The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

For British readers of a certain age, William Sach’s The Incredible Melting Man will hold a special, if misguided, place in their affections. Despite Rick Baker’s impressively grisly effects used to realise the eponymous dissolving astronaut, in the UK the film was initially awarded an “AA” certificate by the BBFC meaning that gore hungry 14/15 year olds were free to sample its gooey delights (it opened in the UK on a double bill with the television film The Savage Bees and was upgraded to an 18 certificate for DVD release). What we got was a ridiculous but strangely quiet entertaining throwback to the days of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and First Man into Space (1958).

Life Victor Caroon and Dan Prescott respectively, the hero of The Incredible Melting Man, Steve West (Alex Rebar), is more fundamentally changed by a trip into space than he could ever have imagined. On a trip to Saturn, he and his colleagues run into solar flares (that look a lot like those at the start of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)). The other two astronauts are killed and West winds up in hospital (we never find out how he managed to get his ship back to Earth) covered head to toe in bandages. Because no-one seems to have any idea of how to secure an ill astronaut recently returned from a disastrous space mission, West is able to peel back the bandages revealing that his face has started to melt. He chases a slow motion nurse who he eats and finds that human blood keeps him going as his body continues to turn into goo. While killing a fisherman (Samuel W. Gelfman), frightening some kids (Julie Drazen, Stuart Edmond Rodgers and Chris Witney) and putting an end to a geriatric couple’s lemon scrumping trip, West is pursued by former colleague and friend Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning, giving his all to a role that doesn’t deserve it) who spends a lot of his time wandering bout in some woods with a Geiger counter shouting to his old buddy that he’s going to help him before the inevitable tragic ending.

Sachs had originally intended The Incredible Melting Man to be a spoof of 50s science fiction/horror films but the producers, including former Amicus mainstay Max J. Rosenberg, had a change of heart during production and demanded a more serious approach instead. Without Sachs’ involvement, the shot new footage (mainly of the astronauts in their cramped capsule and which features some very ropey acting) and re-edited the film to tone down the comedy and play up the nastiness of Baker’s excellent effects. Which goes some way to explaining the film’s alarming tonal issues, skipping merrily back and forth between comedy and gore with no warning whatsoever.

The comedy that remains doesn’t really suggest that Sachs’ original vision would have been any better. There’s a lengthy bit of business with a pair of old timers (Dorothy Love and Edwin Max) trying to steal some lemons that drags of for an eternity before the Melting Man turns up to put the frighteners on them and put us out of our misery. The final moments try to have it both ways, with the grim humour as a janitor sweeps up the fully melted remains of West interspersed with more serious radio reports telling of a new mission to Saturn, the implication being that it’s all about to start all over again. Thanks to the interference of the producers it’s not always easy to tell which bits of the film are meant to be funny and which bits are just badly done. A case in point: the infamous and long drawn out journey down river of a severed head that falls over a waterfall – in slow motion of course – before messily exploding on the rocks below. It has the hallmarks of an extended gag but it could just as easily be Sachs not knowing how to cut a scene to maximise suspense.

We never feel any empathy for poor old West who remains as devoid of character at his messy meltdown as he did at the start of the film – and Rebar is no Bill Edwards from First Man into Space let alone a Richard Wordsworth from The Quatermass Xperiment. There are a few shots of him lurking around outside suburban homes peering it at the normal lives unfolding there Baker’s effects, great though they are, don’t allow Rebar to express much emotion so we have no idea what he’s feeling in these scenes.

The Incredible Melting Man is a very long way from anyone’s idea of a good film but it is undeniably very entertaining in a determinedly low brow fashion. There are stretches of the plot that drag, some of the performances are bloody awful and the post-production tinkering is all too evident throughout. And yet… It’s a hard film to really dislike. It just about lives up to the promise of its ridiculous title, boasts first-rate effects and has some fantastically silly – intentional or otherwise – dialogue (“Oh God, it’s his ear!”). Maybe nostalgia plays a part, memories of the thrill of getting to see something this grisly when we really shouldn’t have been allowed to. Maybe younger viewers won’t be so tolerant of it, and that’s entirely understandable. But for some of us, the sight of Steve West’s putrefying face will always bring with it a little buzz of happiness, no matter how stupid the film itself might be.

Look out for B-movie favourite Rainbeaux Smith supplying that other catnip for teenage boys, bare breasts, as a model and future director of the likes of Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (1984), Oscar winners The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993) and the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme in a small supporting role playing the onscreen husband of Janus Blythe from The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

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