Body Melt (1993)

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) I was unable to find an artistic intention in Body Melt other than “using practical effects to make bodies explode in increasingly gruesome ways,” and that’s fine—there’s a place for plotless splatterpunk horror, I suppose, even though I would like it to be as far from me as possible. What does help make it all palatable is the strong undercurrent of comedy running through the film: rather than go for a dark nihilistic tone, Body Melt is supposed to be funny (for very subjective values of funny) in the vignettes it showcases, with the grotesque effects adding another layer of unreality. The excuse for all of the body explosions is something about new health supplements being tested on a neighbourhood, but that’s about it for plot: much of the film is a series of sketches in which the characters take vitamins and then explode (or melt, or grow appendages) in various creative ways. There’s nudity. There’s more gore than you can possibly imagine. Coming from Australia, it does feel somewhat similar to the wave of super-gory horror coming out of New Zealand at the time, or even the Ozploistation movement from the previous decade. It clearly qualifies as a melt movie (a subgenre of horror about which I was blissfully unaware until a few weeks ago thanks to Street Trash), and that makes any recommendation subject to an asteroid-sized asterisk—it’s certainly an experience, but it’s not that much of a good horror film—even in the subgenre, Braindead is clearly superior.