LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN (1977) ** ½

FORMAT:  4K UHD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 9th, 2016)

The Incredible Melting Man is kind of hard to pin down, and I don’t mean just because of his inherently slippery exterior. The movie flirts with working here and there (mostly whenever the slimy, globular main character is front and center), but the rest of the time it’s pretty much a bore. Still, the film is JUST bad enough to be sporadically amusing. From the odd music and sound effects on the soundtrack to the perplexing compositions of shots to the wooden acting, there is just enough here to keep you amused. Well… almost.

The plot has an astronaut (Alex Rebar) returning home from a space mission with a chronic case of the melts. When he wakes up in the hospital, he kills a fat nurse and then goes around murdering more people. It’s then up to one of his colleagues (Burr DeBenning) to find him and stop him.

The Incredible Melting Man himself is pretty cool. He’s a nifty creation of Rick Baker (just a few years away from winning an Oscar for An American Werewolf in London) as he just oozes and drips and sloshes around for 90 minutes. The rest of the film is not so nifty. It’s basically a throwback to the old ‘50s sci-fi films, except with a better monster. Too bad the acting and filmmaking techniques were better in the ‘50s.

There is one scene though that cracked me up. That of course is the scene where the two old people go out fooling around in the woods and become fodder for the Melting Man’s ire. In actuality, this scene runs on far too long and is fairly stupid, but I liked the fact that writer/director William (Galaxina) Sachs opted to use an old couple as victims. I mean the monsters can’t ALWAYS kill teenage couples in these movies, now can they?

It has its faults to be sure, but The Incredible Melting Man is the only movie I can think of in which the monster gets mopped up by a janitor at the end, so that is worth something at least.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

I’ve seen this on television many times (with most of my viewings coming from Mystery Science Theater 3000), but I’ve never seen it in its uncut glory.  It’s funny, because the MST3K version showed all the gore (including the hilarious slow-motion plunge of the severed head going over a waterfall), but the scene with drive-in starlet Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith was removed. 

Sure, the stuff with Dr. Ted “HOTCHKA!” Nelson still drags like a sumbitch, but whenever the titular man is wasting away before our eyes, it’s fun. 

4K UHD NOTES:

You guessed it, it’s another terrific transfer from Vinegar Syndrome.  The movie hasn’t looked this good since it played in drive-ins back in the ‘70s.  The blacks are deep and dark, and the nature scenes look great in 4K.  In fact, it looks so good that the contrast between the film and the crummy stock footage during the opening outer space sequence is kind of jarring.  There’s also some obvious wear and tear during the famous super-slow-motion scene of the nurse running away from the Incredible Melting Man, but that’s to be expected, I guess.

Speaking of Melty, his slimy Day-Glo color scheme really pops in 4K.  Smith also looks terrific in HDR too, which obviously stands for “Hot Damn, Rainbeaux”!