Australian pharmaceutical corporation Vimuville tests a revolutionary cognition enhancing vitamin on the inhabitants of a suburban housing estate, unaware that their drug has been sabotaged by an ex-employee. When consumed, the vitamin— missing a vital ingredient—causes hallucinations before reducing the user to a gloopy mess of mucous and gore.
Being Antipodean and hailing from the early '90s, messy low-budget schlock horror Body Melt, directed by experimental musician Philip Brophy, automatically makes me think of Peter Jackson's splatter-fest Braindead, although it never quite matches that film in terms of sheer lunacy or creative bloodletting. Thematically, the film is much closer to Larry Cohen's deadly dessert cult classic The Stuff (1985), but is most similar in overall tone to Jim Muro's 1987 melt movie Street Trash, which featured a cast of colourful down and out characters dissolving or exploding after imbibing a toxic liquor.
As with Muro's film, the messy death scenes in Body Melt are the undisputed highlight, no two victims going the same way. The first to suffer is Vimuville employee Ryan (Robert Simper), whose neck opens up to reveal quivering tentacles. Radio station employee Paul has his face reduced to a gory mess, his lips peeled off and his eyes bulging from their sockets. Pregnant housewife Cheryl gives birth to her placenta a month early, the pulsating protein sac latching on to her husband's face while her belly opens up to reveal her innards.
Other fun stuff includes a family of kangaroo-killing out-back inbreds, an imploding head, an exploding penis, gratuitous nudity (both male and female), a roller-blading brat falling from a height onto his face, and Harold Bishop from Aussie soap Neighbours (Ian Smith) getting his ear pulled off.
Being Antipodean and hailing from the early '90s, messy low-budget schlock horror Body Melt, directed by experimental musician Philip Brophy, automatically makes me think of Peter Jackson's splatter-fest Braindead, although it never quite matches that film in terms of sheer lunacy or creative bloodletting. Thematically, the film is much closer to Larry Cohen's deadly dessert cult classic The Stuff (1985), but is most similar in overall tone to Jim Muro's 1987 melt movie Street Trash, which featured a cast of colourful down and out characters dissolving or exploding after imbibing a toxic liquor.
As with Muro's film, the messy death scenes in Body Melt are the undisputed highlight, no two victims going the same way. The first to suffer is Vimuville employee Ryan (Robert Simper), whose neck opens up to reveal quivering tentacles. Radio station employee Paul has his face reduced to a gory mess, his lips peeled off and his eyes bulging from their sockets. Pregnant housewife Cheryl gives birth to her placenta a month early, the pulsating protein sac latching on to her husband's face while her belly opens up to reveal her innards.
Other fun stuff includes a family of kangaroo-killing out-back inbreds, an imploding head, an exploding penis, gratuitous nudity (both male and female), a roller-blading brat falling from a height onto his face, and Harold Bishop from Aussie soap Neighbours (Ian Smith) getting his ear pulled off.