The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

When the movie Frankenstein was released in 1931, at least they had Mary Shelley to fall back on.

When The Mummy came out in 1932, there were centuries of Egyptology to support them.

When Dracula hit theaters in 1931, Bram Stoker was there for them.

You see what I'm getting at; when studios decide to give horror fans of all ages a new legend to ogle, cower in fear from or cheer for, there's usually some modicum of setup. They're based on books, mostly. Ancient writings, even. Sometimes it's even just documented legends. Bigfoots, Yetis, aliens and MothMen alike owe a lot to them, and so do the movies based on them.

However, when you start out with something cold - without books, ancient writings or even tall tales at the local barber shop - you better make sure your horror legend is going to stand up to scrutiny on its own. It's got some tough competition out there when you consider that the Wolfman, Coffin Joe and the Chupacabra have been around long before and will be here long after. Besides which, we have pieced-together re-animated corpses, mummified Egyptians, royal bloodsuckers and lycanthropes to contend with. What have YOU got?

A guy that...melts?

As a mater of fact, that's exactly what we've got in this 1977 entry in the horror/sci-fi sweepstakes. And with The Incredible Melting Man, the most incredible thing about this movie is the fact that it's best-remembered as a showcase for some of the most disgusting effects ever. But even the effects are overshadowed by the...no; no no - we've got other fish to fry right now. Hang on....

Let's stop the world and melt with the plot: Colonel Steve West (Alex Rebar) is one of three astronauts manning a rocket mission to the planet Saturn. Whilst they pass through the rings of Saturn, a flare of light floods the craft which gives West a nosebleed and makes him pass out.

The next scene shows a heavily-bandaged West in a secure government hospital (Where are the other astronauts? Dead - don't ask...). He soon breaks loose of the bonds holding him in his bed and rips off his bandages to find that he has contacted an affliction most likely derived from the Saturn flareup that is making his flesh liquefy, peel and melt away. West snaps and breaks out of the hospital, killing a hapless nurse in the process.

Taking refuge on the outskirts of town (What town? It's in California, out there somewhere..), West soon discovers that the only way to slow his disintegration is to eat human flesh and blood. This forces West to goes on a rampage to slaughter and eat anyone he finds. As all of this goes on, a concerned friend of West's heads up a 1-2 man manhunt to capture and secure him to save both himself and the populace. This man, DOCTOR TED NELSON (Burr DeBenning) must hurry because not only is West's situation a dire one, but one of the potential victims may very well be DOCTOR TED NELSON's own pregnant wife Judy (Ann Sweeny)

Apparently director/writer William Sachs best believed all that he had to do was concoct a bare minimum of plot (astronaut melts, terrorizes) and film what happens. The only problem is he doesn't know how to concoct this bare minimum of plot in a satisfactory way. He DOES know how to give us filler, though. Filler of kids teasing one another, filler of a guy fishing, filler of hero DOCTOR TED NELSON making lunch, filler of two oversexed old fogies stealing lemons, ...I only wish I was kidding about all this... filler of DOCTOR TED NELSON taking Geiger readings in a field, filler of a photographer trying to take advantage of his comely lady subject....

Oh! But this is her; Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith! The Grand Dame of Sexploitation Flicks! The Queen of B-Movies! This little lady had been in such Roger Corman an Roger Corman-influenced drive-in exploitation free-for-alls as Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural, The Swinging Cheerleaders, The Pom Pom Girls, Revenge of the Cheerleaders, Slumber Party '57 and Fantasm Comes Again, just to name a scant few. Melting Man would mark one of her lesser parts in what would kindly be considered "mainstream" films, even though she had parts in much bigger films the likes of Farewell My Lovely, Up In Smoke, Melvin and Howard and Nice Dreams. A small part of her in Du-Beat-e-o (about making a film about Joan Jett group The Runaways) would be her last appearance in film before retiring - she would succumb to complications from hepatitis in 2002 at the too-young age of 47. Sad thing to realize that such a talent as hers would be wasted in smallish parts compared to headlining works in smaller films. Hey, she played the back of Veronica Lake's head in Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, so cut her a break, willya??

Another interesting cameo comes from someone even YOU may have heard of. Jonathan Demme. Yep: Something Wild. Silence of the Lambs. Philadelphia. Rachel Getting Married. Director. Yep, he plays the aforementioned fisherman who is more than intent on finding out who is making noises in the bushes as he fishes, only to be easily dispatched by our goo guy. Jonathan's okay for as long as he's onscreen but, to paraphrase fellow reviewer Roger Ebert as regards Stacy Nelkin in Halloween III: too bad he plays his last scene without a head.

DeBenning plays DOCTOR TED NELSON as a sad-eyed whiner. I'm sorry, but he does. I don't care if DOCTOR TED NELSON is supposed to be a friend who wants to help Melty get un-melted or not, DOCTOR TED NELSON whines and complains. About hot stuff burning his hand. About there being no crackers in the house. About bloody crime scenes. About security guards not taking him seriously because he is, after all, DOCTOR TED NELSON.

Myron Healey, a familiar name for anyone who has seen a Western or two, plays a general who helps DOCTOR TED NELSON mainly by hanging around and doing nothing. Quite a switch for someone who was a bigger deal in such movies as Cattle Queen of Montana, Varan the Unbelievable, Journey to Shiloh and a whole host of TV series and movie roles that total over 300 or so. Not bad.

Sweeny, as DOCTOR TED NELSON's pregnant wife, doesn't really do anything. so let's move on....

But these are not the top-billed names. Our "butts-in-the-seats" talent. Our man who plays the melter of the title, astronaut and Colonel Steve West. Actor Alex Rebar. Now that's juuust under such hard, unyielding names as Alan Steel and Sharon Stone. And the sad thing is our man Rebar only has a minute or less of un-latexed face time before slip-sliding away from us. As our doomed astronaut, Rebar doesn't have the charisma or presence of other endangered astronauts such as James Brolin, Gary Collins, Sam Waterston, Bruce Campbell or the guy who played the android Frank in Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster. Now THERE was a doomed astronaut.

I've done some research on Alex Rebar and , other than some appearances on "The Incredible Hulk", soap opera "The Young and the Restless", "Voyagers!" and as Man on Phone on "Simon and Simon", Rebar fared better as a writer - did you know he wrote or collaborated on scripts for Exorcist ripoff Beyond the Door and Amy Madigan revenge flick Nowhere to Hide? He also wrote and directed a small series of shorts under the heading Sex Pain and Murder. Hmm. For all of that, however, it's interesting to note that what he is mostly known for is... melting.

That could very well be for the fact that if you name your movie The Incredible Melting Man, the last thing you're going to do is cast it full of actors. What; actors?? In a movie about melting men? Please; what you want are special effects, and lots of them. Good ones. Ones that will effectively convey to the viewer that what they re watching onscreen is some man onscreen and - by god - he's melting! So what do you do? Hire Rick Baker? Well, only if you want the best special effects in the world! Here is the man who did makeup effects for such movies as 1976's King Kong, Star Wars and... uh... well, he also did effects on Track of the Moon Beast and Squirm. Gotta start somewhere, I guess. But to his credit, this is Rick Baker we're talking about here, and all of the musculature, dripping flesh and dropping-off body parts are gruesomely effective. Of course there could have been more but Alex Rebar was apparently being a jerk about putting on any of the more extensive disintegrated examples of melting man extension and refused to work with Baker.

Just taking a second here - Hey. Alex Rebar. Wherever you are. You're an idiot.

Okay, back to Rick Baker. Unfortunately, his elaborate work is obscured most often by so much blobby goop sliding off of our boy at random intervals that any talent that went into the detail work is thoroughly obscured so that cinematographer Willy Curtis could show the lighting glisten artfully off of wet, drippy petroleum jelly-based flesh.

I'm sorry, but is art what you're looking for in a movie that has the word "melting" in it? Seeing as this isn't a David Lynch movie, it shouldn't be. Director Sachs simply does not have the sense nor sensibility of a James Whale or a Karl Freund or a Tod Browning, or even a Roger Corman for that matter when it comes to giving us a monster we can fear, abhor or at the very least pity. If you're going to write a movie about a guy who melts then have him stupidly run out of the hospital and start killing people instead of staying to at least let them try and save him, then, I'm sorry, your guy deserves to die. I don't feel sorry if he melts and dies, he's a freakin' idiot. He got what's coming to him. Idiot.

Even with scenes of the panoramic California landscape, slow-motion running running nurses and pyrotechnic sheriffs, it sometimes looks as if we're watching two movies: one making an appeal to the art house, the other to the grind house.

So this "incredible" Melting Man is not a classic monster. He hasn't the pathos of a Frankenstein monster. he doesn't have the dignity of a Count Dracula. He certainly doesn't have the cursed dramatic weight of a Sir John Talbot just before the full moon rises. Jeez, he doesn't even have the character and accessibility of a gorilla in a diving helmet.

The Incredible Melting Man not only failed on several levels of storytelling, character, drama, horror and watch-ability, but in the end it comes across as nothing more than some sort of sick joke where the viewer was victim of the worst punch line since "The Aristocrats".

Everyone involved moved on after this hit theaters like The Hindenburg hit American airspace. It did nothing for anyone and certainly nothing to further the lore of a mysterious (or Incredible, or whatever) Melting Man roaming the lands of California at night, seeking flesh to devour. Certainly Sachs did a few more films, but it only stands to reason that it was due to the lingering contempt reviewers and film-goers held for The Incredible Melting Man that he never stood a chance thereafter as far as Hollywood goes.

I imagine somewhere in a backroom William Sachs is sitting, pouring over a mountain of papers with scribbled notes, timelines, sketches and various scenarios of alternate takes and side stories, wondering what went wrong with his vision. He thought he had everything planned out so well, so intricately, down to the final detail. It coulda/woulda/shoulda/ been a hit. So why wasn't it?

That's easy enough: because Hollywood can always forgive a lesser Frankenstein movie. Or a lower-grade Godzilla movie. They're established, after all. If your legend's establishing movie falls flat, though, it isn't only men that will end up melting: careers will as well.