#34. The Incredible Melting Man
34. The
Incredible Melting Man (1977) - Season 7, episode 704
"Oh great. The movie
has to mop up after itself now."
Plot: An
astronaut gets hit with radiation, and he starts melting.
Famous for:
Being the one MST3k episode that might be too gross for most
people.
"He'd make a pretty good dip with taco chips."
My favorite riff:
I don't remember too many standout riffs in this episode, I just
remember
it being consistently funny from start to finish. Which is rare
for even the best MST3k episodes, most episodes aren't as consistently
funny as this one is.
If
I absolutely HAD to pick one favorite riff from this
episode, there's one scene in particular towards the middle of the
movie. A
lady is looking for an intruder in her house in the middle of the
night.
And for whatever reason, the director decided to add a bunch of
annoying musical stings
to the
scene, just to make things more dramatic. And after a while, Mike and
the Bots start adding their own crazy musical stings too, just to make
things more fun. And it's one of those scenes that is impossible not to
laugh at, because it starts to get quite silly. Every two seconds, Mike
and the Bots are adding a FWISH! or a THWIP! or a ZWOP!
This
is one of those scenes that is impossible to quote, because it's all
sound effects. But when I think of the funniest riff from this movie,
that's the one I remember.
"I had my breasts lowered and my hips pulled out at odd
angles. I hope that's okay."
Comments:
For whatever reason, this is one of those movies that never seems to show up on
anyone's list of favorite MST3k episodes. But every time I watch it, I find myself laughing a lot.
So either I'm right, and everyone else is wrong...
or maybe I just have a
higher tolerance than most people do for disgusting special effects. And jokes about gooey
melting apple heads. I don't know.
All I know is
that every single time I watch The Incredible Melting Man, at the end I find myself
thinking, "Man, that one was really good. That has to be one
of the
most underrated MST3k episodes."
"I'm not gonna look silly in this shot, am I? I will maintain
my dignity?"
"Why is she running through the E-Z mini storage?"
By the way, for
me, the signature scene in this movie comes at the very end. When a
janitor has to literally pick up what's left of the hero, scoop him
into a garbage can, and then mop up after him. If that
doesn't sum up
the experience of watching The Incredible Melting Man, I don't know
what does.
"Ah, I never understood white people."
Also, I can't believe people actually went to see
this
movie in the theater at one point.
It's not the worst movie I
have ever
seen in my life but... my god.
"So he was tomato-based then?"
Other personal favorite things
about this episode:
One word: "Hotchka."
No one knows what the
hell it means. But they sure do get a lot of use out of it.
"Hotchka!"
Trivia:
I remember reading somewhere that this movie was originally
supposed to
be a
comedy. It was intended to be a parody of horror movies.
But then, at the
last minute, the studio got nervous, and they cut out all the comedic
scenes. And they decided to make it a straight-up horror movie instead.
And
anyway, that's how
you
wind up
with a stupid little gooey horror movie that takes itself waaaaay too
seriously, has special effects that are waaaaay too gross for their own
good, and is perfect for MST3k to riff. Sometimes life just works
out perfectly like that.
"Remember when everyone had one of those giant black velvet moth
posters?"
