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Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: August 30th, 2022.
Director: William Sachs
Cast: Alex Rebar, Burr Debenning, Myron Healy
Year: 1977
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The Incredible Melting Man – Movie Review:
A fun cult oddity from 1977, AIP's The Incredibly Melting Man may have been the subject of an MST3K riff fest once upon a time but the film stands on its own as a fun monster movie even without commentary from the Satellite of Love's crew. When the film begins, an astronaut named Steve West (Alex Rebar) and a few other crewmembers are geeking out over how awesome Saturn looks from their space capsule. When Steve's nose starts bleeding and the other two astronauts pass out, something has obviously gone wrong. The next time we see Steve he's laying wrapped up in a hospital bed. He wakes up and realizes that something happened to him out there in space, something that's causing his flesh to literally melt off of his skeleton. He snaps, and after attacking a chubby nurse in a tight fitting outfit, he busts out of the hospital and into the woods nearby where he rips the head off of a fisherman enjoying a cold Coors sixteen-ouncer and terrorizes some kids enjoying found creek porn.
The authorities are alerted and at this point we meet Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr Debenning), a NASA medical big wig who has to find Steve and figure out what the Hell happened to him before the next Saturn mission launches. So armed with a Geiger counter and some help from General Mike Perry (Myron Healy), a portly guy who enjoys a good nap, Ted heads out into the woods to find Steve who has busied himself terrorizing a photographer who has in turn been busying himself by trying to take nudie shots of Cheryl ‘Rainbeaux’ Smith. As West's humanity disintegrates along with his skin, he runs around causing a ruckus, leaving bits and pieces of himself here and there and eating people. He even goes after Ted's in-laws, a randy couple out to steal some oranges on a night time drive to visit their daughter, Judy (Ann Sweeny), and his husband. Will Ted and General Perry be able to stop Steve before he obliterates everyone around him and possibly even save him while there's still something left of him to save?
As wacky as you'd expect a movie about a melting man to be from the director of Galaxina and Van Nuys Blvd., this film features some impressive and fairly early effects work from the great Rick Baker, who appears to have bought an endless supply of what looks like condensed milk and food coloring to make the melting effects happen. Amazingly enough, they work incredibly well and the vast majority of this movie's appeal is going to stem from those effects scenes.
The acting is pretty hokey, the story fairly predictable (though you've got to give the filmmakers credit for going with a surprisingly dark ending) and the stock footage that the beginning that is supposed to be of Saturn looks more like stock footage of the sub but regardless, this movie is a blast if you don't feel the need to take it too seriously. And why would you want to?
There's definitely a twisted sense of humor to much of this film, if it's not obvious from the melting man himself it's painfully obvious in the scene involving Dr. Ted's horny in-laws and their midnight citrus crime spree. The film definitely borrows elements from Phantom From Space and from Frankenstein and it feels more like a fifties sci-fi/monster movie than a typical seventies horror film but that's hardly a bad thing. This is, after all, a movie about a melting cannibal named Steve who rips the heads off of random fishermen and chases nurses through plate glass windows for no reason - and it's just as ridiculously fun as it should be.
The Incredible Melting Man – UHD Review:
The Incredible Melting Man comes to UHD in an HEVC encoded 2160p 4k transfer with HDR10 from a new 4k master of the original negative and framed in its original 1.85.1 widescreen aspect ratio. Aside from few feint vertical scratches and some small white specks here and there, the image is extremely clean, showing excellent detail and beautiful color reproduction. Detail is just flat out impressive in pretty much every frame of the movie, and we get really strong color reproduction and nice, inky black levels as well. The gooey effects work really pops here, and skin tones look lifelike and natural throughout. The image shows now noticeable issues with compression artifacts and is free of any obvious edge enhancement or noise reduction, showing plenty of natural grain and always looking properly film-like.
An English language audio option is provided in 24-bit DTS-HD Mono with optional subtitles offered up in English only. Sound quality is quite strong. The track is clean and properly balanced, there aren’t any issues with any hiss, distortion or sibilance to note. Dialogue is always crisp and clean and easy to follow and the score has some decent depth to it.
Disc 1 -UHD:
Aside from menus and chapter selection, the only extra on the UHD disc is a commentary track with writer/director William Sachs. This proves to be an interesting listen as Sachs goes into a lot of detail about how the final version of the film is not what he envisioned for it and explains how certain aspects of the production were taken out of his hands, resulting in a movie that is quite different from his original vision. Along the way, he talks about working with the different cast members in the film, the effects work, the locations, writing the script, influences that worked their way into the movie and quite a bit more. It’s a really worthwhile track for those who have yet to hear it.
Disc 2 – Blu-ray:
That same commentary is found on the included Blu-ray disc, which uses the same new 4k restoration as it found on the UHD disc. There are also a few featurettes here, starting with It's A War. This is a new thirty-one minute interview with William Sachs where he talks about how he got into filmmaking due to his father's interest in photography before then going on to talk about how he had an interest in writing at a young age, his education and training, lessons that he learned during his stint in the air force, going ahead and making his first feature, the importance of having control over your own project, working with Dean Cundey on Galaxina, various career highlights, coming up with the ideas for The Incredible Melting Man and what it was like making that movie, producer interference on the film and how filmmaking has become accessible to the average person as technology has evolved.
Just Show Up is a new fifteen minute interview with script supervisor Sandy King. This piece covers how she came to do second unit work on the feature, who did what behind the scenes on the movie, how she got her start in animation and moved over to live action when she got out of college, getting her start on non-union and low budget movies and then working her way up to bigger features, how the movie was meant to be a showcase film for the effects and design work, the different locations that were used, initial thoughts on the script versus how the final movie turned out, running into budgetary issues, working with the directors of photography very closely and quite a bit more.
The interview featurette with William Sachs and special effects artist Rick Baker, carried over from the original Scream Factory Blu-ray release, runs twenty minutes and covers why this is a 'glop movie,' the influence of Night Of The Living Dead, where some of the ideas came from, what it was like on set, Baker's initial hesitation in doing the project and coming up with some of the effects set pieces.
The interview with special effects artist Greg Cannom, also carried over from the Scream Factory release, runs a quick three minutes and sees him speaking about what went into creating some of the makeup effects work that he was responsible for during the making of the movie.
Finishing up the extras on the second disc is an original theatrical trailer for the movie, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection options.
As far as the packaging is concerned, the first 6,000 copies of this release ordered directly from the Vinegar Syndrome website come with a nice embossed, limited edition slipcover featuring newly created artwork by Chris Barnes. We also get some slick reversible cover sleeve artwork.
The Incredible Melting Man - The Final Word:
The Incredible Melting Man is a fun one, a completely enjoyable gooey and gory throwback to the sci-fi monster movies of the fifties. Vinegar Syndrome has done right by the film with their UHD/Blu-ray reissue, offering the film up in a gorgeous presentation and with a strong selection of extra features to round things out. All in all, a great release for a really fun movie.