosis. The film really has the look of a 70’s TV movie – just with graphic violence. Somehow this adds to the experience because you don’t have that expectation so much as you watch it. The performances, to be expected are sub-par, with Alex Rebar taking overacting to a grotesquely new level with his few speaking scenes during the opening. These are gold! It’s probably good that he was in that make-up for the majority of the film.

The extras features here are all pretty entertaining, as you do get some interviews with make-up artist Greg Cannom, Director William Sachs and a surprisingly candid Rick Baker. In a soft-spoken tone the FX titan talks about is displeasure with The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar. It's quite funny so I won't be spoiling Baker's experience. Baker also talks about his FX team that included the talented Rob Bottin (The Thing, Total Recall) and of course Greg Cannom.

 On the excellent commentary track Sachs goes into quite a bit of detail on how The Incredible Melting Man came about. Amazingly, it was Sachs' mother who came up with the basic idea of this sloppy slice of genius. Much like Rick Baker in his interview, Sachs seems to wish he had done things differently had he had another shot at making the film.

The Incredible Melting Man will never be confused with one of the great Universal monster classics but if you’re hankering for a beautifully inept, gory, 50’s throwback that will go out of its way to destroy your brain-cells (or melt them), Scream Factory has this enjoyable flick looking better than ever on the Blu-ray.

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