Shopping for Panama hats (originally from Ecuador, not Panama) in the cobblestone plazas of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-largest, and arguably loveliest, city.But with a new airport and many intriguing new hotels, visiting this old colonial town has become a destination in and of itself. Quito is the entry point to catch a ship to the Galápagos Islands-Ecuador’s main attraction.Thankfully the itch is not on my ear, as Steve would testify. So not a masterpiece, but, for all it’s idiocy, I got an odd sense of satisfaction that a 37 year old itch had been scratched. Shame that all the budget went on them, as (sheriff excepted) the murder scenes are mostly not shown. The real star of The Incredible Melting Man is Rick Baker, whose make-up effects on the eponymous anti-hero are stunning and quite convincing. More to the point, parent, why are you allowing her to watch them? The girl, who can’t have been much older than me at the time, escapes and cries to her Mom that she saw Frankenstein (the monster actually, duh) and Mom tells her that she’ll have to stop watching horror films. The Quatermass Experiment and Frankenstein are its obvious touchstones, especially the latter as Steve continually laments his horrific condition (and his haunted by the voices of mission control) and in a more obvious nod to Mary Shelley encounters a little girl by a lake. It’s TV-movie cheap, dramatically poor, makes no sense and is amateurishly acted at best, but the idea is good and could benefit from a remake. The Incredible Melting Man is far from the thrill ride my young self could have hoped for. The end, with still no officialdom in sight. The cops rightfully then get theirs, the local sheriff is fried in a (pretty good) scene involving power cables, and Steve finally melts into a pile of gloop whereupon a shuffling Uncle Remus janitor scoops what’s left up and puts it in a bin. It all ends at a power plant, where Dr Ted gets shot dead by idiotic fat sweaty coppers whilst trying to protect Steve, who’s just saved his pal in a brief return of his humanity. Still his missus is a dab hand with a meat cleaver. So, instead of calling out the military, sealing off the area and calling the President, it’s down to one bloke to stop a homicidal spaceman, who kills and eats lovely old people innocently stealing lemons (his in-laws no less), and the Jonathan Demme is also offed, so presumably Something Wild never gets made after all. Even Jeff Goldblum fared slightly better. It seems Steve is munching on human flesh, which, despite losing his ear and other body parts at an alarming rate, makes him stronger. A fisherman dumbly fishing in what’s little more than a trickle of wee gets decapitated (his head floats downstream and goes pop on rocks at the bottom of a waterfall for no reason other than to show off how great Rick Baker is) and the rest of him is discovered by a randy photographer trying to get a bimbo (who’s happily gone into the desert with him without question) to pull off what qualifies as a ‘top’ for a shoot. He’s played by regular Quinn Martin ‘Special Guest Star’ Burr DeBenning and he’s bullied by a military shithouse to find Steve, who’s rapidly looking more and more like the Master from Doctor Who’s ‘The Deadly Assassin’ covered in jizz. The other astronauts are dead and when Steve awakens to remove his bandages he proceeds to go a bit mad, as his reflection suggests the Clearasil course didn’t quite work.Īfter the nurse gets murdered following a poorly shot slow motion chase, it’s up to manly Dr Ted Nelson to come in and save the day. This is not a secure NASA or military facility with armed guards and scientists everywhere. Then the Burt Reynolds lookalike amongst them (Steve, for that is his name) gets a nosebleed and before you can say ‘very long journey back to Earth’ is wrapped in bandages in a hospital staffed only by Dean Learner from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and a chubby nurse. Three astronauts are in space and thanks to some handy stock footage see the “sun through the rings of Saturn”. But the idea of an astronaut who melted and killed people as a result of an accident in space was always one for the tick-list. And come 1987, this was a film that was long forgotten and impossible to find. The titular character’s well, melted face stayed with me for years, even though I would have to wait a decade to watch it. One trailer (or was it a TV advert?) the eight-year old me somehow managed to see was for The Incredible Melting Man. And I had a huge appetite to grab as much sci-fi and fantasy as I could. What boy didn’t? I collected the figures, got the comics and poster magazines, and got to be Han Solo in the playground. In 1977 I saw Star Wars and went sci-fi mad. I’ve got a lot of posts but they’re all in my head, as Elastica almost once said. It’s shockingly been a year since my last post, so it’s time to get blogging in this place again.
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