An indelible melt

Some films sell themselves by the cast, such as the action movies of the 1980s where the star's surname was in significantly larger type than the name of the film. Some sell themselves by the title alone. I'm a particular fan of a good title. You know what you are going to get with something like 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' or 'The Blood Beast Terror' whereas you're still in the dark with something more vague such as 'Legend'. Actually, 'The Blood Beast Terror' is about a girl that turns into a moth (rather brilliantly called a 'were-moth') so maybe you don't know exactly what you're going to get after all. The title gives you a clue though. There is blood. There is a beast. There is also a certain amount of terror, but this terror is mainly towards the end, when an evil scientist's dastardly plot to create a male were-moth to mate with the aforementioned girl is revealed. Primarily because you fear for the actor's ability to utter the phrase 'male were-moth' with a straight face.

Another film that drops one or two subtle clues as to the plot in its title is 'The Incredible Melting Man', which I was fortunate enough to see recently. Okay, so it doesn't so much give you clues as write the plot on the title equivalent of a baseball bat (it's an American film) and proceed to bash you about the head with it. Needless to say, I was very excited when I loaded the dvd into the player, eager to see this incredible melting man melt incredibly. Sadly, the incredible melting man doesn’t really melt incredibly at all, at least not until the final gooey reel. Until that point he just loiters in the shadows glooping over his suit, lurching out occasionally to smear himself on someone. Initially optimistic hopes of him concentrating his melt when he feels threatened and squirting it at someone remained simply hopes.

Happily this small failing is made up for with some delightful b-movie silliness. Near the end, the hero on the trail of the dribblesome one, Dr Ted Nelson, walks towards a policeman with his hands up and shouts "don't shoot, I'm Dr Ted Nelson" and promptly gets shot. Apparently GPs weren't popular in the 1970s. Nurses evidently weren't particularly bright either, as at one point a rotund nurse is shown running (in glorious slow-motion) away from the eponymous fiend down a very long corridor, and when she reaches the door at the end rather than pull or push it open, she barrels through the glass like it's the front door of her local Greggs. Actually, I might be doing her a disservice. Perhaps if the camera had lingered a little longer we could see that rather than say 'push' or 'pull' on the door, maybe it simply said 'smash through'.





Maybe she was just in a hurry. It can't have been fear, after all she's running away from a man with toilet tissue hanging out of his nose. Don't believe me? Watch the scene here.

There, that has to have sold it. If not, the box cover declares him to be an all new type of monster and I can confirm that this is absolutely true. Of course bearing in mind the toilet paper incident he's not a very scary one. It's hard to feel intimidated by someone with Andrex dangling from his right nostril. This doesn't stop ladies from screaming throughout but really it’s just because of the mess he’s making on the carpet. “Eeeek!" they squeal, "stand on a newspaper!”.