Steve West was the main antagonist of the 1977 horror B-movie The Incredible Melting Man. Originally an astronaut pioneering human exploration of Saturn, he was exposed to lethal degrees of stellar radiation. Rather than being killed outright, however, Steve would suffer a more terrible, lingering fate as his body slowly dissolved and liquefied. With his mental faculties completely degraded, he became a creature of pure instinct, driven to kill and feed upon people in order to slow the rate of his disintegration.
History[]
Steve West was one of three astronauts that had undertaken a mission to far-off Saturn. While observing the Sun through the planet's rings, the astronauts' craft was struck by an intense blast of radiation. The radiation rendered the crew unconscious and when they failed to respond to transmissions from NASA Control, the shuttle was automatically recalled to Earth. When the shuttle returned, two of the crew were dead and Steve had been horrifically disfigured, with radiation burns covering his entire body.
Steve eventually woke up in hospital to find himself wrapped in bandages. His physician, Dr. Lorring, was unable to determine what was happening to him or why he was still alive when both of his colleagues had died. Rising from the bed, Steve stepped over to a sink and unwrapped the bandages covering his face. Looking in the mirror, he was horrified to find that his flesh was slowly melting off his bones. Just then, a nurse entered the room with a jar of blood meant for intravenous delivery. At the sight of Steve's grotesque visage, she dropped the jar which shattered on the floor, and ran away screaming. Steve, driven insane by his condition, followed after the nurse and caught up to her in the corridor, killing her and partially eating her face before escaping the hospital.
Following Steve's escape, his friend and former colleague Dr. Ted Nelson arrived at the hospital and inspected the nurse's body. Discovering low levels of radiation on the corpse, Ted determined that Steve was radioactive and had lost his mind, being reduced to a savage level of intelligence and driven to feed on human flesh in order to slow his disintegration. Ted then called General Michael Perry of the U.S. Air Force to tell him about Steve. The General agreed to help Ted find Steve, but warned him not to tell anyone about the incident.
Meanwhile, Steve had wandered towards a stream where he encountered a lone fisherman. Emerging from the tall grass, he viciously attacked the fisherman and ripped his head off with unnatural strength, tossing it into the stream before feeding on the body. Afterwards, Steve followed the stream and arrived in a clear residential street. There was no one around save for a little girl, who ran away screaming at the sight of him.
That night, Ted returned home to his wife Judy, who told him that her mother was visiting with her boyfriend Harold. At that time, Helen and Harold were on the road and had stopped by a lemon grove, but it was there that they were ambushed and killed by Steve. He then continued to wander aimlessly throughout the night, stopping to rest at a cemetery. While resting, he experienced brief flashes of memory, recalling the last moments of the Saturn mission before he was struck by the radiation.
Sheriff Neil Blake later found the bodies of Helen and Harold, calling over Ted to identify them. After Blake angrily demanded an explanation, Nelson reluctantly revealed Steve's condition. Ted believed that Steve was somehow getting stronger the more his body decomposed. Back at Ted's house, Steve attacked and killed General Perry, although Judy was not harmed. Ted and Neil arrived just as Steve fled the house. Steve then stumbled upon the home of a married couple named Matt and Nell Winters. Steve killed Matt and attacked Nell, but she drove him away after chopping his arm off with a cleaver. While Nell had survived her encounter with Steve, she suffered a mental breakdown.
Ted and Neil followed Steve to a nearby power plant, pursuing him up several flights of stairs. Neil attempted to stop Steve by blasting him with a shotgun, but Steve was seemingly unfazed by the blasts. Steve then grabbed Neil and threw him over a railing where he fell onto a live power line and was electrocuted. Steve then hit Ted, who went over the railing but grabbed onto the ledge. Ted tried to appeal to Steve's humanity, reminding him of their past friendship. This desperate act appeared to work as Steve then reached down to help Ted back up to safety. Unfortunately, two armed security guards appeared at that moment and raised their guns at Ted and Steve. Ted tried to tell the guards to lower their weapons, but they panicked and fired, shooting Ted in the face. Watching Ted die infuriated Steve and he attacked the guards, pushing them over the railing and letting them fall to their deaths.
Death[]
As dawn came, Steve had come down from the tower and staggered to a nearby building, laying against a wall. As the sun rose, he finally succumbed to the radiation ravaging his body, his flesh completely liquefying and his bones softening into mush. In the morninng, a janitor came by and found Steve's molten remains, casually scooping them up and dumping them in a garbage can.