The Incredible Melting Man 1977 William Sachs

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I read Fangoria magazine a lot.  Sometimes they would put fold-out posters on the back of the covers highlighting some monster or other.  It was usually pretty gory and I loved it.  My favorite one was from a movie I'd never even heard of before:  The Incredible Melting Man.  It was the grossest thing I'd ever seen.  My 10 year old brain couldn't comprehend how awesome that movie must be.  I promised myself right then and there that one day I'd watch that movie and my life would never be the same.

Well, now I've watched that movie, and my life's gonna pretty much be the same.  It's too bad, too, because the makeup effects for the Melting Man are pretty fantastic.  They're fantastic because they were done by Rick Baker, way before he made the gorillas in those mists, or Eddie Murphy the only actor in an Eddie Murphy movie.

The plot of the movie goes like this:  Astronauts up in space get bombarded by cosmic rays, one survives, becomes super strong, homicidal, and more than a little bit melty.  It's explained by his doctor, Dr. Ted, "The more he melts, the stronger he gets!"  In scientific terms, Dr. Ted means that Melting Man's strength is inversely proportional to his weight.  Lose weight - get stronger.  Looks like all those anorexics and bulimics are on to something!

It's not that Melting Man is averse to eating.  In fact, he loves to hunt and kill his own food.  It's just that his food consists of people, mostly.  He doesn't eat a lot, but he knows what he likes - old people, fishermen, nurses, old neighbors, kids, pretty much anyone who's not melting will do.



My name's Steve & I like long walks on the
beach, star-gazing, and murder.

 When Steve the Melting Man is out terrorizing the countryside, he comes across an empty house.  Who lives there?  If you said Academy award-winning director Jonathan Demme and the girl who played Ruby in the original Hills Have Eyes movie, you'd be one of the 15 people who'd seen this movie before!  Cheater.  If you've seen The Hills Have Eyes, then you can also guess who gives Melty Steve a taste of his own medicine!

It's off to the power plant for ol' Steve, because that's just what monsters do.  By this point, he's pretty melted, so he's super-strong because of that scientific formula I mentioned earlier.  You'd think that the cops would realize that he's MELTING, so after he MELTS, he's not gonna be a problem anymore, but no!  You know cops.  They can't leave a murdering fugitive alone to drown in his own juices - they've gotta take him in.  Probably for questioning.  Fingerprints are out of the question.

Is it too much to say that things end badly for all concerned?  Steve, Dr, Ted, Dr, Ted's wife, the Chief of Police, anyone who watches this - they all just sorta wished they'd stayed home and watched That's Incredible! instead.  That Fran Tarkenton sure could play football.