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The Incredible Melting Man plays like an extended episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, but with violence and some nudity. I know this film is a bit crummy but I found it impossible not to kind of like it.

The acting and script are not the best. But the effects are good for a 30 year old movie with a budget of $50 - the title character takes quite a while to actually melt but when he does it's reasonably impressive; we also have one inventive death scene involving electrocution. Of note too is the music, it's insane - a cheese-tastic medley of nonsense.

Notable highlights:

* Marvel at the slow-motion nurse who jumps through a pane of glass for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

* Be amazed by a day in the life of a severed head.

* Beware of the psychotic cannibalistic melting humanoid. Called Steve.

* Be astonished when our hero takes a break from hunting the melting lunatic to have a bowl of soup and complain about insufficient crackers in the kitchen.

This film is just too 70's for me to hate it. It's tacky and trashy but I thought it was a lot of fun. You could do a lot worse.

"The Incredible Melting Man" is a fantastically gross, trashy and energetic Z-grade production that every self-respecting camp-horror freak simply has to see for him/herself! The ideal way to describe this low-budget 70's gem is like a shameless copy of Hammer's "The Quatermass Xperiment" ...only a thousand times filthier! Astronaust Steve West is the only survivor of a disastrous space-mission, but turns out the carrier of a horrible disease that makes him radioactive and ... causes him to melt! In shock after seeing his face in the mirror (can you blame him?), Steve busts out of the hospital, leaving a trail of sticky pus and fallen off body parts behind. Doctor Ted Nelson has to find him urgently, as the disease also set Steve up with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The premise may sound utterly stupid but this flick is enormously entertaining and contains great make-up effects from the hand of Rick Baker. The melting dude's face looks like a rotting pizza and his heavy breathing makes him sound like Darth Vader! Another big advantage is that William Sachs' screenplay doesn't waste any time on tedious scientific explanations or emotional speeches. The repulsiveness starts right away and lasts until the very last moment of the film. Just enjoy this silly horror gem and try to switch off your brain activity as much as you can because, if you start contemplating about the many stupidities in the script, you'll miss out on all the campy fun!

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.

The Incredible Melting Man is written and directed by William Sachs. It stars Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning and Myron Healey. Music is by Arlon Ober and cinematography by Willy Curtis. Astronaut Steve West's body begins to melt after he was exposed to radiation during a space flight to Saturn.

Escaping from the hospital, West trawls the land in search of human victims to eat in the desperate hope of staving off the melting of his body.

It's as bad as you most likely have heard it is, and Rick Baker's makeup work is as good as you have heard it is! Intended as a horror parody but switched to being a "supposed" horror with some cuts and swipes requested by the studio, it's pretty evident upon viewing the film that was clearly the case. Tale doesn't add up to much more than the melting man of the title walking from one scene to another dripping in goo whilst meeting up with a host of bad actors. He's pursued by a pal who wants to help him, while it all builds to some fireworks at a power plant where the "big" battle unfolds.

You can't really do much with the story, after just 8 minutes of film he starts melting and once his bodily parts start falling off you just know he is beyond help. The tragic creature vibe is strong enough to hold interest, if you can stop yourself from laughing at everything else that surrounds him (it) during its Quatermass Experiment journey. The power plant scenes are nicely photographed, the final demise of the creature is bleakly sad and Baker really comes through with the only bit of quality in the piece. It's messy in more ways than one! But fun to be had if in a very forgiving mood. 4/10

When I was a kid way back in 1977 there was an article about this movie in a kids magazine called Dynamite. It looked so incredibly gross that it just had to be fantastic, right? Well, go forward to the present year, 2003. I'm channel surfing and lo and behold, I find that The Incredible Melting Man is coming on Flix!! Sure it's goofy, but I got kinda excited about it since I STILL remembered seeing pictures of this hideous guy with his face melting off in that magazine. OK. I really wasn't expecting much, but I must say, despite the terrible plot, acting, etc., the special effects weren't half bad. Definitely not a movie you could enjoy while eating a plate of lasagna or something like that. But, even the gross factor is overshadowed by the dumbness of it all. To quote a character in the movie, "The more he melts, the stronger he gets!" WHAT?? No explanation is EVER given as to why this guy has ended up this way or how it is making him stronger. And it has to have one of the most depressing endings I've ever seen in a Z-grade movie!! I'll almost bet I would have loved this movie had I seen it as a kid in the late 70's though. I guess that whole idea of what I thought it would be as a kid was ruined by actually seeing it. Oh well...