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Synopsis
from original 1993 press-kit

Injected With an experimental drug, the research chemist Ryan (Robert Simper) leaves a mysterious rural health farm and drives to the outer-city suburb of Hornesville, As Ryan's body starts to deteriorate and his driving becomes more erratic, a cruising police car starts to chase him. Charging towards a group of houses in Pebbles Court, Homesville, Ryan leaves a cryptic message on his dictaphone: "The first phase is hallucinogenic ... The second phase is glandular... The third phase is ..."

Before he can finish the sentence, Ryan crashes into a parked car and dies. The cops and various residents approach the wreck, but do not see the bizarre tentacles that crawl out of the dead man's neck.

Senior detective Sam Phillips (Gerard Kennedy) and his rookie partner Johnno (Andrew Daddo) start investigating the death. Was the dead man attempting to contact one of the residents In Pebbles Court? And why?

Strange things begin to happen to the residents. Paul Mathews (William McInnes) drinks an innocent-looking vitamin powder and starts hallucinating. A ghostly apparition comes for his ribs.

Two young Italian boys Sal and Gino (Nick Polites, Maurie Annese) drive into the outback and are captured by a feral, mutant family and their patriarch Pud (Vince Gill).

The pregnant Cheryl Rand (Lisa McCune) loses her placenta. It hides in the house and then attacks her husband Brian (Brett Climo). The Noble family go to a health farm for "a holiday we'll never forget".

The cops begin to piece the puzzle together, making connections between the bizarre events in Hornesville and the so-called health farm run by the insidious Dr. Carrera (Ian Smith) and his assistant Shann (Regina Gaigalas).

But can they stop Carrera 's crazy scheme? Or will everything Just keep melting?

Production Notes
from original 1993 press-kit

Director and co-writer Philip Brophy describes Body Melt as "the suburbs on weird drugs. It started off with ideas of what you could do to the human body. Something that pushes the body beyond its normal capacities." His inspiration came from "recently married perfect couples, woollen jumpers, baby name books, aerobics classes, four wheel drives, new housing estates and anything else associated with complacent lifestyles."

Body Melt is the story of the deluded Doctor Carrera who is experimenting on normal suburban people. With his assistant Shann. they find ways to administer their new drugs to unsuspecting residents of a suburban housing estate. Their aim is to "create the new you". But it all goes horribly wrong.

"Generally, everyone's become much more obsessed with the living body", says Brophy in the Australian magazine Fatal Visions. "That's what's so great about modem horror movies. Over the past ten or fifteen years, what has come to the forefront is the question of how you can transform a body, whether it's through steroids, psychic healing, or any drugs you want to name."

The casting for the 36 speaking parts In Body Melt was a challenge for Brophy and producer-eo-writer Rod Bishop. "We had to find the right combination of types" said Bishop. "Our casting agent was thrilled. There were so many weird and wonderful characters in Body Melt. He could offer up all sorts of actors hidden away in the depths of his filing cabinets." Well-known film and television professionals like Gerard Kennedy, Vince GiJ and Ian Smith were cast alongside actors from television commercials and soap operas. Brophy wanted everyone "to play it straight. this is not an over-the-top Monty Python splatter-skit. It's a straight horror film with comic moments".

The main location for the new housing estate of "Homesville" was found in an outer suburb of Melbourne. "It's hard to believe it's a real location" says Bishop. "It's so new. There are no trees. Just identical architecture, lawns and driveways. The houses all look like they have popped up from the ground like mushrooms." The location for the health farm called Vimuville run by the doctor and his staff was also found in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. On the outside, It looks like an ultra-modem clinic, equipped with swimming pools, gyms, skate-rinks and fine dining. But behind these facades lie the laboratories where experimental drugs are created, and where huge, muscular assistants prepare to transport the "vitamins" to an unsuspecting world.

For the numerous special make-up effects needed for Body Melt, Brophy and Bishop turned to Bob McCarron, Australia's leading expert in prosthetic effects. "Everything I do in this film is like horror magazine front cover material", says McCarron. "Being called Body Melt, most people do melt, but they do so from within and we've used three 40 gallon drums of phlegm." Called on to create gigantic tongues, a placenta that jumps on a character's face, tentacles which crawi out of a neck and up somebody's nose, McCarron says of the actors: "They all took it as fun and looked on it as good experience. Most of them had never worked on a film like this before. They all had a good time, right down to the young kid playing the roller-bladder who gets his face sheared off on a skateboard ramp, which we had to film in rain and darkness."

Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy