L'uomo di cera

After a mishap in space, an astronaut returns to Earth where he starts turning into a murderous melting monster.

I must admit that while watching this B monster movie my opinion of it did change a few times. At first, after the first 15 minutes or so, I thought that this was going to be one cheesy mess of a movie. However I found myself enjoying this campy flick the further I got into it. I mainly have the great makeup effects of a young Rick Baker to thank for it too! Baker's talents are evident even in this early movie with it's bloody good makeup work. The oozing melting man effects are impressive for a low-budget production. There's also a great death-by-power line scene.

Still, this movie isn't flawless now. The performances of the cast are pretty weak and the movie has its share of silly scenes - like an overacting nurse running through a window to escape the title character or a scene where an elderly couple decide to steal some lemons and end-up paying big time!

The Incredible Melting Man is a mixed-bag of B horror fun. Nothing to be taken seriously, for sure, but B horror fans may just dig it.

** 1/2 out of ****

Irresistible, guilty pleasures like "Incredible Melting Man" don't appear often, so when they do, you watch them closely. Space shuttle pilot survives a near-fatal dose of radiation, but finds that his flesh is melting, and this inversely increases his hostility. After catching a glimpse of his disfigurement in the mirror, he becomes enraged. You'd become unhinged too. Despatching the nurse (who does the longest slow-motion panicked run in film history) he escapes, then awkwardly stumbles across the landscape, disintegrating and dismembering until his inevitable conclusion.

While star-billed, Rebar has little to do, and is unrecognisable beneath Rick Baker's repulsive make-up, leaving acting duties to the capable DeBenning whose ability to deliver his puerile dialogue without flinching is a testament to his dedication and professionalism. He has some crackers - my personal favourite being when he spies a piece of rotting flesh attached to a tree and on closer inspection announces despondently "Oh god.. it's his ear". A quality supporting cast includes Myron Healey and Michael Alldredge as the reinforcements, while Janus Blythe and Jonathan Demme appear in cameos. Exploitation aficionados might also recognise tragic Rainbeaux Smith as the model, nearing the end of her mainstream film career.

Baker's make-up effects are spectacularly camp; the guy's decapitated head tumbling down the waterfall is pure gold. Only the terrified expression bares any resemblance to the person off whom it was ripped, but that's trivial. The radioactive goo that trickles off Rebar is like pizza topping; sometimes cheesy with occasional ham. What enthralls some, will appear tasteless to others, but credit where it's due, Baker has done an outstanding job.

Like its title character, William Sachs' film ambles along, bereft of any real plot or direction, just a succession of gory, head-ripping melting moments, punctuated by incessant flashbacks and stock footage of solar flames. Often pilloried as a stinker, there's more than meets the eye here, and though not a serious contender with "The Quartermass Experiment" or others of its ilk, it's still entertaining late night fare, well worth the admission.

The acting in this film is rotten, the music similarly crass, and the plot so full of holes it's surprising they were able to string a movie together from it. But...

It's very funny.

Watch this with some mates and you can all have a laugh as the sheer stupidity of it all unfolds in front of you. Why does that nurse run through a glass door? Why does Steve lurk around his friends house, fertilising the garden? Pre-pubescent kids taking a puff? And what's with the head in the waterfall?

I'm sure the intention was to make a genuinely scary film, but it's more like an Ed Wood effort. The only thing they managed to do well was the effects.

The Incredible Melting Man (1977), looks, every bit, like a polished, seasoned, TV production company, produced a science fiction film, about a lost astronaut, inflicted with a terrible condition, wandering around the hills of southern California, terrorizing the public, while his friends at the space agency, try to save him. Then, Moe, Larry, Curly and Freddy Krueger come into the production and make, another movie. Then, they merge the two movies together into this mess. I decided to look into this situation, with the obvious differences and from what I have read, that is exactly what happened to this doomed production.

Director, William Sachs, who has plenty of good credits in his resume, along with a fine group of seasoned actors and legendary, make-up genius, Rick Baker, started shooting this movie and those parts of the film, are the good ones in this movie. Studio producers then came in, did reshoots on all those scenes, which are truly embarrassing and re-edited the film, in a completely different way. The only thing, that the producers decided to do, that I feel worked in the film, was making the Incredible Melting Man (1977), into a full horror movie and not a parody of itself, which Sachs had originally intended to do. Sachs uses, in his filmmaking process, interesting styles of camera-work, lighting and editing, as well as, strategically-placed, audio edits and voice-over techniques. The film looks really good in some parts. The melting-man is what kills the film.

Rick Baker's creature effects are ok, but they too, suffer from the re-editing and change of direction, that the film took. At one point in the film, we get to witness the melting man's right eye-ball fall out of his head. Unfortunately, later in the film, we can see actor, Alex Rebar's, real eye, poking out behind all of the creature make-up effects. The melting effects worked much better in long shots, back shots and low-lighted scenes. The dripping effect of his skin falling off his body looks cool in some shots. There are plenty of miscues in the film and terribly embarrassing moments, which means, maybe Sachs was right. Make the film a parody of itself, because the melting skin and bones, are a metaphor, for a mess of a film, on the way.

4.6 (E MyGrade) = 5 IMDB.

Well. Apparently in this film there is a "man" who is "melting" and this is "incredible". Whatever. For my money there is only one reason to see this film, and it has nothing to do with snot-faced fellows who eat people's flesh.

At one moment in the film the incredibly thin and pasty protagonist Dr. Ted Nelson mentions his mother-in-law, and suddenly this film swings into high. We're shown a wonderful sequence of two incredibly lumpy elderly folks driving. These oddly shaped, lawn gnome-esque folks decided to steal lemons, but they get scared and run (well, totter) back to their automobile only to be eaten by the titular character.

God, these two actors are wonderful! Dorothy Love and Edwin Max deserve the accolades of their peers for this brief glimpse into the magical and bewitching talents of actors in their prime, who were given a script that seemed to have been written by a spastic monkey.