Every country has its cinematic shame. America gave us Cool as Ice, Italy unleashed Troll 2, and Australia decided the world needed Body Melt, a film that proves once and for all that sunscreen isn’t the only thing that’ll make your skin peel in the outback.
Directed by Philip Brophy—an art punk musician turned filmmaker who apparently decided Cronenberg wasn’t gooey enough—Body Melt is what happens when suburban satire collides with a vat of radioactive mucus. The result isn’t a horror movie, not really. It’s more like someone filmed a late-night infomercial for vitamins and accidentally left the camera running while everyone’s organs liquefied.
The Plot: Suburban Hell, Now with Extra Pus
The premise: a shady health spa called Vimuville wants to turn vitamins into weapons of mass digestion. They test their glowing Flintstone chewables on unsuspecting residents of Pebbles Court, a cul-de-sac so bland it makes Desperate Housewives look like The Wire.
One poor schmuck, Ryan, tries to warn the neighbors, but overdoses on his own product and promptly sprouts throat tentacles before kissing his windshield at 80 mph. That’s the movie in a nutshell: people eat pills, then their insides burst out like a Gallagher watermelon show.
From there, we meet Pebbles Court’s unlucky residents:
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A pregnant woman whose placenta develops better motor skills than her husband.
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A wannabe bodybuilder who sneezes so hard his head dissolves into snot.
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A mother whose tongue grows long enough to audition for Kiss.
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A family who eats vitamin-laced pot roast like it’s their last supper—spoiler: it is.
And then there are the side quests: two dim-witted dudes take a road trip, get lost, and end up at a mutant farm straight out of The Hills Have Eyes: Kangaroo Edition. Because when your movie’s already about killer supplements, why not add in a subplot about inbred outback freaks who look like melted Vegemite sculptures?
The Characters: No Survivors, Only Slime
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Detective Sam Phillips (Gerard Kennedy): The kind of grizzled cop who seems less horrified by exploding torsos and more annoyed that his lunch break keeps getting interrupted by green ooze.
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Johnno (Andrew Daddo): The rookie detective whose main contribution is looking confused, which, to be fair, mirrors the audience.
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Dr. Carrera (Ian Smith): The mad scientist who developed the vitamins, then spent the rest of the film regretting it while his ear got ripped off by a man with half a face.
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Shaan (Regina Gaigalas): The health spa manager who’s equal parts evil mastermind and L’Oreal commercial. She finally implodes—literally—when someone slaps her too hard, proving skincare really is delicate.
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The Noble Family: Proof that “a balanced diet” doesn’t mean taking experimental drugs with your roast lamb.
Not one of these people makes it to the end credits with their dignity—or epidermis—intact.
The Gore: Nickelodeon Slime, Rated R
You know those green slime buckets from Nickelodeon’s Double Dare? Imagine those, but weaponized. That’s Body Melt.
We get exploding fetuses, mutant dogs, and digestive tracts that decide to take the scenic route out of the body. It’s all accompanied by sound effects straight out of a yogurt commercial: squelches, plops, and enough moist tearing to make a butcher wince.
But the gore isn’t scary—it’s hilarious. There’s no build-up, no suspense. Just: vitamin goes in, organs come out. Repeat until the audience is numb, nauseous, or both. It’s less The Fly and more Fear Factor: Melbourne Edition.
The Satire: Suburbia, Shaken and Puked
According to interviews, Brophy wanted to make a satire about Australia’s obsession with health, fitness, and suburbia. Which is noble, except instead of a biting critique, we got a two-hour goo parade. The “message” gets lost somewhere between the mutant placenta attack and the guy sneezing his face off.
The suburbanites aren’t characters; they’re disposable meat balloons waiting to pop. If the film’s goal was to show that consumer culture turns us into mindless test subjects, well, congratulations—it also turned this script into one.
The Acting: Dead on Arrival
The performances range from “high school play” to “local car commercial.” Gerard Kennedy at least looks like he wandered in from a different movie, maybe a police procedural that accidentally got slimed. Everyone else either overacts like they’re auditioning for Neighbours or underacts like they’ve already read the reviews.
Special shout-out to Clive, the local bully, who manages to be less intimidating than a kangaroo in a traffic cone. Also to the mutant farmer Pud, whose name alone sounds like something you’d find in a clogged drain.
The Ending: Hypernatural Nonsense
After everyone’s intestines have staged their great escape, Dr. Carrera shoots himself, the cops shrug, and the vitamins still make it onto store shelves. The final shot shows them sitting at a supermarket like nothing happened, which I assume was Brophy’s big satirical punchline. But after ninety minutes of body fluids and screaming, it just feels like the world’s worst Woolworths ad.
Why It Fails (But Also Why It’s Weirdly Watchable)
The problem with Body Melt isn’t that it’s gross. Gross can be great. (The Thing, Society, Street Trash—all classics.) The problem is that it’s only gross. No characters to care about, no tension, just a series of grotesque skits loosely tied together by a bottle of evil vitamins.
But here’s the twist: it’s also kind of… fun? Like watching a blender explode in slow motion, you can’t look away. The special effects are so rubbery they feel like a latex factory sale, and the satire is so on-the-nose it punches straight through into the sinus cavity. It’s bad, but it’s memorable—which is more than you can say for most straight-to-VHS horror of the era.
Final Thoughts: Better Dead than Fed
So is Body Melt a good movie? Absolutely not. It’s a mess of half-baked satire, bargain-bin gore, and performances that should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. But is it worth watching? Oh yes. Because sometimes you need to remind yourself what cinema looks like when ambition collides with incompetence and both dissolve into green slime.
In the end, Body Melt is less a film than a bodily function: loud, messy, and vaguely embarrassing, but strangely satisfying to witness once. Just don’t watch it after dinner.
