The Incredible Melting Man.Arrow Booklet
Author: Unknown
Date: 2014-09-16 12:40:18+00:00

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ALEX REBAR as Steve West

BURR DeBENNING as Dr. Ted Nelson

MYRON HEALEY as General Michael Perry

MICHAEL ALLDREDGE as Sheriff Neil Blake

ANN SWEENY as Judy Nelson

LISLE WILSON as Dr. Loring

Produced by SAMUEL W. GELFMAN

Written and Directed by WILLIAM SACHS

Specials Effects and Make-up by RICK BAKER

Music Composed and Conducted by ARLON OBER

Film Editor JAMES BESHEARS

Director of Photography WILLY CURTIS

CAST

CREW

CATHERINE MARY STEWART as Regina Belmont Music by DAVID RICHARD CAMPBELL

KELLI MARONEY as Samantha Belmont

Music Supervised by DON PERRY

ROBERT BELTRAN as Hector

Director of Photography ARTHUR ALBERT

GEOFFREY LEWIS as Carter

Editor FRED STAFFORD

MARY WORONOV as Audrey

Executive Producers THOMAS COLEMAN & MICHAEL ROSENBLATT

JOHN ACHORN as Oscar

Produced by ANDREW LANE & WAYNE CRAWFORD

SHARON FARRELL as Doris

Written and Directed by THOM EBERHARDT

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CREDITS

GOING CRACKERS
by Mike White

IT CAME FROM THE SUPER 8!

A POTTED HISTORY OF THE FIRST HOME MOVIE DISTRIBUTION FORMAT
by Douglas Weir

ABOUT THE TRANSFER

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by Mike White

“Hatcha!” It’s not something you might hear too often unless you’ve got William Sachs’s The Incredible Melting Man on repeat. It’s the exclamation of Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning), a man who loves his crackers and isn’t afraid to tell you about it.

The second feature-length narrative from unsung cinema ‘fixer’ William Sachs, The Incredible Melting Man plays much like a piece of ’50s sci-fi schlock, fitting since it’s an uncredited remake of Robert Day’s First Man into Space (1959) with a little bit of Val Guest’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Robert Clarke’s The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) thrown in for good measure.

In Day’s film, hot shot test pilot Commander Charles Ernest Prescott (Marshall Thompson) takes a trip outside of Earth’s atmosphere and comes back worse for wear. His brother, Dan (Bill Edwards), eventually manages to lead Charles into a chamber where all of the oxygen gets pumped out. In his typical post-dubbed manner, Charles gives a heartfelt soliloquy before passing away.

You would think that the NASA would have learned from Charles’s fate! Alas, a mere 18 years later, a manned mission to the rings of Saturn results in the deaths of several astronauts and the metamorphosis of Steve West (Alex Rebar). In It Came from Hollywood (1982), Gilda Radner describes the unlucky hero of First Man into Space as the “burnt casserole man”. The casserole never quite gels for The Incredible Melting Man, Steve West - he’s more like an “unbaked lasagna man”. Steve comes back from Saturn as a big, gloopy mess courtesy of F/X legend Rick Baker. Leaving bits of himself behind (and probably a snail trail of viscera) should make the task of tracking him down after he escapes confinement an easy job for Dr. Nelson, but Dr.

Nelson doesn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.

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Originally known as “The Ghoul from Outer Space”, The Incredible Melting Man was meant to be a comedy. Writer-director William Sachs clashed with the film’s producers about the tone of the film. Sachs says that he “fought with them a lot and all the stuff about the rings of Saturn was added by them. It wasn’t in the original film. I opened the film with the nurse running down the hallway and through the door.

They thought I was making a serious film and I was making a parody.” Indeed, the film often seems just inches from outright parody most of the time, albeit more in the vein of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) than Airplane! (1980). Sachs recalls that when the film came out, “A lot of people got it, but not all. It was fun to watch it with an audience. The producers tried to make it a straight horror film, but they must have noticed the guy’s ear on the tree and the ending when he gets shoveled into a garbage can.”

The cockamamie dialogue proved ripe for riffing on Mystery Science Theater 3000

(Episode 704), like Dr. Nelson’s wholly unscientific observation of “He seems to be getting stronger as he melts. I’ve got to find out why.” And then there are those damn crackers… He seems to value crackers even more than Steve’s life, having to be reminded about Steve’s predicament while he steams over some cracker-free soup.

“I guess you like food,” Sachs says. “I’m a big fan of the turkey leg scene myself.”

Sachs refers to the scene in which General Perry (Myron Healey) spends an inordinate amount of time picking out leftovers for a midnight snack while Steve skulks around the house outside, leaving his goo all over the windows of the Nelson household.

Food plays a big role in The Incredible Melting Man. It’s when making dinner that Dr. Nelson exclaims his famous “Hatcha!” and, during one excruciating sequence, when his mother-in-law and her new beau steal a bunch of lemons, perhaps to have themselves a lemon party or make a pie. Not to be left out, Steve is frequently feasting, too, though usually on innocent bystanders.

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Steve isn’t much of a movie monster. He looks gloriously grisly and he has increased strength, but he moves at an alarmingly slow rate, shuffling about like a zombie.

His biggest skill seems to be catching people unawares. Steve spends much of his time shambling through the countryside. When he’s not chomping on people he’s haunted by the film’s tacked-on opening; the dialogue playing repeatedly during his moments of introspection. Other than that opening scene, we don’t see much of Alex Rebar without his goopy make-up. Aside from being an actor, Rebar is a fairly notable screenwriter, collaborating on an Exorcist rip-off, Beyond the Door (1974), the exploitation classic Demented (1980) and the Sex, Pain and Murder series (2000), among others.

Another notable actress, and one whose performance gets cut short on the Mystery Science Theater episode, is Cheryl ‘Rainbeaux’ Smith, who makes an all-too-brief appearance as a model who gets mauled by a sleazy photographer. Ms. Smith already had a respectable film career at this point, turning in two of her best performances in The Pom-Pom Girls (1976) and The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974). Several other actors were staples of ’70s cinema and television, including Dr. Nelson’s wife, Judy (Ann Sweeny) and his colleague, Dr. Loring (Lisle Wilson). The two would reunite on an episode of The Lou Grant Show. Also along for the ride is the man who directed Cheryl Smith in Caged Heat (1974), Jonathan Demme. Turning in one of his few acting performances, Demme came to the film as a favour to the producer of The Incredible Melting Man and Caged Heat, Samuel W. Gelfman (who plays the unlucky fisherman who loses his head).

Some of the reasons why The Incredible Melting Man has had such staying power include the credible comedic performances given by nearly everyone in the cast, even a group of kids who run into Steve during an ill-fated game of hide-and-seek.

Of course, the effects from Baker still manage to turn one’s stomach decades after they were put on film. Additionally, the score by Arlon Ober (and the Cosmic Consort Orchestra) provides a pitch-perfect accompaniment to the on-screen action. Finally, 10

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the film looks darn good. Some viewers have complained about the lighting being The internal transformation of Steve into the Melting Man could have provided flat but the restored print almost makes the film look better than it has any right to be.

Sachs’s film with pathos that would have felt out of place in either the comedy or horror incarnation but would have fitted well with the film’s ’50s inspiration. Like In the annals of movie novelisations, Phil Smith’s adaptation of The Incredible Melting another ‘incredible’ man, Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Steve Man may not be the strangest but it’s near the top of the list. The book has had at West’s plight could have been documented via voiceover narration to put viewers into least two printings, one with images from the film that screams “A New Peak in the mind of a man losing his grasp on humanity as his body slips away.

Horror!” and one with a cover painting by Joe Petagno which claims “He Is a Human Time Bomb!” First published by the New English Library in 1978, the back cover Pathos, bah! Rather than navel-gazing (when would Steve’s navel have slipped off blurb has Steve returning from Mars (rather than Saturn) and puts him “On the run his body?) The Incredible Melting Man revels in extended forest scenes and melty from the quarantine hospital which had been treating him ... from the authorities mayhem. The only possible metaphor to be found here is one about male impotence.

who had to conceal his escape at all costs ... from his friend Ted Nelson ... and from The melty man has been described as “the arch-enemy of trouser confidence”. Dr.

the dreadful organism which had taken possession of his flesh, turning him into a Nelson seems to have been some problems when it comes to his manhood. There’s fiendish nightmare but leaving his mind intact to cringe from the murderous horror a curious exchange between Dr. Nelson and Dr. Loring about Judy being pregnant he had become.”

after two miscarriages. This might lead a viewer to think that Judy and her unborn child will come into danger in the film’s third act, but that’s not to be. I think, rather, The novelisation adds another level of oddity to the mix with the use of British phrases that this throws Steve’s manhood into question. He’s one of the most lacklustre that pepper the book. Fortunately, Smith appears to embrace the intended tone that protagonists of the screen, simply following a path of radioactive particles and pizza-Sachs was going for. With tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Smith begins one like goo through the forest. He isn’t one for heroics and can’t even keep his mind on chapter with a gross-out description of bones cracking and skin ripping only to reveal the task at hand. “Steve? I’ve got to go out and find Steve.”

a few sentences later that the reader is witnessing a chicken dinner that Judy Nelson has prepared for her husband and the General.

When Dr. Nelson finally confronts Steve, he gets knocked off a staircase and hangs precariously from a ledge. He hangs there like Scotty (Jimmy Stewart) in Vertigo Apparently, Smith worked from Sachs’s script rather than the finished film as the (1958), struggling for help until Steve gives him his remaining hand. It’s right after book opens with the murder of the nurse caring for Steve rather than the space this that Dr. Nelson seems to come into his own. When Steve is threatened by a pair mission. Smith details the virus which has attacked Steve’s system, slowly turning of security guards, Dr. Nelson doesn’t try to diffuse the situation in any way other him into jelly, and the technicalities of space flight. Rather than just relying on Dr.

than insisting on his identity. “Listen to me! I’m Doctor Ted Nelson!” he screams to Nelson to be our foil, Smith provides Steve with an internal monologue to flesh him no avail.

out and make readers care for the man who’s turning into a monster.

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If no one learned from the “burnt casserole man” of First Man into Space, the big wigs at NASA certainly didn’t take an object lesson from Steve’s gloopy condition. At the end of The Incredible Melting Man, another mission to Saturn is prepped and ready to go. One of the final images is of the sun spewing its matter into the solar system.

Will the next man who looks at the sun through the rings of Saturn share Steve’s fate?

Some things are better left unknown.

Mike White is the head honcho over at Cashiers du Cinemart and a co-host on The Projection Booth podcast – www.projectionboothpodcast.com 16

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A POTTED HISTORY OF THE FIRST HOME MOVIE

DISTRIBUTION FORMAT
by Douglas Weir

When Super 8mm film was developed by Eastman Kodak in 1965 as an upgrade to the ageing Standard 8 format, its uses were not bound to only that of the home movie market, though that was the original objective. The idea behind Super 8 was to alter the size and shape of the perforations that ran down the edge allowing for a larger exposure area than Standard 8 resulting in sharper images. Kodak also made room for another new addition that followed in 1973, a combined magnetic audio track that ran down the opposite edge. Though available before, this was the first time it had been standardised. With these improvements to a still very popular medium, film distributors began to think seriously about a new distribution format aimed specifically at the living room.

Up until 1965, films distributed on Standard 8 were confined to the restrictions of image quality and were mostly old black and white silent films and short cartoons.

When Super 8 arrived whole films could be potentially distributed directly into the home with superior image quality in colour, with sound and even – with a special lens for your projector – in CinemaScope!

The market was flooded with cartoons, sporting events such as boxing and football,

‘specialist’ films available from behind the counter, documentaries and Hollywood shorts and feature films presented in a format that became known as the digest.

Digests were, very simply, edited down versions of feature films that maintained the 20

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absolute basics of the films plot (if they were well edited) within the confines of the reels length. The most popular lengths of digest were seven minutes (200ft) and twenty minutes (400ft). Depending on the size of your wallet, other more expensive options were available such as several reels of 400ft film. If you were lucky enough to have a capable projector (again, not cheap) then you could be watching Jaws, Superman, King Kong or The Towering Inferno projected on a big screen in the comfort of your own home. In some cases, due to US/UK theatrical distribution holdback, films such as Star Wars could be bought as Super 8 digests several months before being released in UK cinemas. Sub distributors such as Castle Films, Ken Films, Derann Films Services and Arrow Films made a killing licensing titles from Hollywood until the big studios started to get in on the act and distribute Super 8 films themselves.

With Super 8 distribution being big business through the 1970s, things began to quieten down in the ’80s due to the popularity of VHS and eventually Laserdisc.

However the nail wasn’t finally in the coffin until Kodak discontinued Super 8 Sound film in 1998 and Derann Film Services, at one time the world’s largest sub-distributor of Super 8 films, closed its doors in 2011. Right up until the end, films such as Toy Story (1995) and Independence Day (1996) were available to own as brand new Super 8 prints.

The Incredible Melting Man is presented here in what was probably the most common variant of the Super 8 digest, the 200ft seven minute reel. Don’t be put off by the bad audio or the soft image. Back in the ’70s this was the cutting edge of home cinema.

Douglas Weir is Technical Producer at the British Film Institute.

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The Incredible Melting Man appears in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono 2.0 sound. The High Definition master was produced by MGM and made available for this release via Hollywood Classics.

The Incredible Melting Man Super 8 Digest version was transferred from an original Super 8mm print, kindly made available for this release by Douglas Weir.

Disc and booklet produced by: Ewan Cant

Executive Producer: Francesco Simeoni

Production Assistants: Louise Buckler, Liane Cunje Technical Producer: James White

QC and Proofing: Michael Brooke, Ewan Cant Subtitling: IBF Digital

Authoring: Utd by Content

Artist: Gary Pullin

Design: Jack Pemberton/Emily Fordham

Alex Agran, Rick Baker, Greg Cannom, Jordan Fields, Alistair Leach, Jennifer Rome, William Sachs, Melanie Tebb, Gareth Tennant, Neil Thomas, Douglas Weir 26

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FCD1009

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