You won't be disappointed!

Memorable, crazy movie

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The Incredible Melting Man is a less than fantastic 70's B grade sci fi/horror flick. Astronaut Steve West returns from a space mission from Saturn and the results of the mission killed off his compatriots, but somehow Steve survives and escapes from the hospital turning into a man who's skin is melting, looking like a walking pizza that has a craving for human flesh. The best thing about this film is the make up f/x by Rick Baker. The acting, direction and overall quality of the film is pretty bad. The story is played out in typical slasher fashion and is by in large a pretty boring movie. I normally like movies from this time period that are in the splatter genre, but this film in question dosen't really stand out much and hasn't aged well.

First of all if there's one thing I can tell you, with one-hundred percent certainty, it's the fact that there's absolutely nothing remotely "incredible" about the movie "The Incredible Melting Man".The title of this movie should really be "The Many Shortcomings of Dr. Ted Nelson" because that's whats going on for the majority of this profoundly mediocre movie, yet another example of lame and forgettable B-Grade Schlock-Cinema. On all counts The Incredible Melting Man is a very amateurish effort, a tepid combination of Sci-Fi and Horror, which ultimately is quit pointless and for the next 84 minutes boredom and disbelief will be your two primary emotions. Which is something I know quit well, having seen the MST3K-version of this movie several times, I find that there are few movies that do less or have a weaker plot then The Incredible Melting Man - not to mention the films glowing star-power! The cast of this movie is as bland and as forgettable as you'll ever see and that couldn't be more true when one mentions the actor, Burr DeBenning, who is the movies star and main character and also Blandness Personified. If one were to waste their time rating individual actors, it's really hard to think of one who had less charisma or screen presence then Burr DeBenning and really what kind of a name is that anyway? The films feeble and poorly defined plot involves a trio of space explorers who are presumably irradiated "by the rings of Saturn" ... or something like that, one of them "Steve" initially survives and makes it back to Earth, only he's not the same man that he was, thus he goes on to become: The Incredible Melting Man. There's really very few important details involving plot once Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) makes his grand entrance and for the next 84 minutes this movie is nothing more than a series of bland and uninspired events (a true master-class of mediocrity in the movies), all of which falls right in line with what I said about this movie being pointless. Thus this pitifully puerile little Sci-Fi flick proceeds to play out in a series of loosely connected occurrences (many of which are entirely mundane), which are happening somewhere in one of the less densely populated areas of southern California. One can't help but sense that the cast of this movie seems to be aware of just how bad the material is and are completely bored and indifferent to it, not surprisingly this negatively affects their acting, which is as flat, as it is uninspired.From a visual stand-point this films just miserable, a murky combination of scenes, which when not showing-off someones riveting home life, are a mess of under-lit and poorly composed night scenes; that primarily focus on showing the melting man, who pointlessly ambles around various locations while committing a few murders. The murder scenes in this film are lamely carried out in a series of quick cuts or in some cases not shown at all, thus leaving us to just presume that a grizzly murder has taken place. The main thing that keeps Dr. Ted Nelson busy throughout the movie, other than entertaining General Perry and arguing with his wife about them being out of crackers, is when he's actively searching for the melting man with his trusty "Detectron" Geiger-counter and repetitively yelling "Steve, it's Dr. Ted Nelson, I want to help you." over and over. Another reason why this movie is so underwhelming (besides it's minuscule budget) and so utterly uninvolving, is because the very existence of the melting man is a closely guarded government secret, one that's on a strictly need-to-know basis or at least those were the General's orders.One character who does inject some energy into this otherwise slow-going movie is the local Sheriff, who after at least four murders finally gets filled in on the situation, which leads up to the movies tepid and illogical conclusion. In the middle of the night Ted and the Sheriff track the melting man, by following his radioactive "pools" to a large and curiously accessible power-plant, where the final encounter is to happen. Here the movie ends even less logically then how it started, such as the melting man's "powers" increasing in potency as he literally loses limbs and further proceeds to melt, which even for an Incredible "Melting" Man, is evidently an unhealthy state to find yourself in. The logic of this movie is riddled with holes and plagued by one ponderous and poorly-acted scene after another and I know that it comes as a shocker, but this movie possesses many of the qualities which are typical of that of a bad movie. Gasp! Say it ain't so. Yet depending on how you see it it can be fun, as it should come as no surprise this movie was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I would definitely recommend that version, if any.My favorite part of The Incredible Melting Man, other then the "cracker conversation", is that just seconds earlier the movie introduced a great new "comic-book word" to the rest of the world. Which is heard when Dr. Ted Nelson carelessly burns his hand on a hot pot and yells out loud >>> OTCH-GHA! <<< all while wearing a dorky-looking, brown, turtle-neck - but hey, this was filmed in the 70's after all. One last thing and that is the fact that this Sci-Fi film was released somewhere in the latter half of 1977, which officially places it in the Star Wars Era (Stars Wars mania was rolling at full-tilt at the time), which when compared to those icons of the genre, only serves to make this excruciatingly amateurish excursion into Sci-Fi seem all the more pathetic.Conclusion: Apart from Rick Baker's FX, The Incredible Melting Man is profoundly lame and was obsolete immediately upon release.

There's nothing like seeing the sun from the rings of Saturn! That basically sums up the theme of this deliciously bad and funny science fiction/horror film that has to be seen to be believed. Basically a rip-off of the atom age science fiction movies of the 1950's and 60's, this is too funny to pass up, yet too gory for some audiences to watch without turning their face away. It is one of those "Come back from outer space and see what you turn into!" themed space films, and boy, what happens to the astronaut here isn't a fate you'd wish on your worst enemy, probably because you know he'd be trying to chow down on your face for dinner. Lots of dripping goo will give the "eew" factor to audiences not expecting it, but there are also plenty of seemingly intentional laughs here in spite of the carnage.Burr DeBenning is the handsome scientist, Dr. Nelson, whose old friend Steve has become a walking Frankenstein's monster, to quote one little girl who encounters him like the little girl did Karloff and Peter Boyle, and at least at the hands of Karloff didn't live to regret it. A fisherman encounters more than a bear and "heads up" (or off), the shot of the poor man's face floating down a river of no return onto an obvious man-made waterfall and plopping down as if it was an Alaskan salmon. That was the first of many laughs for me, and I settled back in preparation for a treat of horror comedy that both grossed me out and tickled my funny bone, although a few sequences were extremely disturbing.The funniest sequence comes with the car ride of Dr. Nelson's seemingly old crone of a mother-in-law (a hysterical Dorothy Love), kissing her boyfriend as he drives, then nagging him to stop to pick oranges, which actually turn out to be lemons. The tension increases as the monster oozes his way through the lemon grove, stalks Dr. Nelson's house, encounters a turkey leg eating general, and eventually ends up in some sort of power plant like James Cagney fighting to get to "the top of the world". Another hysterical sequence has a young couple coming home to find oozing blood on their open door, and the poor girl actually pushing a refrigerator in front of the door and chopping off a hand while going slowly insane over what she's encountered. For a local sheriff, his encounter with the gooey creature turns out to be totally electrifying!Containing some of the most ridiculous attempts at serious conversations I've seen in a film, one whole segment deals with Dr. Nelson's pregnant wife and him arguing over her forgetting to pick up crackers. It goes on and on, seemingly pointless, yet the same pointless attempt at serious conversation with mother-in-law Love just continues to get so hysterical, I longed for it to continue. She wants to stop to call to let her daughter know she's late, even though they are just a few minutes from there. Then, she wants to stop and get them chocolates or flowers, denying that she wants the chocolates for herself yet agreeing that flowers die too quickly. Hence the sudden decision to pick citrus fruit when you're already late, a segment that reminded me of Billie Burke's insistence on eating cake in somebody else's house while searching for her missing husband in "Topper Returns". This is fast and funny, yet there is a serious message attached to the plot line that keeps repeating through the monster's memory of being an astronaut and encountering rays from the sun as seen from many millions of miles away. What are we going to outer space for when we don't know what sort of horrors we might bring back, and while it isn't mentioned, destroying our own atmosphere at the same time? So when a bad movie still makes you think about the impact that human beings are having on the world that we're supposed to be content with and try to continue to nurture, there is some purpose to it. The ending is very downbeat and ironic, with a janitor finding the mess of the night before, and simply sweeping it all up and tossing it away as the shot of another spacecraft prepares to take off.

The whole decade of the 1970s brought on a lot of change in several areas of life. People were advocating for peace rather than war. Some were fighting for civil liberties. Others were making strides in space exploration and some were pushing the limits that were everyday filmmaking. The 1970s for Hollywood received a jumble of new people who were making films that attracted audiences like never before. The horror genre was being exploited and tested to see how graphic directors could get away with showing their material to casual audiences. Science fiction movies were also on the rise with a number of films that inspired many future film crew professionals. For director William Sachs, having produced only a few films before this, took a hand at the horror and sci-fi genre. What turned out being only a literal 2-week shoot, has also been regarded as one of the worst films ever released. It is pretty bad, but it isn't the worst. It does have some moments to point out but it's more for if you just want to laugh at how silly the execution is.The story is about an astronaut named Steve West (Alex Rebar - probably his most memorable role) who went on a trip with others to Saturn to see the Sun of our solar system. Scientifically the trip doesn't make sense, but that's the least of the problems. After receiving some type of radiation trauma from the rays of the sun (via public domain stock footage), West is the only survivor. When he awakes, he discovers his skin is beginning to fall off. Expecting the worst, West begins to rage with fear and develops an appetite for human flesh. Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning), a friend of West is ordered by Gen. Michael Perry (Myron Healey) to find him before word gets out and also figure out how West got that way. This plot would be okay if it held a little more weight. Sachs was also the writer for this project. The screenplay is too light on exposition and hardly develops its characters. There are subplots, but much of the material is just filler making them pointless. Padding is really a big one. The whole running time is just an extended cat & mouse chase.Also not helping that is 99% of the acting is dull and unconvincing except for maybe Sheriff Neil Blake (Michael Alldredge). The actor who's possibly the worst is Burr DeBenning. As the lead, his delivery is banal, carrying barely any hint of emotion. This is made all the more obvious when certain characters make extremely dumb decisions or lack any kind of deductive reasoning. Nobody can find a man who is literally melting and leaving trails everywhere he goes. Probably one of the more frustrating parts is not really getting to know the star of the film. Sachs script loves to indulge in giving its audience numerous playbacks of the first scene to West's poisoning. Yet, some viewers might actually like to get to know what's going on in West's mind other than the fateful day he went all brain stew on everyone. Audiences aren't given any reason as to why West went after people he knew other than he needed buckets of blood to survive. The creature idea itself isn't the most unique either (although only one film has been made about such a creature) but how it's treated visually is another story. Practical effects whiz Rick Baker (getting his kick- start from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)) was head of special makeup effects. Wow is the melting man actually believably unappealing. Alex Rebar in costume as the slimy fall apart man is visually nauseating and that's good. Taking into account the budget and how long it took to shoot the movie, that alone is a feat in itself. The rest of the horror relies on more gore than anything else. There is nothing to be scared about because of how quickly the acting takes one out of even remotely feeling that it could happen. There is a funny moment though. The credits aren't exactly clear but there is a scene involving to old folks driving. There acting is by no means good but if anything they provide the most energy to the film. It's truly ironic that two older actors can show up the rest of the entire cast when it comes to showing any emotion beyond seriousness.The last two components that need to be mentioned are camera-work and music. Willy Kurant took care of cinematography. Although mostly doing more of his native work for Belgian productions, Kurant does however give the film somewhat of a professional look. The lighting is clear and bright where it needs to be. The camera is also steady and that's always good. Arlon Ober composed the musical score. Ober who is more familiar with orchestrating and conducting still makes use of whatever he saw in this below average film. It's not a good score because of its typical 1970s sound using flutes, electronic piano and guitar. It's an odd combo and it would be one thing if it was experimental, but this film was trying to appeal to mainstream audiences, so no. It also doesn't help with bad acting that it makes the scenes feel over dramatized. What does work however is the motif theme for the melting man. The theme consists of sad sounding strings in full orchestra, which makes the character feel that more tragic. Unfortunately, it's still not that good of a film.The (though all too 70s) film score, well-lit cinematography and makeup effects are mostly well put together, nothing else is really that acceptable. Most of the acting is not even comically dry, almost all characters are one-dimensional and the padding makes the sit painfully slow.