Post by Seth Drakin of Monster Crap on Dec 1, 2006 22:48:00 GMT -5
Monster Crap Inductee #20: The Incredible Melting Man
With The Power To…….Melt.
1977
Okay before I continue, if none of you get the joke made on the sub-title, you probably have never watched Nickelodeon and the Kablam show Action League Now. It was basically a show with four crappy superheroes The Flesh (he is super strong and super naked), Thunder Girl (she flies like thunder), Stinky Diver (a former navy commando with an attitude as bad as his odor), and Melt Man (with the power to melt). They would fight the evil Mayor and save the day.
Anyways, we look at this movie and unlike Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, you really knew what you were getting yourself into with this movie. I mean, look at the cover, you can tell you are going to see a bad movie. In fact, this movie is bad in an extremely funny way so after the disappointment that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, we go to a bad movie that makes me laugh in the Incredible Melting Man.
We start the movie off with three astronauts going to Saturn. We only know this because an announcer has told us that. You wouldn’t know of course by the view because it looks too much like they were just on the moon.
For Some Reason, Filmmakers thought these two looked the same.
The lead astronaut Steve looks at the sun and mentions that we haven’t seen anything until we’ve seen the Sun while being in the Rings of Saturn.
Huh?
Sorry, I meant we haven’t seen anything until we’ve seen the sun through the rings of Saturn. But before they go any further, they are struck by a huge beam of light which sends Steve into convulsions with blood on his mouth. We go to a hospital room where Steve is covered with tape and looks like a mummy.
The wrapping actually made him look like Uncle Fester.
We have a black doctor (Dr. Loring) and a fat nurse (I’m going to call her Nurse Beluga) saying there is nothing they could do. But of course they don’t want anyone outside of themselves, General Perry, and Dr. Ted Nelson. They decide to leave Steve unattended. While no one is in the room, Steve wakes up and finds his hands to be extremely deformed. He gets out of his bed and takes the bandages off to find his face melting. This does not make Steve happy and Steve goes extremely crazy. Nurse Beluga comes in and screams while running away. She runs into a hallway that looks like one from a warehouse or a dog pound. Where in the blue hell is this place. She then goes though a door and when I say through I don’t mean she opens the door. She just breaks through the glass. Steve also runs through the door and finally is able to catch up to the nurse. What’s really funny is while he is catching up to the nurse, the camera goes towards Steve’s point of view and you can hear the sound of small wheels rolling. This would make it seem like Steve found a skateboard and is using it. He kills her and we move on.
We move to the morgue and we see Dr. Loring and Dr. Nelson looking over the remaining dead body of Nurse Beluga. He body is extremely radioactive and it seems as if part of her is melting as well. Dr. Nelson calls for General Perry to explain to him of the situation. General Perry answers and seems to be at some control room somewhere. Obviously the people he works for are too cheap to get him his own private office. Ted tells Perry that Steve has escaped. Perry is not happy and tells Ted to not tell anyone outside of the room of Steve and they have to find him before anyone gets killed. Ted then has to be a buzzkill and tell the good general that Steve has already killed Nurse Beluga. General then tells Ted to find Steve immediately and hangs up on him.
We then move to a scene where Steve (now The Melting Man) is moving through the wilderness. I have to say for a very crappy movie, the effects are done very well and are extremely gruesome. Even the man’s shoes are melting. He bumps into a guy who looks like Bill Gates while the guy he fly fishing. The Melting Man kills him and we see the guy’s head thrown into the stream. Meanwhile back at the hospital halls that look like a warehouse or dog pound. Ted tells Dr. Loring that his wife is pregnant again. I find that funny because if she is pregnant again, it would have to mean that she was pregnant before and we do not see any sign of a kid in this film. Unless of course she had a miscarriage or got an abortion, but Ted’s attitude or lack thereof doesn’t tell us that. Of course Dr. Nelson mentions that this is her third try so obviously she has failed twice already. You just really can’t tell what has happened with Ted’s facial expressions and attitude.
At home, Dr. Nelson tells his wife about what happened with Steve. He also complains about not having any crackers with his soup and now we think our hero is a whining shrimp…..kinda like Nicholas Cage.
Hey That Was Mean And Uncalled For (*goes into a corner and cries*)
Cry me a river, Cage. Dr. Nelson also tells his wife to not tell the General that he mentioned it because he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. After that, the camera gives us a meaningless scene where the head of the last victim is going down the stream. The head falls down a waterfall and lands on a rock, busting the head open. We move to two boys smoking cigarettes and being total pansies coughing. A girl comes in and smokes the cigarette as well, also coughing. After not being able to get the girl to play doctor with them (horny little bastards), they decide to play Hide and Seek. The girl is it and tries to find the boys. She instead finds the Melting Man and runs away screaming. We get a nice glimpse of the Melting Man’s right eyeball falling off his face. Once again, points to the special effects people for doing that. The little girl goes to her mother and tells her that there is a Frankenstein in the woods. While I would love to go into the diatribe about the monster in Frankenstein not being Frankenstein, we don’t have time. When she tells her mom this, her mom does what any sane adult would do and tell her that she needs to stop watching monster movies.
We now see Ted at the forest where The Melting Man was and trying to call out for him. Ted thinks he has found the Melting Man, but all he has found was the Melting Man’s ear that fell off. Ted then picks up General Perry and head over to the hospital. They stop when they see the ambulance and Sheriff Blake recovering the headless body of that fisherman. They of course tell him nothing of the Melting Man and go on their way. We then go back to the Melting Man, who is looking at the sun and remembering the events that caused him to become the Melting Man. These events will continue to haunt the Melting Man through the rest of this movie.
It is night now and the Melting Man is still walking around the woods aimlessly. At the hospital, Ted’s wife calls and invites Dr. Loring and General Perry over for dinner. Dr. Loring respectfully declines, but General Perry takes the invitation. Ted’s wife mentions that her parents are coming over. We then go to the parents who decided to take a short cut and have gotten themselves lost. They stop at a lemon tree and decide to get some oranges. They are chased by a guard dog and are attacked & killed by the Melting Man. On a serious note, this would be the last scene that the actress who played the wife’s mother would ever act as two years later due to cancer. The actor playing the father of Dr. Nelson’s wife would make one more movie before dying three years after this movie of old age.
Meanwhile back at the home, Ted Nelson’s wife is worried because she thinks her parents should have been at the house by now. She mentions something about the Melting Man out there and overhearing that conversation was General Perry. He is not too pleased that Ted told his wife information that was confidential. Back outside, we see the Melting Man has passed though a graveyard. We see puss and crap coming out of his face. Driving by that graveyard are Ted Nelson and General Perry, who fail to notice the Melting Man there. The Melting Man then walks some more and heads over to Ted’s house where Ted’s wife is inside watering the plants. He watches her through a window as she is doing all of this. Ted’s wife then begins sewing because women who are becoming mothers obviously sew. We see more of the Melting Man and you can almost see the jawbone of Steve and yet he is still melting. While the wife is sewing, she hears a window being broken and then asks if it is Ted because we all know homeowners break into their own houses instead of using the key or ringing the doorbell. Ted’s wife then goes to investigate and in a dark room, even the wood on the panel is a better actor than her. She turns on the light and finds out that the cat has broken a glass on the floor. Bad Kitty. She then is surprised by Ted who goes over to her while she is cleaning up. We then go to the bedroom where Ted’s wife tells her husband that she is sure her mother is dead. Meanwhile, Sheriff Blake drives towards the lemon farm and finds the abandoned car with the remains of the two old people. He also finds what is left of the guard dog as well. The sheriff calls Dr. Nelson and tells him that he has a situation and wants to see him immediately. Dr. Nelson leaves his wife to the care of General Perry, who apologizes for being upset with Ted over him being a rat. Dr. Nelson then drives off as General Perry helps himself to the fridge and has a piece of turkey. Meanwhile, Ted’s wife takes a nap as the Melting Man leaves some of his body on the window. Ted meets up with Sheriff Blake, who forces Ted to divulge the information on the Melting Man. He tells him everything with the promise that he won’t tell anyone else.
General Perry is in the living room eating a turkey leg when decides to go outside. When he opens the door, he is met by the Melting Man who drags him outside and kills him. When Dr. Nelson and Sheriff Blake return to the house, they find what is left of General Perry and fear what is next to him. But relax when they find out that it is only a turkey leg. Meanwhile at a nearby house, two young adults Matt and Nell are about to go home and get it on. I would cue the sex music, but they stop to notice that someone has broken into the house. Matt goes into to check things out and never returns. In horror movies, there is only one thing we can assume when we never see him again and that is he died. Nell gets inpatient and goes inside to look for him. She enters the bedroom and runs out while being chased by the Melting Man. She locks herself in the kitchen and puts the fridge over the door so he can’t bust in. She calls for help as the Melting Man’s arm breaks a window and grabs her. She is able to escape by cutting off his arm with a cleaver. The Melting Man runs away and she cries in the corner of the room. Help arrives in the form of Dr. Nelson and Sheriff Blake, who confirm that the Melting Man has been here.
Snidley Whiplash, however, had been nowhere near that house.
They follow the Melting Man to the power station, which just happens to be open for some odd reason. You know, whenever I am near a power station, there are gates that keep intruders away. This power station has no gates. They corner the Melting Man at an edge and the Melting Man attacks Sheriff Blake while Ted Nelson does nothing. The Melting Man kills Blake by throwing him into electrical wires and electrocuting him to death. A quick scuffle finds Ted nearly hanging on the ledge by two hands when the Melting Man recognizes him and pulls him back up. Two nearby cops come by and pull out their guns. Ted tries to stop them and receives a fatal bullet wound for getting involved. This angers the Melting Man who kills the two policemen. He walks off to a nearby shed where he completely melts.
Not That Way Of Melting
I mean he really melts and you can see everything about him become a flesh colored goo. The next mourning, we see a maintenance man come by and notice the goo. He just cleans it up and acts as if nothing has happened. After that, the movie is over.
Now this movie had very bad acting by everyone in the movie. In fact, almost everyone of those who couldn’t act were not even able to show facial expressions other than that blank look that normally comes out of someone when they are high on some bad drugs. The special effects work which I praised profusely was done by Rick Baker, who would move on from this piece of crap and become a big name in the business of special effects and makeup design. Also another person who came out unscathed was Jonathan Demme, who had a small role as Matt. He would find his true calling in life as a director and win the Academy Award for Best Director for this film.
Good to know everyone’s career didn’t melt like this movie did.
With The Power To…….Melt.
1977
Okay before I continue, if none of you get the joke made on the sub-title, you probably have never watched Nickelodeon and the Kablam show Action League Now. It was basically a show with four crappy superheroes The Flesh (he is super strong and super naked), Thunder Girl (she flies like thunder), Stinky Diver (a former navy commando with an attitude as bad as his odor), and Melt Man (with the power to melt). They would fight the evil Mayor and save the day.
Anyways, we look at this movie and unlike Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, you really knew what you were getting yourself into with this movie. I mean, look at the cover, you can tell you are going to see a bad movie. In fact, this movie is bad in an extremely funny way so after the disappointment that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, we go to a bad movie that makes me laugh in the Incredible Melting Man.
We start the movie off with three astronauts going to Saturn. We only know this because an announcer has told us that. You wouldn’t know of course by the view because it looks too much like they were just on the moon.
For Some Reason, Filmmakers thought these two looked the same.
The lead astronaut Steve looks at the sun and mentions that we haven’t seen anything until we’ve seen the Sun while being in the Rings of Saturn.
Huh?
Sorry, I meant we haven’t seen anything until we’ve seen the sun through the rings of Saturn. But before they go any further, they are struck by a huge beam of light which sends Steve into convulsions with blood on his mouth. We go to a hospital room where Steve is covered with tape and looks like a mummy.
The wrapping actually made him look like Uncle Fester.
We have a black doctor (Dr. Loring) and a fat nurse (I’m going to call her Nurse Beluga) saying there is nothing they could do. But of course they don’t want anyone outside of themselves, General Perry, and Dr. Ted Nelson. They decide to leave Steve unattended. While no one is in the room, Steve wakes up and finds his hands to be extremely deformed. He gets out of his bed and takes the bandages off to find his face melting. This does not make Steve happy and Steve goes extremely crazy. Nurse Beluga comes in and screams while running away. She runs into a hallway that looks like one from a warehouse or a dog pound. Where in the blue hell is this place. She then goes though a door and when I say through I don’t mean she opens the door. She just breaks through the glass. Steve also runs through the door and finally is able to catch up to the nurse. What’s really funny is while he is catching up to the nurse, the camera goes towards Steve’s point of view and you can hear the sound of small wheels rolling. This would make it seem like Steve found a skateboard and is using it. He kills her and we move on.
We move to the morgue and we see Dr. Loring and Dr. Nelson looking over the remaining dead body of Nurse Beluga. He body is extremely radioactive and it seems as if part of her is melting as well. Dr. Nelson calls for General Perry to explain to him of the situation. General Perry answers and seems to be at some control room somewhere. Obviously the people he works for are too cheap to get him his own private office. Ted tells Perry that Steve has escaped. Perry is not happy and tells Ted to not tell anyone outside of the room of Steve and they have to find him before anyone gets killed. Ted then has to be a buzzkill and tell the good general that Steve has already killed Nurse Beluga. General then tells Ted to find Steve immediately and hangs up on him.
We then move to a scene where Steve (now The Melting Man) is moving through the wilderness. I have to say for a very crappy movie, the effects are done very well and are extremely gruesome. Even the man’s shoes are melting. He bumps into a guy who looks like Bill Gates while the guy he fly fishing. The Melting Man kills him and we see the guy’s head thrown into the stream. Meanwhile back at the hospital halls that look like a warehouse or dog pound. Ted tells Dr. Loring that his wife is pregnant again. I find that funny because if she is pregnant again, it would have to mean that she was pregnant before and we do not see any sign of a kid in this film. Unless of course she had a miscarriage or got an abortion, but Ted’s attitude or lack thereof doesn’t tell us that. Of course Dr. Nelson mentions that this is her third try so obviously she has failed twice already. You just really can’t tell what has happened with Ted’s facial expressions and attitude.
At home, Dr. Nelson tells his wife about what happened with Steve. He also complains about not having any crackers with his soup and now we think our hero is a whining shrimp…..kinda like Nicholas Cage.
Hey That Was Mean And Uncalled For (*goes into a corner and cries*)
Cry me a river, Cage. Dr. Nelson also tells his wife to not tell the General that he mentioned it because he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. After that, the camera gives us a meaningless scene where the head of the last victim is going down the stream. The head falls down a waterfall and lands on a rock, busting the head open. We move to two boys smoking cigarettes and being total pansies coughing. A girl comes in and smokes the cigarette as well, also coughing. After not being able to get the girl to play doctor with them (horny little bastards), they decide to play Hide and Seek. The girl is it and tries to find the boys. She instead finds the Melting Man and runs away screaming. We get a nice glimpse of the Melting Man’s right eyeball falling off his face. Once again, points to the special effects people for doing that. The little girl goes to her mother and tells her that there is a Frankenstein in the woods. While I would love to go into the diatribe about the monster in Frankenstein not being Frankenstein, we don’t have time. When she tells her mom this, her mom does what any sane adult would do and tell her that she needs to stop watching monster movies.
We now see Ted at the forest where The Melting Man was and trying to call out for him. Ted thinks he has found the Melting Man, but all he has found was the Melting Man’s ear that fell off. Ted then picks up General Perry and head over to the hospital. They stop when they see the ambulance and Sheriff Blake recovering the headless body of that fisherman. They of course tell him nothing of the Melting Man and go on their way. We then go back to the Melting Man, who is looking at the sun and remembering the events that caused him to become the Melting Man. These events will continue to haunt the Melting Man through the rest of this movie.
It is night now and the Melting Man is still walking around the woods aimlessly. At the hospital, Ted’s wife calls and invites Dr. Loring and General Perry over for dinner. Dr. Loring respectfully declines, but General Perry takes the invitation. Ted’s wife mentions that her parents are coming over. We then go to the parents who decided to take a short cut and have gotten themselves lost. They stop at a lemon tree and decide to get some oranges. They are chased by a guard dog and are attacked & killed by the Melting Man. On a serious note, this would be the last scene that the actress who played the wife’s mother would ever act as two years later due to cancer. The actor playing the father of Dr. Nelson’s wife would make one more movie before dying three years after this movie of old age.
Meanwhile back at the home, Ted Nelson’s wife is worried because she thinks her parents should have been at the house by now. She mentions something about the Melting Man out there and overhearing that conversation was General Perry. He is not too pleased that Ted told his wife information that was confidential. Back outside, we see the Melting Man has passed though a graveyard. We see puss and crap coming out of his face. Driving by that graveyard are Ted Nelson and General Perry, who fail to notice the Melting Man there. The Melting Man then walks some more and heads over to Ted’s house where Ted’s wife is inside watering the plants. He watches her through a window as she is doing all of this. Ted’s wife then begins sewing because women who are becoming mothers obviously sew. We see more of the Melting Man and you can almost see the jawbone of Steve and yet he is still melting. While the wife is sewing, she hears a window being broken and then asks if it is Ted because we all know homeowners break into their own houses instead of using the key or ringing the doorbell. Ted’s wife then goes to investigate and in a dark room, even the wood on the panel is a better actor than her. She turns on the light and finds out that the cat has broken a glass on the floor. Bad Kitty. She then is surprised by Ted who goes over to her while she is cleaning up. We then go to the bedroom where Ted’s wife tells her husband that she is sure her mother is dead. Meanwhile, Sheriff Blake drives towards the lemon farm and finds the abandoned car with the remains of the two old people. He also finds what is left of the guard dog as well. The sheriff calls Dr. Nelson and tells him that he has a situation and wants to see him immediately. Dr. Nelson leaves his wife to the care of General Perry, who apologizes for being upset with Ted over him being a rat. Dr. Nelson then drives off as General Perry helps himself to the fridge and has a piece of turkey. Meanwhile, Ted’s wife takes a nap as the Melting Man leaves some of his body on the window. Ted meets up with Sheriff Blake, who forces Ted to divulge the information on the Melting Man. He tells him everything with the promise that he won’t tell anyone else.
General Perry is in the living room eating a turkey leg when decides to go outside. When he opens the door, he is met by the Melting Man who drags him outside and kills him. When Dr. Nelson and Sheriff Blake return to the house, they find what is left of General Perry and fear what is next to him. But relax when they find out that it is only a turkey leg. Meanwhile at a nearby house, two young adults Matt and Nell are about to go home and get it on. I would cue the sex music, but they stop to notice that someone has broken into the house. Matt goes into to check things out and never returns. In horror movies, there is only one thing we can assume when we never see him again and that is he died. Nell gets inpatient and goes inside to look for him. She enters the bedroom and runs out while being chased by the Melting Man. She locks herself in the kitchen and puts the fridge over the door so he can’t bust in. She calls for help as the Melting Man’s arm breaks a window and grabs her. She is able to escape by cutting off his arm with a cleaver. The Melting Man runs away and she cries in the corner of the room. Help arrives in the form of Dr. Nelson and Sheriff Blake, who confirm that the Melting Man has been here.
Snidley Whiplash, however, had been nowhere near that house.
They follow the Melting Man to the power station, which just happens to be open for some odd reason. You know, whenever I am near a power station, there are gates that keep intruders away. This power station has no gates. They corner the Melting Man at an edge and the Melting Man attacks Sheriff Blake while Ted Nelson does nothing. The Melting Man kills Blake by throwing him into electrical wires and electrocuting him to death. A quick scuffle finds Ted nearly hanging on the ledge by two hands when the Melting Man recognizes him and pulls him back up. Two nearby cops come by and pull out their guns. Ted tries to stop them and receives a fatal bullet wound for getting involved. This angers the Melting Man who kills the two policemen. He walks off to a nearby shed where he completely melts.
Not That Way Of Melting
I mean he really melts and you can see everything about him become a flesh colored goo. The next mourning, we see a maintenance man come by and notice the goo. He just cleans it up and acts as if nothing has happened. After that, the movie is over.
Now this movie had very bad acting by everyone in the movie. In fact, almost everyone of those who couldn’t act were not even able to show facial expressions other than that blank look that normally comes out of someone when they are high on some bad drugs. The special effects work which I praised profusely was done by Rick Baker, who would move on from this piece of crap and become a big name in the business of special effects and makeup design. Also another person who came out unscathed was Jonathan Demme, who had a small role as Matt. He would find his true calling in life as a director and win the Academy Award for Best Director for this film.
Good to know everyone’s career didn’t melt like this movie did.
