If you've been searching for a movie with an exploding erection in it, look no further than Body Melt.
I think this film is supposed to be an Australian Horror-Comedy. I'm not sure about that because while it is reasonably gory, it's barely funny. Now, I'm not terribly familiar with any Australian humor that does not involve throwing a shrimp on the barbie, so it's possible I'm just not getting it. But any possible comedy in the film can't be more than a very, very poor man's version of Benny Hill, if Benny Hill had a fetish for bodily fluids and rural inbreds.
The basic story involves a company called Vimuville and the special formula it tests on a variety of people to ill effect. There's a single guy, a pregnant couple and a family that takes a tragic trip to the Vimuville health spa. They take the drug and their bodies break down in what I'm sure were disgusting ways to Australian audiences of the early 90s. Compared to American special effects gore of that time period and since, it's fairly tame even if quite inventive. One of the more interesting things is that there's very little blood in this film. But it's more than made up for by buckets and buckets of snot, vomit and fleshy ooze.
There's also a couple of detectives investigating the case and a couple of kids, who look and act like the Australian version of the teenage guidos from that TV show "Growing up Gotti", that end up shanghaied and brutalized by a family of rural Australian mutants. I think a lot of the humor in the film is, theoretically, supposed to be wrapped up in the inbreds vs. Aussie guidos scenes. But, even though they pretend to tie in all together, it's like the Down Under version of The Hills Have Eyes got spliced together with the Down Under version of Videodrome or something.
What Body Melt has going for it are some creative though crudely executed gross outs, some naturalistic nudity, what I believe is one of the only fully sculpted, fake corpse penises in cinema history and some insights into Australian culture. What it lacks is a coherent story, characters you care about and fully discernible dialog. The Australian accents in this film are the full blow kind, not the cleaned up, Americanized sort you hear from Nicole Kidman or Hugh Jackman. Honestly, you either have to rewind and listen to certain bits over and over again or just shrug your shoulders and go along. I'm not sure even understanding all the dialog would make the story any better.
The credits list this movie as based on several short stories and they didn't work very hard to tie them together into a complete whole. It's more like one of those anthology movies like Creepshow, though it's not even as good as Creepshow II.
The insights provided into Australian culture are two.
1. Australians apparently like to say the F-word. A lot. And not for emphasis like Americans do, but more like it's a random adjective or punctuation.
2. Australian Cinema in the early 90s did not place a huge amount of importance on physical beauty. Body Melt has a fairly large cast and there's two, maybe three people in the whole movie pretty enough to be in an American film. Especially in an American gross-out horror flick, where pretty actors are used almost like set decoration. Frankly, Body Melt may demonstrate the wisdom of casting the handsome. If the actors in this film were more attractive, you might pay more attention to them and less to the film's flaws.
The effects don't live up to today's CGI standards, but if you're looking for some unusual gore (like that exploding erection), you can find it in Body Melt.
I think this film is supposed to be an Australian Horror-Comedy. I'm not sure about that because while it is reasonably gory, it's barely funny. Now, I'm not terribly familiar with any Australian humor that does not involve throwing a shrimp on the barbie, so it's possible I'm just not getting it. But any possible comedy in the film can't be more than a very, very poor man's version of Benny Hill, if Benny Hill had a fetish for bodily fluids and rural inbreds.
The basic story involves a company called Vimuville and the special formula it tests on a variety of people to ill effect. There's a single guy, a pregnant couple and a family that takes a tragic trip to the Vimuville health spa. They take the drug and their bodies break down in what I'm sure were disgusting ways to Australian audiences of the early 90s. Compared to American special effects gore of that time period and since, it's fairly tame even if quite inventive. One of the more interesting things is that there's very little blood in this film. But it's more than made up for by buckets and buckets of snot, vomit and fleshy ooze.
There's also a couple of detectives investigating the case and a couple of kids, who look and act like the Australian version of the teenage guidos from that TV show "Growing up Gotti", that end up shanghaied and brutalized by a family of rural Australian mutants. I think a lot of the humor in the film is, theoretically, supposed to be wrapped up in the inbreds vs. Aussie guidos scenes. But, even though they pretend to tie in all together, it's like the Down Under version of The Hills Have Eyes got spliced together with the Down Under version of Videodrome or something.
What Body Melt has going for it are some creative though crudely executed gross outs, some naturalistic nudity, what I believe is one of the only fully sculpted, fake corpse penises in cinema history and some insights into Australian culture. What it lacks is a coherent story, characters you care about and fully discernible dialog. The Australian accents in this film are the full blow kind, not the cleaned up, Americanized sort you hear from Nicole Kidman or Hugh Jackman. Honestly, you either have to rewind and listen to certain bits over and over again or just shrug your shoulders and go along. I'm not sure even understanding all the dialog would make the story any better.
The credits list this movie as based on several short stories and they didn't work very hard to tie them together into a complete whole. It's more like one of those anthology movies like Creepshow, though it's not even as good as Creepshow II.
The insights provided into Australian culture are two.
1. Australians apparently like to say the F-word. A lot. And not for emphasis like Americans do, but more like it's a random adjective or punctuation.
2. Australian Cinema in the early 90s did not place a huge amount of importance on physical beauty. Body Melt has a fairly large cast and there's two, maybe three people in the whole movie pretty enough to be in an American film. Especially in an American gross-out horror flick, where pretty actors are used almost like set decoration. Frankly, Body Melt may demonstrate the wisdom of casting the handsome. If the actors in this film were more attractive, you might pay more attention to them and less to the film's flaws.
The effects don't live up to today's CGI standards, but if you're looking for some unusual gore (like that exploding erection), you can find it in Body Melt.