Pebbles Court is a dead-end road in the subdivision of Homesville, a section of Melbourne Australia. The residents are being used as guinea pigs to test a new super supplement from the Vimuville Corporation that promises lots of health advantages. The residents of the area have been sent samples of Vimuville’s new dietary supplement. The supplements are available in pill form or loose and soluble in water. The side effects to the drug are hallucinations and various bodily changes that result in people melting and /or exploding body parts. The net result either way is death.
Ryan Brennan (Robert Simper), the chemist that helped develop the supplements has second thoughts about using humans as test subjects without their knowledge. He believes that Vimuville is doing unethical experiments on the Homesville residents. The Vimuville Corporation is run by Dr. Carrera (Ian Smith) and Shaan (Regina Gaigalas). Ryan quits, but before he leaves, Shaan gives him a hypo full of the experimental drug, enough to kill him, and it does, but not until he melts.
Before he died, Ryan had been trying to reach one of the residents of Pebbles Court to warn him about the drug. Ryan was trying to reach Paul Matthews (William McInnes), at number 9 Pebbles Court, when his car crashed into another vehicle. Ryan was then thrust airborne and crashed through the windshield. Assigned to investigate the accident are Detective Sam Phillips (Gerard Kennedy) and his partner Johnno (Andrew Daddo).
Others being given the drug are the Noble family, Thompson (Adrian Wright), Brandon (Ben Geurens) Elloise (Amanda Douge), and Angelica (Jillian Murray). Then there are Cheryl Rand (Lisa McCune) and her husband Brian (Brett Climo). Cheryl is pregnant and seeing Dr. Carrera. Finally, we have Sal Ciccone (Nicholas Politis) and Gino Argento (Maurie Annese).
Eventually Dr. Carrera finds out that the reason his drug is causing people to explode is because it is missing one ingredient. Without that ingredient, the body can’t control the effectiveness of the supplement. Something that Carrera’s former partner left out of the formula. Of course, growing food and making vitamins on land that use to be an old chemical dump isn’t a good idea either.
“Body Melt” was released in 1993 and was directed and written by Philip Brophy. It is an Australian independent science fiction black comedy body-horror film. Australian films are sometimes referred to as Ozsploitation. The film was co-written by Rod Bishop. Both Bishop and Brophy are ex-members of the art punk group → ↑ →. They also did the soundtrack. The music is great.
The editing is just a little choppy. There are several storylines that eventually converge. Until they do it is a little confusing. Also, when one of the side effects for your experimental drug is hallucinations, it adds to the confusion. Of course, you can add all kinds of weird stuff to your movie, and it will fit right in. You may have to watch it more than once to get everything that’s going on. Even if you don’t get it the first time around it is still a pretty decent movie.
Once you figure out what’s what, the movie gets a little freaky. There is a lot of gross in this movie. It seems that everyone’s death is both gory and unique. Just about every kind of body fluid ever known is featured, and some made up ones as well. I guess the plot of the film is basically the same as the title, everybody melts. If you like Cronenberg style weirdness, then this may be the movie for you.
Another reason that the film seems a little disjointed at times could be due to the fact that they wanted to make the entire film an anthology but couldn’t get the financing for it.