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This is the first Against the ’70s Request Line film, and it’s from subscriber Steve Carlson. Thanks, Steve! You can read Steve’s own reviews over at his Patreon, The Overdue Diligence Project, and you should, because his stuff is great. If you’d like to request a specific 1970s movie for me to cover, you can do by subscribing either here or over at my Patreon1. Also, inevitably, there are spoilers here, but I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum in the review half, enough that you could read it and still enjoy and be surprised by the film. Read with care. Thanks!
What is it? The Incredible Melting Man, written and directed by William Sachs, and starring Burr DeBenning, Alex Rebar, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Bonnie Inch, and introducing Jonathan Demme as Matt Winters.
First viewing? No. Last recorded screenings were 6 March 2022, and before that, 18 July 2020. There’s at least one unrecorded screening: my first viewing at a drive-in at the age of 5. This isn’t counting however number of viewings of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version.
What’s it about? A manned mission to the rings of Saturn goes wrong when the astronauts expose themselves to the sun’s rays, killing everyone except Steve West (Alex Rebar). Upon returning to Earth, Steve begins decomposing, and he escapes from a secret hospital and goes on a killing spree. His friend Dr. Ted Nelson (DeBenning) is charged, by General Perry (Healy), with finding Steve without informing anyone of Steve’s existence.
What are your thoughts about it? Read anything about The Incredible Melting Man, and you will inevitably learn that writer/director William Sachs intended the film to be a comedy, a satire or spoof of horror films like Night of the Living Dead. This intention was thwarted when the producers decided they wanted a “serious” horror film instead. To this end, they cut many of Sachs’ comedic scenes and shot new horror ones without his input. The resulting film then is, according to Sachs, a compromised vision, with the implication being that The Incredible Melting Man, thought by many to be one of the worst movies ever made, is not his fault.
(takes a deep breath) I call bullshit.
To be clear, I don’t dispute Sachs’ description of events. It’s clear something went awry in the production; it’s incompetent in many ways, a failure in nearly all the ways, but in ways that are je ne sais quoi. That said, I think Sachs is using this meddling to cover his ass.
Let’s, if you will, melt it down.
Rick Baker’s makeup effects are just awesome. Just the gloopiest, gloppiest creature this side of the Blob.
1). The premise isn’t funny.
Comedies, more often than not, can be identified as such right from the premise. An obnoxious, fun-loving businessman enrolls in college to help out his son. An over-the-top, gung-ho cop tries to adapt to policing a quiet, unassuming village. An office worker who hates his job is accidentally hypnotized into not caring about his job, which ends up pushing his career further. What is the comedic premise of The Incredible Melting Man? An astronaut suffers an accident in space, and upon returning to Earth, begins to melt and must eat people (or something) to survive. Boil it down further: it’s about watching a guy slowly die a horrible death. Could it work as a black comedy, by really leaning into the nihilistic despair inherent to the premise2? Sure, but that’s the kind of tall order Sachs doesn’t have the dishes to fill.
2). The actual comedy isn’t funny.
But what about the stuff that’s supposed to be funny? What about the jokes?
Well, that depends on what, in this movie, is considered a joke. Or put another way, what Sachs considers to be funny. What is funny to William Sachs?
Let’s start with the film’s most unforgettable moment: the heavyset nurse who runs down what seems like an endless hallway, then bursts through a glass door instead of just, you know, opening it3. Is this a joke? Or is it horror? (With this movie, it can be hard to tell.) I imagine a lot of us would instinctively say, No, this isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s nightmarish, and the stunt, performed by Bonnie Inch, albeit impressive, looks painful as hell. But any horror generated by it is undermined by its much-too-muchness. The corridor and the shot length are too long, the cut to the door too shocking — it’s a setup and a punchline. Furthermore, it’s hard to take the moment seriously when there’s nothing chasing after her in the shot. Amazingly, Sachs intended to open the film with this tonally-indeterminate4 bit of business. (The best way to open a comedy is with a screaming woman plunging into glass.) As far as I can tell, the joke is that this woman is so scared she hurts herself getting away from a guy who wants to eat her skin or whatever.
Steve Carlson, a guy I’ve mentioned a lot lately, has a Tumblr/Twitter account called Shots of Anarchy where he posts screengrabs that are “a symbol of all things wild and unpredictable, of happy accidents and unintended effects, of reality reaching into the frame of an artificial narrative and asserting its existence.” This was his selection from THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN.
Then there’s the scene with, oh god, the three kids. Two kids, around ten years old by the look of them, are sharing their first cigarette. (claps hands, opens arms The ’70s!) This ritual is interrupted by a girl about the same age. After one boy asks if she wants to play doctor; she says no, but agrees to hide and seek if she can try the cig. She takes a puff, stomps it out, and one of the boys gives her a long, strange look, a kind of mixture of pity and disgust. I have no idea what exactly was intended here; it’s completely baffling, yet somehow the linchpin of the entire scene. They take the game to the nearby woods. Once the game starts, though, they essentially ditch her. As the girl wanders the woods, she comes across Ol’ Melty and runs away screaming, zooming past the boys, who snicker. As far as I can tell, the joke is this girl gets payback for being in the boys’ space by getting scared by a guy who wants to eat her skin or whatever.
Other things we did as kids in the 70s: spend hours in cars without seatbelts, play on playground equipment that would make Jigsaw blanch.
Not long later, somewhere in the middle of nowhere5, a photographer takes pics of a model (Against the ’70s icon Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith). After the usual patter of “that’s great baby” etc., he tries to cajole her into taking off her top. When that fails, he pulls it down himself. The model swats him away, but not before stumbling across the body of one of Ol’ Melty’s victims, their dead hand “grabbing” her exposed ankle. As far as I can tell, the joke is this woman gets her comeuppance for her uncooperative attitude by getting groped by a corpse who had his skin eaten or whatever by a guy.
This scene’s a difficult watch. It barely seems like Smith is acting, and as depressing and frustrating it is to consider, I wouldn’t be surprised if she drew on real-life experiences here.
This is what’s funny to William Sachs.
3). The actual horror is hilarious.
One of the weird results of the movie’s production history is not only that Sachs’ “comedy” isn’t funny, but the producers’ course-correcting horror scenes are extremely funny6.
Glaven!
The producers inadvertently set the tone right at the start. The first scene, introducing Steve West and showing the accident, wasn’t in Sachs’ original. It not only includes a nearly-flubbed line from actor Alex Rebar, but when asked to perform the moment when he’s bombarded by radiation, Rebar makes a series of goofy faces that 1960s comedians would’ve deemed over the top. Soon after, in another producer-added scene, Astronaut Steve wakes up in a hospital. He removes the bandages from his face, and seeing that his body is deteriorating, goes on a freak-out rampage. Fine and dandy… except that, for the entirety of the scene, one of the bandages flaps around from his left nostril like toilet paper on the end of a shoe.
You got a little something, right ther— no, the other side.
None of the horror in this horror movie is anything other than silly. Not when Melty Steve clubs the head off a fisherman, not when the fisherman’s head gently floats down a stream and then falls over a tiny waterfall. Even worse, the producers attempt to give Ol’ Melty some pathos by flashing back to his past. Except the only “past” anyone managed to film were the terrible capsule scenes from the beginning. One could argue that this is horrific and tragic, that this hyperfocusing on the event that ruined his life represents his mind losing its humanity along with his body. This argument is undercut by the repetition of Rebar’s “duh-doi” face.
We can rebuild him… oh wait no we can’t.
4). Nothing works in this movie, and that’s the best thing about it.
In the film The Skydivers (1963, Coleman Francis), there’s a shot that I think is one of the most amazing ever committed to celluloid. In one scene, a woman is piloting a small plane, when she experiences engine trouble. She lands the plane at an airfield, and continues to barrel down the runway, her plane wobbling dangerously to and fro. There’s a cut to a close shot of her inside the violently-shaking plane. Now, it’s clear that the plane, in reality, is inside a set and stagehands are shaking the plane to give the illusion of movement. That’s not the issue. In another shot, a guy on the ground sees the plane in distress, and rushes to help. We cut back to the close shot of the woman in the shaking plane… and then the guy enters the shot and helps the woman out of the plane. The shaking plane. The one that was supposedly in motion. In just a few seconds, Francis completely shatters the reality of his story. This isn’t the same thing as seeing the stage lights or the boom mike; he doesn’t undermine the illusion. He replaces one illusion with a completely different one, one that’s impossible but exists nonetheless.
If I had to choose a Shot of Anarchy for this film, I think I’d select this moment, which takes less than a second. Here, Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) is using a Geiger counter to track the Melting Man, following it where it leads him… even if it means stepping through tree branches he could easily move around. If it was meant as a joke, it happens too quickly to register as one.
The Incredible Melting Man is kind of like that shot, only stretched across 85 minutes. The film’s attempts to represent reality through illusion have been performed so poorly, they end up, moment by moment, incident by incident, creating a carnival-mirror reality. It doesn’t make sense that a government would send a manned mission to the rings of Saturn, but it happens. It doesn’t make sense that a debilitated astronaut would be able to pilot his craft back over four years to return to Earth, but it happens. It doesn’t make sense that a multimillion dollar mission to Saturn could return secretly to Earth without anyone noticing, but it happens. It doesn’t make sense that a top secret manhunt would be expected to be carried out by a single doctor, but it happens. It doesn’t make sense that a guy would go fishing in a stream that is, at best, a few inches deep, but it happens. It doesn’t make sense that a man who is melting, literally losing body tissue, would get stronger, but it happens.
It also doesn’t make sense that a one-scene character should be played by the late legendary director of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, STOP MAKING SENSE, PHILADELPHIA and New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss” video, but it happened.
On one level, The Incredible Melting Man is a misbegotten disaster of a movie. It’s not the comedy Sachs intended, and I doubt it ever could’ve been. It’s not the straight horror movie the producers wanted, either, despite their efforts. Both of these parties were probably disappointed, but they shouldn’t have been; for on another level, they made something utterly unlike anything else. They ended up creating something stronger than its weak component parts, a puddle of goop where you can’t tell the blood-red swirl from the pus-white one.
Not relevant to anything, but this is like every house in Ballard, WA in the 90s.
How many stars out of five? Two. It’s a bit of a rough sit, but it’s a singular sensation and when finished, weirdly satisfying. (Off-topic, but this is also how I felt about True Detective S2.)
Where can I stream it? As of this writing7, you can stream it from Paramount+, Paramount+ via Amazon Prime Video, Epix via Amazon Prime Video, Epix, Epix via The Roku Channel, and DirecTV.
What can we take from it? It would make sense to turn the titular Goopy Gus into a creature for the Cypher System. But in the spirit of the film, we’re going to do the less sensible thing. We’re going to commemorate Dr. Ted Nelson.
Dr. Ted Nelson. Say it loud and it’s grating. Say it soft and it’s almost infuriating. I spilled a lot of words above about how the film smudges the line between comedy and horror, then goes on to smudge both genres into an unidentifiable blur. Actor Burr DeBenning understands the ridiculousness of his character and uses that to anchor the film. Wherever the film goes, we know Dr. Ted Nelson will be there, not doing anything particularly worthy of standing under karma’s bedpan but deserving it all the same. Dr. Ted Nelson, I salute you and humbly offer this new descriptor:
You think pretty highly of yourself. So much that you announce yourself with your full name and honorific wherever you go. So much that when your spouse fails to buy your favorite snack at the store, or when someone hangs up on you, or authorities order you to do something, you take it as an offense directed at the core of your being. You’re not just annoyed or peevish. You’re…
AGGRIEVED
You gain the following characteristics:
Self-regard: +4 to your Intellect Pool
Skill: You tend to be aggrieved by most things in your life, and you voice your displeasure often, which most people find unattractive. You can use this to your advantage. All tasks involving creating a negative social outcome are eased one step.
Inability: You take yourself seriously but can never manage to get anyone to do the same. All tasks involving getting others to believe you or do something in an emergency are hindered one step.
Initial Link to the Starting Adventure:
Originally published 3/29/22 on Substack.
“Here” meaning the Substack. Both the Substack and the Patreon, as of this writing (4/7/24) are defunct, and at some point in the future won’t exist anymore.↩︎
If I could go back in time and replace Sachs with a different director, I’d choose Allan Arkush. I’m not a huge fan of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, but his anarchic spirit and Mad Magazine vibe might’ve been able to do something with TIMM.↩︎
The hallway shot is reminiscent of a similar one from Blacula (1972, William Crain). Blacula was produced by the legendary Samuel Z. Arkoff. Reportedly, the producers added slow motion to this Incredible Melting Man shot. Who was one of the producers of The Incredible Melting Man? You guessed it: Frank Stallone.↩︎
I didn’t have the right segue to talk about the “crackers” scene, so here it is. Dr. Ted Nelson has just told his wife that Steve has “escaped” (a strange word choice that the wife accepts), when he was specifically told not to tell her. He then immediately changes the subject to the lack of crackers in the house. I’ve watched this scene many times and I’m still not sure if it’s failed drama or failed comedy. The bare naked subtext says comedy, the suffocating dead air says otherwise.↩︎
The film was shot in California, but does a remarkable job of looking like a nebulous nowhere of scrub-filled plains, power stations and lemon groves — the world as unincorporated non-municipal zone.↩︎
Part of this switcheroo is because, far as I can tell, Sachs tends to shoot in a rigid, occasionally symmetric, Kubrickian style, a style not known for belly laughs, while the producers’ pickup shots are done in a very loose handheld style. They’ve swapped cinematic languages.↩︎
4/7/22↩︎
