Le monstre qui vient de l'espace

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 ****

This movie is bad, no doubt about it, nothing good in that. In fact, i can't find with all the possible reasons why they do such a film ? Neither i understand why they've done a re-edition on video ? Maybe for the special effects, but even for that, this movie is not worth it. The story is really too easy, and i dont recommend a trip to Saturn, your skin may begin to melt and you'll be forced to pursue big nurses with apparently a surhuman strentgh and you'll have to eat flesh. So if i was you, instead of renting this movie, rent something like The Monster Club, another bad but enjoyable B movie...

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.

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...

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.