![]() ![]() Colors are rich as well, and I didn't notice any real compression or transfer problems either, only an image that shakes a tiny bit, once or twice, to complain about. ![]() Logically, it follows that daylight scenes enjoy a fairly sharp picture, too. Grain is minimal, but ramps up in darker scenes. ![]() Luckily, that shot is stock-footage, as the rest of the movie looks much better. This MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD-R has been assembled from the best 1.85:1 ratio, widescreen print elements available, reads a disclaimer, probably to prepare you for an opening shot of solar flares sporting a big-old huge, squiggly hair. Wake up and smell the blood America! Gore is here to stay! Seeing that melting face on the cover of Famous Monsters on some little grocer's magazine rack in Sacramento in 1977 was my wake-up call. Plus his title character has a melting face and likes to eat people. Mixing gory, venal cynicism with disturbingly naïve humor, Sachs directs his creature feature with a flair for making every character seem as mad as a hatter, making every actor seem completely inept, and larding the whole thing with unintentional hilarity. Yeah, so The Incredible Melting Man is no great shakes. Sachs builds tension through scenes of the wife fretting as she knits meanwhile, West decides to sit down next to a nondescript tin shed and melt to death, in the loneliest ending to a creature movie ever filmed. thought you were taking a nap," Nelson yelps, as the camera goes in for another lengthy close-up of Nelson's singularly unattractive wife. The nice thing is that Sachs switches to slow motion, following the head down as it shatters like a melon on the rocks.Īctivity soon reaches a fever pitch at Nelson's house, as the General bivouacs there during his search for West. Next minute, West tears off that fisherman's head, tossing it in a stream so that it may bob up and down in idyllic manner before going over an artificial waterfall that looks to be installed in some porn producer's back yard. I love my mutilation with a side of folksy humor, don't you?Īs the Melting Man eludes capture by staggering slowly around in a field, remembering in great detail scenes we just viewed ten minutes ago, hero Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) proactively goes into some kind of epileptic fugue state, becoming overly concerned with buying crackers. And they get frisky, but are soon enough Melting Man Munchies. Though integral to the plot, these two act as if someone had shoved the brains of a pair of four-year-old Martians into their bloated corpses. If that was the case, I would have liked what he was forcing on the elderly couple out on a mission to steal some lemons for Dr. ![]() This deficit displays in the form of bizarre tonal shifts, shameless recycling of footage, total lack of tension, and a probable directing style involving mandatory drug use amongst the cast. Sachs' short resume includes other wonky genre classics like Galaxina and whacked-out documentaries like Secrets of the Gods, but nothing that would distinguish him as a master of cinema. But, as a loony one-off and gore fiesta, The Incredible Melting Man can't be beat! Never mind the fact that Melty by nature must end up a puddle sooner or later. The Incredible Melting Man sold itself as 'the first new horror creature.' Writer director William Sachs may even have believed the idea, though his slime-bucket creature lacks the philosophical significance of, say, Frankenstein's Monster, or the looks of Dracula. It should come as no surprise that things don't end well. It's a big catch-22 that involves stock characters running around acting ridiculous while West melts like an ice cream sundae, eyeballs falling out, and rips a fisherman's head off. Unfortunately, being a melting man isn't all that incredible, sending West into a murderous, cannibalistic rage, which prolongs his miserable life. When astronaut Steve West makes the mistake of admiring 'sunrise' through the rings of Saturn, the sun itself sends out a solar flare that fries his buddies and sends him back to Earth a changed man. Just as Lucas was creating the first generation of Star Wars geeks, special effects artist Rick Baker was uniting gore freaks with his gloppy effects from this cynical face-boiler. Though poor in most respects, this horror film, in this reviewer's opinion, achieves historical significance by proving in 1977 that a mainstream audience existed for gory special effects films.Īnyway, that's what messed me up. Here's a landmark film that spits in the eye of George Lucas, a wretched, ignored pageant of plodding evil and slime that posits this: out there in space, you won't find cute droids and heroic peasants, just homicidal rage and liquefacation. ![]()
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