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 ****

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.

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 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 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.