Tweet
Released by: Scorpion Releasing
Released on: 4/30/2013
Director: Philip Brophy
Cast: Gerard Kennedy, Andrew Daddo, Ian Smith, Regina Gaigalas
Year: 1993
Purchase from Amazon
The Movie:
A dietary supplement company is working on a new product called “Vimuville†and has chosen the quaint little piece of cul-de-sac suburbia Pebbles Court as a neighborhood worthy of testing the new sensation in health and fitness. The good people of Pebbles Court have no knowledge of their new roles as lab rats, and don't even question the free samples they keep finding in their mailboxes. A number of different people live at Pebbles Court, such as a young couple with a baby on the way, and a four family unit complete with a bitchy teenaged girl and a shit-headed pre-pubescent lad.
An accident involving one of the engineers of Vimuville brings the police to the neighborhood, and they keep having to come back to it once all the fluids start gushing out of people as they die horribly. Two other scientist/evil corporation types know what their product is doing to the test subjects, but that doesn't change things. As to the grand plan for killing people with a health supplement, that doesn't seem to be of importance to the story. Also having some part in all this is an Outback car repair business run by a dirty man with weird boils and such on his face, as well as a trio of seriously low-level IQ mongoloid children. Daddy Incest was at one point a colleague of one of the evil scientists, but this bit of subplot seems to be little more than a reason for some backwoods murder/cannibalism.
It's kind of all over the place with the story and the sub-stories and the whole thing feels more like a loose anthology than a structured plot, with the body-melting Vimuville as the joining thread. The fact that the movie is based on some short stories the filmmakers wrote makes the disjointed nature of the film a bit more understandable. Like for instance, after the initial accident a Pebbles Court, two teens in one of the houses, not jacked up on the melting supplement, drive off and end up at the aforementioned boil-ridden scientist's dirt estate. No reason they end up there, other than to repair a windshield, and die for no other reason than for entertainment to the mentally and hygienically challenged family. And our entertainment as well, of course. But the two guys have NOTHING to do with the main plot.
But none of that matters much because the film's soul purpose is to go for the gross-out. No one is safe in this chunk blower, and that includes an unborn baby, a kid on inline skates, or a juiced-up muscle-head's penis. And speaking of muscle-heads, the evil scientist lady (who shows her naked goods in the first few minutes) is accompanied by two such men, and one of them has a voice that is so uncharacteristic that it's giggle-worthy. At any rate, body fluids of all types splash, weird tentacles burst from cavities, and faces do funky things. The SFX gags (gore pun) are performed with glee and deliver 100 percent on the satisfaction front.
This oddball, so-called “Ozploitation†flick is pretty foolish, but entertaining for certain. Lots of gooey special effects lend themselves to create some fun moments nothing seems off limits. It's difficult not to compare Body Melt to movies like the New Zealand-made Dead Alive and Bad Taste, and it's pretty obvious that Peter Jackson's movies influenced the director. That's not a bad thing though. He may have not created a cult hit, but he definitely created something fun to watch.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Things look pretty good for the most part on Scorpion's DVD. Not having seen movie prior to this release, it's impossible to say how it compares, but the image is clear, colors look proper as do skin tones. A bit of print damage appears here and there, but it's nothing distracting at all. There's nothing to get up on a soapbox and praise, but nothing to bitch about either. The audio is on par with the video and things are clear and easy to understand, unless Australian accents are difficult for you to understand. If that's the case, you'll be unhappy to know there are no subtitles available.
Extra-wise, the only thing on the disc is the intro and outro by host Katarina Leigh Waters. After a little bit of sketch comedy, she drops some factoids on us concerning the movie and the actors. Other than that its bare bones all the way.
The Final Word:
While certainly not one of the finest entries to come from Australia (not by a long shot) Body Melt absolutely delivers on goopy and horrible deaths. It flops in a number of other ways, but at the end of the day, it accomplishes its goal. Scorpion's disc is light on the extras we've become so spoiled with, but it's worth picking up. It should become a proud member of that collection your family just doesn't understand.
